Abstract

Moving images of animals have been popular from the beginning of the medium of film and fascinate us from childhood, and they show the cultural image that exists in a (human) society of (other) animals. This essay outlines how Disney rose to prominence in the first half of the 20th century by strongly humanizing (or anthropomorphizing) animals in his animated films and not taking them very seriously as animals. In the second half of that century, the BBC had great success with nature series in which, on the contrary, scientific distance and the differences between humans and animals (‘anthropo-denial’) were central, and animals were seen primarily as objects. In recent decades, new insights into biology on the one hand and technological innovations in the media on the other have led to more diverse and ambivalent animal images. These reflect a growing awareness of the similarities between humans and other animals, with films and TV series using new images and stories to enable viewers to empathize with non-human living beings.