CANE TOADS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 150

sociological inquiry - namely the reading of human societal meanings into the
animal kingdom' (1990: 1110). As Taussig makes clear, this is the opposite of
anthropomorphism. Rather than projecting human characteristics onto toads,
Lewis uses the intermediary of the toad as a means of illuminating the modern
social world and refracting the complexity of the cane toad problem. As people
from all walks of life offer their opinions on the toad, the self-conscious rendering
of human-animal relationships allows a kind a transferral to take place, in which,
as Taussig observes, 'the humans become somewhat like animals, and the toads
become somewhat like humans' (ibid.: 1111). It turns out that the cane toad offers
the perfect vehicle to blur various binaries including native/pest, domestic/wild
and human/animal, in order to help us see the ecology of an invasive species in a
multiplicity of forms.
This chapter examines Mark Lewis's cane toad films as an exemplary form of
eco-documentary, with a view to understanding how they revise and overturn
conventional forms of science and wildlife documentary. By examining the ways
in which animals and humans are framed in Lewis's films, I wish to trace several
cinematic and televisual trajectories that inform his practice as a non-fiction
filmmaker, as well as looking at the broader impacts of these films. My central
argument is that these films constitute an important model for eco-documentary,
one that plays on the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, connections between
humans and other animals. I am inspired, in part, by Jennifer Ladino's call for
scholars of animal studies and ecocinema studies to examine films that depict 'ways
of becoming with nonhuman animals', particularly films that blur generic con-
ventions and invite discussion about the meanings and resonances of animality
(2013: 144). My approach also draws on Anat Pick's 'creaturely poetics', in which
she argues that the vulnerability that unites humans and non-humans can be used
as 'a means of interrogating and expanding the possibilities of (non-human)
subjectivity' (2011: 6).
My aim in this chapter is to open up new ways of thinking about invasive
species, particularly cane toads, through the modalities of their popular
representation in Mark Lewis's films. I begin with a brief exploration of how these
films foster new ways of depicting human-animal relationships. Why did Mark
Lewis choose to represent the cane toad in this particular way? I then consider the
precise ways in which these films rework the differing scientific paradigms of
conventional forms of science and wildlife documentary. By investigating Lewis's
unique documentary style, it is possible to see how these films constitute an
important form of eco-documentary. It is also possible to see the limits of this
representational strategy. Finally, I look at the combination of animality and
ecology in these films. Rather than seeking to master the problem of cane toads in
Australia, what does it mean to respond to cane toads, as Lewis does in his films,
from a variety of different perspectives?