Elephants,
lions, tigers and leopards evoke fascination and awe, fear and
excitement.This bookanalyzes trained acts in twentieth-century live
circus and cinema,reveals how humans anthropomorphize animals with their
emotions, and interrogates the notion thatanimals embody a
phenomenology of emotions and feelings in culture.
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| Elephants, lions, tigers and leopards evoked fascination and awe, fear
and excitement in the twentieth-century circus. Wild and Dangerous
Performances: Animals, Emotions, Circus explores what happened when big
cats roared on cue and elephants danced together. Acts in live circus
and cinema reveal how humans anthropomorphize animals with their
emotions. Trained animals became caught up in scientific precepts from
Darwin on emotions and in opposition to animal performance. This history
considers acts by Carl Hagenbeck, Frank Bostock, Alfred Court, Clyde
Beatty, Mabel Stark, Patricia Bourne, Damoo Dhotre, Gunther
Gebel-Williams and others in leading international circuses. Their acts
featured: Nero, the horse riding lion, Rajah, the wrestling tiger,
Sonia, the waltzing leopard, and Champion, lying like a fur collar
across the trainer's shoulders. Descriptions of animal performers were
vivid and moving, but completely contradictory. Animals embody a
phenomenology of transacted emotions and feelings in culture, recently
exemplified by Christian, the lion.Contributing to the growing
scholarship in animal studies, this fascinating study has much to offer
to anyone interested in circus animal performance, performance history,
animal emotions and animal rights and ethics. | | |
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