The Evolution Of Animal Rights

Ecocriticism is not only a current form of literary criticism, but also a vigoroussocial movement. It came into being in the1980s and has become a main force in theliterary criticism. In order to get economic interest, humans exploit mineral resources,cut down trees and hunt wild animals at random. This leads to not only an ecologicalethic crisis, but the disorder of ecosystem and extinction of species. As a result, moreand more scholars pay attention to the study of animal rights from the perspective ofecocriticism.Animated films are one form of films. Although at first the target audience ismainly children and adolescents, animated films have grown to have an extensive adultaudience because of richer topics and use of new technologies. The animated filmsdiscuss much about the relationship between humans and nature, especially betweenhumans and animals, which aims at awakening conscience and responsibility of humanbeings and giving the revelation of taking care of animals consciously. As a result, it isbelieved to have improved humans’ behavior to animals and even the moral realm.Up till now, as for the studies on animated films about animals, many scholars inChina focus on cross culture, use and future development of modern techniques,literature and art such as narrative techniques, role making and so forth. Studies abroadare related to influence studies, application of digital techniques, influences on theteaching and learning in the classroom. However, there are not enough studies on howthe relationship between human beings and nature or animals is presented in these films,which is the starting point of the study.By making a careful survey, we can find the relationship between humans andanimals presented in these films, the consciousness of caring for animals, the theme ofanimals as subject-of-a-life and ideas about inherent value have been developing withtimes changing. In the thesis, five representative animated films in Hollywood: Bambi,101Dalmatians and The Aristocats, Brother Bear and Rio are selected as researchsubjects. The writer adopts animal rights theory, which are from the famous animalrights theorist Tom Regan, such as animal awareness, subject-of-a-life and inherentvalue and so forth, to probe into animal rights thoughts in these five films from the perspective of ecocriticism.The present study shows that the animated films about animals in Hollywoodpresent different attitudes towards animals, the evolution of which is from humans’denial of animal rights to accepting some rights of poultry, and finally recognizingrights of all the animals in nature.