I first want to ask a question which I plan to answer right away. To what degree are you allowed to anthropomorphize something? The answer: The sky is the limit. You can do it by a little, a lot, or entirely. Whatever suites your fancy. Now, let's look at a few examples.
One of my most favorite works of fiction was "Bambi, a Life in the Woods" by Felix Salten. To only a small degree, he anthropomorphized a number of animals so that you could understand them better. Felix gave these animals a couple things that animals normally do not have. Namely, the ability to communicate in a human language as well as an emotional and social structure that was slightly more organized than animals usually possess in reality. This was done purely to help us relate and understand them.
In my opinion, Disney improved on Mister Salten's book with their film "Bambi" released in 1942 and the brilliant sequel "Bambi II" released 64 years later in 2006. Disney sustained the anthropomorphization level from the novel. However, he added more of his own. Although the cervidae (deer) characters still walk like normal cloven hooved animals, the smaller critter types, such as Thumper the rabbit and Flower the skunk, seemed to have more human style characteristics such as fingers and thumbs. Although they would often stand up to communicate, they would still be compelled to dropped down to all fours to travel.
The facial expressions of all the characters in the Disney movies were far more advanced than explained in Salten's books. Bambi showed true emotion that we could understand. He suffered through problems that we would empathize with far more than an actual deer would. The death of his own mother very likely affected the audience more than it would a real deer. It was all intended to tell a story to us, and it did so quite well.
If Disney were to tell the same story from the actual perspective of the deer without any anthropomorphization at all, it would be an incredibly boring experience. In fact, we would likely need a documentary narrator to give us the play-by-play just so it would all make sense, and even then, we would see our own lives as much more interesting than the survive-or-be-killed lives of deer. Disney's surprising addition of Thumper and Flower added more story to the movies than the book had. We enjoyed their little friendship just as much as the drama happening between Bambi and his parents. Anthropomorphization made all of this possible.
Now let's look at a higher degree of anthropomorphization and even another famous Disney film. I am speaking of the 1973 film "Robin Hood." The contrast with the "Bambi" example here is that, instead of making animals anthropomorphized, we are making human characters into animals. Sort of. In fact, we are taking animals, anthropomorphizing them, and then substituting human characters with our anthropomorphized animals. It totally worked, by the way. The movie is popular to this very day and has formed the groundwork for the study of anthropomorphization in modern animation.
The animals of "Robin Hood" are brought as close as they can to humans without giving up the genuine animal look. They still have fur, a snout, a tail, and ears, but they have the body and physique of a human being. Their personalities are way more like ours. Nothing is left of their animal brains. They are essentially humans that look like animals. And in many ways, the choice of animal often fits the character being introduced. Robin Hood is a clever fox. The sheriff is a big, fat wolf. Little John is a not-so-little bear. It all makes sense and helps us understand who they are and why they do things. I dare say this movie told the story better than any other version of "Robin Hood" ever made for this reason.
Without going on too much into it, there are also many examples of anthropomorphization happening to inanimate objects. Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" did this with all kinds of household furniture. They were merely given eyes and mouths in this case. It was closer to how it was done in "Bambi," I suppose. You might also look into many of the platformer video games made by developer Rare. They love taking just about any kind of inanimate object, plopping a set of eyes on top, and filling it with life. It is a mainstay in most of their games, I have noticed.
I'm not done yet. Let's talk about the anthropomorphization that we do every day. Look at our cars. For one, we made them look a whole lot like they have a face. And sometimes we talk to them. We talk to a lot of things that don't have a bloody idea what we are saying. I am even guilty of this. I talk to my cat Cupcake all the time. I pretend she knows what I am saying, but in truth, she is probably wondering when I am gonna shut up.
The anthropomorphization of something is an aspect of humanity that is built in. We do it to anything we want to understand better. It sometimes works, and in other cases, we are merely diluting ourselves with fantasy. In and of itself, there is no real harm in it. But sometimes I do not think people really understand what anthropomorphization is really for. In the children's show "Dexter's Laboratory," child scientist Dexter gave a dog the gift of speech so he could understand how a dog thinks and comprehends things. All he got for it was a dog who blathered on about the fact that he was a dog and how he thought everything might be food. Dexter's problem was that he half-assed the experiment.
What Dexter should have done was to give the dog an understanding of what it meant to be a human being. It would work a lot better. However, it might also shock the dog into an early grave. Human characteristics are one thing, but to understand the human condition enough to empathize with them can be fairly traumatic all at once. Dexter's method, although incomplete, may have been ultimately humane. The canine was left to live in ignorance and simply be... a dog.
But what if we did turn something inhuman entirely into a human for the sole purpose of understanding them? 100% anthropomorphization. This means we are taking everything inhuman out and putting everything human in. The creature or entity now understands humanity but he is still what he is on the inside. My final question to you is this: Was that a cruel thing to do?
Thank you for reading my blog? Did you love it? Did you hate it? Whatever the case, you can comment below, or you can email me at tkwadeauthor@gmail.com. See you next time!
The desire to humanize animals is a curious phenomenon. It seems as if it makes certain ideas easier to communicate. After all, the hardest thing to face is ourselves.
ReplyDeleteI liked this reply. It is very hard to understand ourselves.
DeleteAnthropomorphization is a fascinating concept, it certainly makes some really endearing characters in fiction. I don't see your final example as cruel, given that the idea was to understand the being and seemed to be done out of friendship. Now if the purpose was for the subject to know us instead it would be cruel and wicked because it would be done because of vanity.
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