Films, gestures, species

Abstract

As non-verbal communication, gestures are central to the cinematic representation of the animal. How has the cinema constructed creaturely gestures? How do animals enunciate? Charles Darwin argued in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) that there is an evolutionary continuity between human and animal expressions and gestures. In his book, he drew on photography to provide visual evidence of his theory that the emotions evolved in human and animal, and that animals also experienced a range of emotions similar to those experienced by the human animal. To what extent has the cinema represented a gestural continuity between species? This paper explores these questions in relation to a range of films. It focuses on the extent to which the cinema deploys human and animal gestures to reinforce and/or undermine an anthropocentric discourse and point of view.