"The Call Of Animals": Analyzing Ecological Thoughts Embodied In Contemporary American Animal Movies

Eco-criticism, as a tendency of literary and cultural criticism, appeared in1970s.And now it has become an important method of literary and cultural criticism in thewest, even the whole world. Eco-criticism mainly probes into the relationship betweenhuman beings and nature, and the root of environmental deterioration, species extinctionand ecological crisis. Eco-critics pay close attention to animal rights, advocatingecological holism and the harmonious relationship between animals, human beings andthe whole eco-system.Contemporary American animal-related movies, which developed from1940s and1950s, mainly contains the literary documentary that restores the real animal livingstatement, features movies that takes an animal as its main character and animal dramathat fuses with recording techniques. Although it can’t be put into any traditional genre,as the rapid development of the movie technology, the animal movie has changed fromthe simple kids’ movie to the one that is embodied with rich aesthetic values and lifeethics. Containing in-depth ecological thoughts, many animal movies occupy asignificant position in awakening people’s ecological awareness and have great effecton building the harmonious society.So far, many scholars have studied contemporary American animal-related moviesfrom the perspective of forms, with comparisons between the eastern and westernanimal movies, animals’ roles and so on. Few have analyzed them from the angle ofeco-criticism. Thus, this thesis chooses three representative contemporary Americananimal movies: Water for Elephants, The Horse Whisperer and Rise of the Planet of theApes as the discussion text, and tries to analyze the animal rights theory, ecologicalholism and warnings against modern people’s Anthropocentrism behaviors embodied inthem from the perspective of eco-criticism.In addition, the aim of this thesis is to awaken people’s ecological awareness, build the culture and development model in which human beings, animals and the naturalenvironment live in harmony with each other, and make a little contribution to solvingthe extinction of species and ecological crisis.