Slayers, Rippers, and Blitzes
Dark humour and the justification of cruelty to possums in online media in New Zealand.
Originally published in Frontiers in Communication by Emily Major, PhD.
What follows is a Preamble authored by Emily Major, PhD, along with the article’s Introduction.
Preamble
The article’s title, “Slayers, Rippers, and Blitzes,” directly references how
brushtail possum “pests,” and related conservation initiatives, were discussed in Aotearoa New Zealand’s online news media. Amateur hunters and trappers were heralded as “Slayers” of villainous possums, while an escaped pet joey, called a “Ripper” in the media, allegedly held a woman “hostage” at her home. “Pest” control campaigns, referred to as “Blitzes” by conservation organizations, championed the German blitzkrieg-style attacks on the demonized marsupial. Images and language among these articles paired dark humour with a sense of justifiable vilification, making the plight of possums a unifying subject to lure in readers. This article outlines the extensive discourse analysis that considers the intersection of humour and cruelty, news media ethics, and patriotism within conservation in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Introduction
In Aotearoa New Zealand, brushtail possums (herein: possums) are the country’s most despised villains (Potts, 2009; McCrow-Young et al., 2015; Major, 2023). The reference to “Aotearoa New Zealand” acknowledges both the Māori name and colonial name; however, the remainder of this paper will use “New Zealand” as the attitudes discussed primarily concern settler understandings of possums. These marsupials were introduced by colonial settlers from their native Australia to the largely mammal-free New Zealand in 1858 to establish a fur trade. Existing Critical Animal Studies research has explored how possums have been scapegoated as an invasive Australian “pest” and have subsequently been targeted by relentless “propaganda” campaigns (Potts, 2013; Armstrong and Potts, 2021), such as Predator Free 2050 (PF2050). PF2050, a “moonshot” government campaign that seeks to eradicate all possums, stoats, and rats by the year 2050 (Palmer and McLauchlan, 2023), hinges on the widespread education and dedicated participation of all New Zealanders in the trapping, killing, and removal of these nonhuman animals widely deemed to be “pests.” Using the term “animal” as if it were separate from human beings is problematic; however, there is no perfect way to refer to nonhuman animals that does not reinforce the binary between human and nonhuman. For the ease of reading, “animal” will be used. “Pest” is deliberately written with apostrophes to denote the cultural construction of the word. Possums are routinely framed by the media using disparaging metaphors, such as “the only good possum is a dead possum” (Potts, 2009), or by widespread misinformation about their diets, such as the overstated suggestion by conservation authorities that possums extensively predate on native birds and their eggs. While a possum may eat an egg or bird, it is highly irregular as their folivorous diets consist mainly of vegetation (State of Victoria Department of Environment, Land, Water, and Planning, 2017). These bird and egg “flora-devouring brutes” are described as “great [in Australia], not here” (Moroney, 2016, para. 12). This framing of non-native possums as antithetical to the nation’s native species has resulted in a breeding ground for speciesist and racially motivated cruelty that has normalized and desensitized New Zealanders to abject violence against those ostracized beings. While many readers, particularly those enculturated in anti-possum rhetoric, may not agree that possums belong in New Zealand, the notion that possums should be treated with care and consideration should not be too far of a leap for a nation that prides themselves on cultural acceptance and diversity (for human beings, at least). The outpouring of support for the Muslim community as a result of the March 2019 terrorist attacks in Christchurch reflects the nation’s recognizance that abuse and cruelty are not merited across racist terms (Royal Commission of Inquiry, n.d.) — so how could we think about cruelty and abuse of possums in speciesist terms? This article seeks to eschew these ideas, and though the focus is on possums, this phenomenon of a “war on species” is not new, as can be illustrated by the “war on rats” in New York City (City of New York, 2023).
This paper employs thematic analysis of online news articles that were published between May 2016 and August 2023 and included the word “possum[s]” in their titles. The purpose was to explore how language and images were used to support, reinforce, and police speciesist narratives regarding this introduced species. The motivation to pursue this project stemmed from McCrow-Young et al.’s (2015) seminal paper which examined New Zealand’s print media narratives about possums between 2003 and 2014. Their article offered a snapshot of how possums were framed by news media using negative and often militant language and imagery that socially and culturally sanctioned abuse toward the species; however, their article was published before the advent of the PF2050 campaign in 2016. Though PF2050 has since received a host of criticisms, such as not being realistic to achieve within the short time frame (Linklater and Steer, 2018) and that its potential failure could cause a series of social, environmental, financial, and animal risks (Palmer and McLauchlan, 2023), its emergence signaled a turning point in the “war” against possums where proponents of the government-sanctioned campaign were given social license to kill the marsupial in the name of conservation vigilantism to correct errors from past wrongs. As such, this paper seeks to build upon McCrow-Young et al.’s (2015) work by exploring how media representations about possums have evolved post-PF2050.
While the aggressive and negative portrayal of possums that McCrow-Young et al. (2015) mentioned was replicated in the post-2016 articles, a sinister undercurrent emerged that combined dark humor, which sought to trivialize or make light of sinister subjects for entertainment, with casual objectification of possums, ultimately, making their abuse, suffering and cruelty not seen as abuse, suffering, or cruelty. This paper will discuss the findings of the subsequent media analysis and explore why and how this combination in the media has prevented possums from being awarded agency or consideration for empathy in the mainstream cultural milieu in New Zealand. The intersection of possums as a foreign species and unwelcome Australian invaders in the media has culminated in creaturely hatred toward the possum which invokes as metonym ideas about purity, belonging, and race.
Organizations, such as the Department of Conservation (DOC) and affiliated environmental and conservation groups, are largely responsible for curating and shaping the narrative about the place of possums in New Zealand. However, the media also plays an integral role in upholding, reinforcing, and maintaining these possums as “pests” discourses in the public sphere. Previous research has examined how these dominant narratives have taught New Zealanders of any age to treat the “forests as abattoirs,” inciting grave concerns around the development of empathy and compassion in the nation (Major, 2023). Not recognizing these possums as sentient beings cultivates not only their unethical and cruel treatment in conservation but also supports and fosters a sociocultural ignorance that engenders racist and speciesist rhetoric within digital media that can cause lasting harm to more beings than just possums.
Ultimately, this research is critically important as it considers the extent to which the media contributes to and legitimizes forms of cruelty to not only possums and other “pest” species, but to those beings ostracized as condemned “others.” A new media ethics that rejects these discriminatory discourses can be informed through the consultation of critical animal media discourse, feminist media ethics, and critical discourse analysis that prioritizes a more intersectional, anti-speciesist media literacy among the populace. Instead of possums being represented in the media as invasive villains who are the target of jokes that poke fun at their mistreatment, they can be reimagined as unwilling victims of colonization who were forcibly introduced to an unfamiliar land (to exploit and consume their bodies, nonetheless) and were persecuted when their once-nurtured abundance soured to disdain. Perhaps then, possums are victims of colonization, too, who belong alongside native species in this postcolonial nation of patchwork cultures; however, at a bare minimum, they are deserving of compassion, care, and respect.
Emily Major, PhD is a PAN Works Research Fellow and early career researcher who uses Critical Animal Studies, ecofeminist ethics of care, and intersectional approaches with advocacy to promote empathy, compassion, and kindness to nonhuman animals. Emily recently graduated with her PhD in Human-Animal Studies from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, and is a committee member of the Australasian Animal Studies Association (AASA), a board member of the New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society (NZAVS), and a member of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies (NZCHAS).
Nicole Roberts is the Associate Editor for PAN Works and provided editorial support for this essay.
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