Non-human Characters Research Articles

Narrating Disruptive Encounters in the Forest: Hunting, Animal Lives, and Ecology

Over the last century, three popular writers and media personalities have written bestsellers and created TV programs in order to alert the general public to the suffering of wild animals as well as the deleterious effects on young trees caused directly or indirectly by hunting and forestry practices. Austrian journalist and writer Felix Salten published Bambi: A Story of Life in the Woods (1923), using a baby deer’s perspective. German journalist and literary author Horst Stern shocked the nation with his TV program Remarks about the Stag (1971), which shows the brutality of hunting; his 1989 Jagdnovelle (The Last Hunt) weaves together a hunter’s perspective with his prey animal’s experience. In recent years, German forester Peter Wohlleben has shifted the focus from animals to plants by publishing a series of popular books about the forest, starting with The Hidden Life of Trees (2015). This essay examines how Salten, Stern, and Wohlleben all humanize their animal and plant characters, including through a form of “critical anthromorphism” (Mossner)—and are criticized for it. They also incorporate ethology, i.e. observations of animal behavior and the forest environment, as well as scientific knowledge, as they attempt to evoke their audience’s empathy for their nonhuman characters. Hunting pressure and the violent disruption of the lives of the animals leads to an “ecology of fear” instead of an “ecology of subjects” that would align better with changing perceptions of “nature” (Soentgen). Ethical questions concerning the mass killing of Europe’s largest mammals remain as it does not succeed in reducing deer overpopulation or damage to the forest ecosystem, perpetuing Germany’s forest/game conflict.

Expository spirits: media and the material occult in J.R. Planché’s The Vampire

ABSTRACT There is a long tradition of aligning vampires with media, dating back to Dracula’s defeat by humans using modern communication technologies. This article examines an earlier, more elemental vampire in J.R. Planché’s 1820 stage melodrama The Vampire. Planché’s play was staged during a period when the definition of media was shifting from the natural elements toward human communication technologies. Building on John Durham Peters’ expanded notion of media as encompassing bodies and environments as well as minds and communication technologies, this article reads Planché’s nonhuman characters – spirits of the air and water and a vampire who disappears into the stage – as somewhere between characters and scenery. By showing how these nonhuman characters align with the melodrama’s pictorial renderings of environment in its ‘vision’ scene, the article suggests how the elemental both orders and complicates modes of signification grounded in the social world. Over the course of the nineteenth century, vision scenes became less elemental and more psychological in later melodramas such as David Leopold Lewis’s The Bells (1871). The Vampire’s vision scene thus suggests the elemental underpinnings of later melodramatic conventions for representing inner life.

Human and Nature Interactions in Kesar Lall’s Folk Tales from Nepal: An Eco-Critical Reading

Folktales are traditional stories orally handed down to the succeeding generations. They portray the co-existence and collaborations of humans, non-human characters and environments. This study explores the relations and interactions of humans, non-humans and nature in Kesar Lall’s Folk Tales from Nepal: The Origins of Alcohol and other Stories from ecocritical perspective. It has used ecocriticism as a theoretical tool. It is a library and qualitative research. The main finding of this study portrays the association and interactions among humans, non-humans and nature. The attitude of humans exploits the biological and physical environment for the sake of humans. Humans have hostile relations with non­­-humans like ogre in the natural world. The folktales demonstrate metamorphosis nature of gods and nagas. They portray the death of human beings as the natural process. They have abundant evidences of environments, and they transfer the value of ecological wisdom more to the readers. This study increases the environmental literacy of youths and expands the Nepali folktales to English speaking communities.

Meaningful Grunts and Radical “Blehs”

This article studies the radical identity-making potential of noise and nonhuman sound in video games. To do so, this article focuses on the oral production of the rabbid protagonists—mischievous humanoid rabbits easily identifiable by their constant and cacophonic sound making—in the Mario + Rabbids series. The rabbids’ constant shouts, grunts, and cries serve as great examples of the potential of nonhuman noise and sound to not only reproduce identities that escape from human-centric conceptions of being, but, more importantly, to invite players to see all identities—including their own—as polysemic and sometimes contradictory assemblages. This article converses with existing research on the ability of human voice and silence to manage identities in video games, with studies on nonhuman material excess in video games where players control nonhuman characters, and with work on how animal main characters sound in video games. This dialogue brings forth reflections on what being and becoming mean. The cacophonic nature of noise does not necessarily invoke the absence of all meaning, but an opportunity to embrace its many potential meanings and reflect on an equally polysemic world.

Gender Representation in Children’s EFL Textbooks: A Comparison between Private Primary Schools and Language Centers in Fes

It is commonly assumed that the social and cultural values of societies are always ingrained in their educational systems, particularly in teaching and learning materials. Textbooks are one of the materials in which gender stereotypes have been documented worldwide. In the Moroccan context, children's EFL (English as a foreign language) textbooks used in primary schools may transmit typical patterns and discriminatory images about gender, which perpetuate more gender disparities. To this end, this research aims to determine the way gender is depicted in four EFL textbooks for the 4th grade published between 2012 and 2020 in Morocco. It also tends to exhibit the major differences between EFL textbooks used at language centers (Super Minds 4 and Let’s Go 4) and private primary schools (English Pass Pack 4 and Passport to English 4). The research is conducted both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results of this study show that there are equal gender representations in EFL textbooks used at language centers compared to textbooks used at primary schools in terms of nouns and proper names, pronouns, non-human character representations, and roles associated with males and females.

〈팥죽할머니와 호랑이〉에 나타난 농경문화의 브리꼴뢰르적 변용과 협력의 의미

This article is focused on the culture of agriculture and the characters’ cooperation in the tale of 〈A Red Bean Porridge Granny and A Tiger〉. These characters’ conflicts in the whole story can be sorted out into two types which are the conflict of a granny and a tiger, and one of a tiger and several non-human characters who lived in the granny’s home. This second conflict involves the cooperation of the granny and non-human characters. The potter, here, is triggered by the laboriousness of farming that the granny feels, and the latter is induced by sharing the red bean porridge that the granny made. These conflicts have significant meaning because both of them are universal experiences humans have gone through in history and the laboriousness of farming is eventually connected to the joy of redbean crops. This study is, especially interested in the behavior of cooperation because it can occur only with those whom you want and choose, and cooperation relationship also always visualize their relation and its effects unlike conflict relationship is not always visualized in their relations that can be with anyone. That is, cooperation has a reasonable background and purpose.
 With these perspectives, the story can be analyzed as revolving around the aspect of characters’ cooperation in the second chapter, and showed that their cooperation set can be considered ‘bricoleur conversion’. In the third chapter, this article suggested that the granny’s laboriousness seemed to recall non-agriculture which symbolizes a tiger, however, it paradoxically verifies the power of agriculture that involves cyclical living culture, diversity, specialization, and cooperation of communities. The tale of 〈a red bean porridge granny and a tiger〉, therefore, is a metaphor featuring characters’ conflicts and cooperation and solar term, that about humans’ culture of agriculture that they have gone through with nature, labor, threat of enemies and their communities’ driving force to prevent themselves against any threats.

Queer Fish: Following the Great Transgender Fish in the Book of Jonah

Abstract This paper builds both on Raymond Person’s “The Role of Non-Human Characters in Jonah” where he argues that the book of Jonah is a satire of an anthropocentric worldview and on the work of transecological notions of enmeshment. The great fish stands at the center of the text and Jonah’s transformation, but the fish itself is transformed, starting the journey as a male fish and later becoming a female fish. Queer bodies and animal bodies are often mere metaphors in literature, examples of their andro-anthropo counterparts who are the subjects of the story. By taking the fish’s transition seriously, the fish’s queer body becomes the center of the satire and cannot be dissolved as merely a device for teaching Jonah a lesson. The fish is everything that Jonah is not: a transgender or gender fluid being with a nurturing nature and a fierce obedience to God.

A Pilot Study on the Video Game Interface from the Perspective of the Human-Computer Interaction -- Taking Far: Lone Sails as an Example

The advancing IT industry gives rise to the video game industry, where more fancy and exquisite graphics can be generated. The property of video games based on human-computer interaction that associated the IT industry with art and design draws more and more attention from scholars. A genre called indie video games is less popular and less discussed. As a result, this paper is written to research the human-computer interaction applied in an indie video game, Far: Lone Sails. A pilot study will be conducted by reading and analyzing its official artbook, actual scenes during the process of the game, and relevant articles to answer the question, How does an indie video game interface manage to engage the player based on human-computer interaction? After conducting the pilot study, it can be concluded that to engage players, Far: Lone Sails applies different forms of human-computer interactions to build moods, a bond with a non-human character, contrasts, guidance, and narration.

The Roles of Human, Nature, and Supernatural Power in Phuoc's The Celestial King Phu Dong and the Iron Horse

Anthropocentrism centralizes the role of humans and human impact on the environment. In folktales, the anthropocentric nuance is amplified by the moral messages delivered after telling the tales. The moral messages are usually for the betterment of humans. This paper intends to offer an alternative reading of a folktale by shifting the focal perspective slightly from human to nature and supernatural beings and their power. The object of this paper is a folktale from Vietnamese culture titled The Celestial King Phu Dong and the Iron Horse. In the tale, the human character could defeat the monster since they had supernatural power. This paper employs three tools to foreground the roles of nature and supernatural power. The folktale's plot is analyzed by its tale elements proposed by Booker (2004). The power relation of the actants is analyzed using Greimas' actantial analysis, and the clause structure is examined by Systemic Functional Linguistic's thematic structure analysis. The result shows that the plot is built upon the opposition between human and nonhuman characters. The actantial analysis indicates that in opposing the nonhuman character, the human character needs help from nature and supernatural power. The thematic patterns structure the delivery of the power relation and the human character dependency. This paper concludes that human character is depicted as dependent on nature and supernatural power in solving problems and obstacles. It foregrounds the agency of objects surrounding humans.

Human-nonhuman boundaries and inter-creatural empathy in Klara and the Sun, Fifteen Dogs, the Wonder that Was Ours and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

ABSTRACT Engaging with issues of categorisation, human supremacy, and (the lack of) empathy, in this article I read Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021), André Alexis’s Fifteen Dogs (2015), and Alice Hatcher’s The Wonder That Was Ours (2018); novels that I argue are connected by their interrogation of biopolitically produced and policed boundaries between human and nonhuman beings, and by their focus on inter-creatural empathy and care. Through the lens of critical posthumanism, Agambenian biopolitics, and care ethics, I explore how these texts interrogate boundaries between animals, humans and techno-creatures, and I contend that they provide nonhuman and marginalised human characters with a (narrative) voice in order to challenge and undermine anthropocentric conceptions of subjectivity, agency and community. Mapping the novels’ portrayal of inter-creatural care relationships, I argue that affirming vulnerability potentially leads to the recognition of a “strange kinship” between human and nonhuman characters; and it is my ultimate claim that these texts turn proximity and porosity into productive and often transgressive inter-creatural entanglements, thereby disrupting processes of exclusionary differentiation, and opening the way to an imaginative exploration of new ways of being.

Outlandish creatures and genre crossover in young adult liminal fantasy: a Deleuzian perspective

This study employs Deleuze’s concept of “deterritorialisation” to examine how young adult liminal fantasy can blend genre expectations and engage in environmental enquiry for a young adult audience. The term “outlandish creatures” is introduced to denote these improbable nonhuman characters that inhabit imaginary worlds in YA liminal fantasy where they exist intrinsically in young protagonists’ daily lives, exemplifying the genre’s propensity to transcend boundaries between species, genres, and reality. By conducting a Deleuzian analysis of Sonya Hartnett’s The Midnight Zoo (2011), Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls (2011), and Shaun Tan’s Tales from the Inner City (2018), this study reveals that the depictions of encounters between youth and outlandish creatures not only reflect environmental anxieties in the Anthropocene era, but also contribute to the enrichment of narrative explorations within the genre. The study concludes that YA liminal fantasy has the capacity to address identity issues faced by contemporary young adults and foster ethical directionality through the productive fusion of genres and species.

Intangibility and Selfhood: Westworld as Allegory for Adaptation in the Digital Age

Abstract Despite the digital becoming ever more ubiquitous, the physical matters more than ever. We see this in interviews with actors who voice animated characters, actors who voice computer generated imagery (CGI) characters, and actors who voice other non-human characters. Many things present a challenge to the ways in which we understand the physical—the structures of meaning in the world primarily, along with the specific filmic ways we understand star bodies. These combine to create barriers to ‘seeing’ the truth of a character we might think, but this is fixated on an approach that privileges a hierarchy of actors over character. Equally, it is one that privileges body over character. The recent series of Westworld begins to challenge this, thinking about the ways in which while the physical may be required, audiences are able to think beyond it. It functions as a way to consider the digital adaptation of the self, and the return to the needs of the physical to express character. Ultimately, this article argues that although we cannot escape the physical, the hierarchies and boundaries we have in place for understanding the truth of the self remain as unfixed as ever, despite the recourse to adapting through non-physical means.

Aesthetics, Technology, and Social Harmony: Constructing a “Green China” Image Through Eco-documentaries

ABSTRACT As China’s environmental problems have been thrust into the limelight of both domestic and international media, the Chinese government is eager to present a positive country image in terms of environmental planning and protection. Against this backdrop, this study aims to investigate how a “Green China” image is constructed through state-sanctioned eco-documentaries. Drawing on the Attitude System in Appraisal theory and multimodal discourse analysis, the study develops an analytical framework to investigate country image as semantic categories, as well as how it is constructed through multimodal resources. The analysis shows that these documentaries create an eco-friendly country image through: (1) highlighting the significance and desirability of the Chinese landscape (appreciation), (2) constructing a positive image of Chinese social actors in terms of environmental protection (judgment), and (3) depicting non-human characters’ happiness and security of living in China (affect). These positive attitudes reflect and constitute China’s green image branding practices shaped by the entangled forces of the Party-state’s rejuvenation of traditional culture, its development of globally competitive green technologies, and its promotion of participatory environmental governance.

Metode Desain Karakter Aaron Blaise dengan Penerapan Antropomorfisme dalam Animasi Lakontara sebagai Upaya Pelestarian Ketoprak

The Marmalade team with their animation titled "Lakontara" has successfully won a gold medal in the GEMASTIK XV 2022 event. In their animation, Marmalade raises the issue of the low interest of the community in traditional Javanese theater (ketoprak) performances, and how ketoprak can remain relevant and compete with other modern entertainments. In the character design of Lakontara, it can be seen that the characters are predominantly non-human characters given human attributes and behaviors, indicating that the characters are designed using anthropomorphism. This is commonly found in popular animations such as Cars, Toy Story, and SpongeBob SquarePants. Anthropomorphism is claimed to make animations appear funnier and more appealing because it can bring something impossible in the real world into the animation.

The image ratios for designing cute nonhuman anthropomorphic characters

Nonhuman anthropomorphic characters have found wide use in various entertainment media, particularly animations, comic books, and games, and the designs of these characters are becoming increasingly diverse. This study employed the baby schema concept to explore the eye, mouth, head, body, and limb designs and body proportions of nonhuman anthropomorphic characters, all of which influence their image styles. The study examined the appearances of popular, cute nonhuman characters to identify the design rationale for various image styles. The relationship between cute nonhuman characters and their images of cuteness was explored in two stages. First, the study conducted a focus group interview and cluster analysis to identify five popular styles of cuteness, namely, innocent, childlike, funny, energetic, and ridiculous. Subsequently, the study administered a questionnaire and obtained 200 valid responses. The results indicated that the five image styles feature unique eye and mouth characteristics and distinct head-to-body and limb proportions. The design rationale for each identified image style of nonhuman characters provides a reference for designing exceptional characters that exemplify various trends of cuteness, which, thereby, enables businesses to seize the market opportunities created by emerging entertainment media industries.

Invoking ‘Empathy for the Planet’ through Participatory Ecological Storytelling: From Human-Centered to Planet-Centered Design

In sustainable design and innovation, appreciation of the Planet as an equal stakeholder with humans and businesses continues to rise. Yet a consistent challenge arises in that people have difficulties relating to the nonhuman and interpret the world in terms of human values and experiences. We need more practical tools to stimulate a connection, especially in its affective dimension, to the Planet and to include nonhuman stakeholders in sustainability developments. To anchor Planetary understanding and considerations, we investigate the role of participatory storytelling to stimulate a reappraisal of the needs of nonhuman stakeholders through empathy building. To posit this, we defined empathy for the Planet as a holistic relationship with human and nonhuman stakeholders. We facilitated workshops where design students, design professionals, and business stakeholders could co-create environmental stories using human and nonhuman character personas. We analyzed the personas, stories, and participants’ feedback on the process experience and impact and observed that story creators experienced empathy for the Planet through projecting and blending their own emotions and intents onto the characters. We discuss, therefore, how ecological story co-creation can be a tool for self-reflection, collective sense-making, and the inclusion of the voice of Planetary stakeholders relevant for sustainable design and to drive sustainability engagement in general. This research confirms the role of stories and imagination in creating a bridge to the natural world through new, human and nonhuman, perspectives.

Androcentric Bias: Anthropomorphic Characters Promoting Masculinity

Cartoons on television are a platform for gender representation because of their varied content. It is observed evidence that cartoons hold a more dominant role over the centuries. The stereotyped gender representation in animated television programs affects viewers, particularly young children, in a variety of ways. The purpose of this study is to analyze how anthropomorphic characters promote masculinity in Indian television cartoons. The character comparison was conducted to determine whether cartoons in India promote masculinity or not. It was discovered that anthropomorphic male characters played the main characters and dominate one, while female anthropomorphic characters are underrepresented, indicating that gender is stereotypically portrayed. Through androcentrism, the article would examine how the gender stereotypes given to the nonhuman characters in these shows perpetuate gender unfairness. This study examines how gender stereotypes are promoted through the pretense of “children’s entertainment” in animations and how these problems might be addressed.

ANALYSIS OF CHARACTER AND CHARACTERIZATION IN ERNEST MILLER HEMINGWAY NOVEL “THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA”

Based on the novel The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway, 1952. The discussion of the problem in this novel is to analyze the main characters, namely Santiago, Manolin and Marlin. The data used to strengthen the facts in this study are library research and are supported by novels and biographies of the author. The method used in this research is a comparative literature study with descriptive qualitative research. The characterizations contained in these characters are as follows: Santiago is a character who has a physical condition, is generous, never gives up, a parent figure for manolin, an unlucky character (salao). Meanwhile, Manolin is a character who has unyielding character, lucky character, compassionate and kind, loyal character. As for the non-human character, he is Marlin, besides he is a friend and brother to Santiago, stubborn, Santiago's pride.

그림책 등장인물의 성별에 대한 유아들의 인식

Objectives This study aimed to examine how children perceive the gender of human and non-human characters while reading picture books.
 Methods Children’s perception was observed through reading out two different picture books for 48 children of Y kindergarten and S kindergarten in S city, in a primary large-group session and secondary small-group session, then a repetitive and active verbal interaction afterward.
 Results Children displayed a tendency to perceive the gender of the human characters in picture books based on social constructs. Male children largely focused on references to conventions and social constructs, whereas female children focused on visual features such as reference to illustrations, colors, clothes, and physical attributes. In the case of non-human characters, social constructs and references to illustrations had an equivalent degree of influence on the perception of gender. Male children used references to conventions as evidence to perceive the characters’ gender, while female children used references to illustrations and clothes.
 Conclusions By understanding children’s perception of the gender of human and non-human characters in picture books, this study can contribute to composing a children’s literary education curriculum that pursues diversity to diminish gender stereotypes, and deepening meaningful literary interactions with children from the perspective of gender sensitivity.

Features of Anthropomorphic Narrative in Modern Prose

The narrative structures of novels written by Ye. CheshirKo and O. Roy are considered. The author characterizes the narrative polyphony: the voice of subjectivized unreliable narrator is supplemented by the voice of an objectified narrator or the voices of other characters, which leads to transformations of the genre basis of the work. It is established that the narrative on behalf of the nonhuman character causes the appearance of the features of magical realism which consist of a special binary chronotope including the characteristics of the contemporary real world and the alternative one, a distinct type of character who is either a representative of the alternative world or a mediator between two worlds. The relevance of the research lies in the need to study narrative instances in the modern prose. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that on the basis of the modern novels, united by several features, the narrative polyphony and the ways of its creation are characterized. The author explores the stylistic features of the aforementioned novels which have not previously been the subject of thorough literary analysis. It is proved that the polyphony of narrative images expands the possibilities of the plot, style, as well as the view of a person as the subject of the image. The comparative method and the method of intertextual analysis are used in the article.