Reference no: EM133262953

In the article, The Cutopia Paradox: Anthropomorphism as Entertainment, the authors discuss how animals are portrayed by the media as having human-like qualities and being cute for our entertainment and pleasure. An example of this is from the movie The Jungle Book. A boy is left orphaned by a vicious Bengal tiger who killed his parents, the boy is then raised by wolves. In this story, the wolves are given humanistic characteristics such as speech and emotional understanding. There are also a bear and a panther who help raise. the boy and are givne voices and human expressions to make them seem cute to the audience. In real life, the wolves would not have adopted the child and raised him as their own. But by giving the wolves attributes that would make them more relatable to humans they are seen as cute because they took in an orphan boy and raised him. We can also see that this happens with documentaries featuring the mating rituals of animals. In recent years there have been documentaries made with storylines that feature voiceovers to humanize the animals and make them cute and more appealing to us viewers. Although they are in their natural environment and not being held captive they can still be considered to be actors because they are "performing and animating a role that has been authored by another being."

Respond naturally to the post, asking a few questions for further discussion perhaps but focusing especially on how they helped you understand the concepts through the examples they chose and presented.