S8E8: Film and TV with Lynda Korimboccus and Ankita Rathour
In this episode Ankita Rathour and Lynda Korimboccus join Claudia to discuss the interconnections of film, tv, and animals. Together they touch on everything from the Peppa Pig paradox in children’s media to the shifting role of animals in Hindi cinema, nationalism and caste politics.
Ankita Rathour is a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech. She received her PhD in English from Louisiana State University in 2023. As a scholar she is deeply invested in investigating Hindi cinema (Bollywood) and violence in post/colonial spaces. She was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Her academic and popular articles have been published in Media Watch, E-Cine India, Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching, Feminism In India, Fair Observer, and E-International Relations to name a few. If Bollywood intrigues you, she is happy to chat anytime! Her email is arathour6@gatech.edu
Lynda Korimboccus is a passionate advocate for equity and justice. She is a Lecturer in Sociology and Programme Tutor for the Scottish Wider Access Programme (SWAP) in Social Sciences at West Lothian College, where she has worked for 15 years. She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy as well as an independent scholar in the field of critical animal studies. A PhD Sociology candidate, Lynda is researching the experiences of vegan children in the education system with a view to making recommendations to expand its inclusivity. Lynda also writes for Faunalytics and is Editor-in-Chief of the Student Journal for Vegan Sociology.
Mentioned:
The Subaltern Gazes: Commentary on Amit Masurkar's Sherni by Ankita Rathour.
Pig-ignorant: The Peppa Pig Paradox. Investigating Contradictory Childhood Consumption by Lynda M Korimboccus
Animal representation on UK children’s television by Lynda M Korimboccus
Can the Subaltern Speak by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
From Symbolic to Agential: The Evolution of Natural Representation in Indian Eco-Sensitive Films by Rakesh Kumar Pankaj and Dibyakusum Ray
The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery by Spiegel, Marjorie
Human supremacism: why are animal rights activists still the “orphans of the left”? by Will Kymlicka
When different is ambivalence: Strategic ignorance about meat consumption by Marleen C. Onwezen and Cor N. van der Weele
Humane Jobs: A Political Economic Vision for Interspecies Solidarity and Human–Animal Wellbeing by Kendra Coulter
Advertising oppression: the reproduction of anthroparchy in UK children's and" family" television by Kate F. Stewart and Matthew Cole
Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell.
Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Mother Cow, Mother India by Yamini Narayanan
The Sexual Politics of Meat by Carol J Adams
The Desi Gaze, a podcast by Ankita Rathour.
“Children’s affective imaginations are directed towards representations and away from the real victims” (Stewart and Cole, 2018).
“As it has been copiously argued, the very existence of Indian cinema is intricately related to its national political backdrop which became even more apparent in the general filmic sentiment of the early 1990s, which saw the emergence of the “feel-good, all-happy-in-the- and, tender love stories with lots of songs and dances … ‘family values’ and their palpable, if not entirely self- evident, investment in ‘our culture.’ The 1990s is the defining moment in the history of Indian cinema1 that emerged in collusion to the neoliberal bent of the Indian economy, transcending its state-controlled, socialistic carapace and embracing market-oriented capitalist norms that– apart from generating deeper social layers and economic deprivation, cast a deep effect on national forestry and ecology. The natural resources of India, around this time, started to be “valued for the range of the services they can provide to the hydrological cycle, to soil systems, biological diversity, and carbon storages as well as to recreational services” (Pankaj and Ray, 2023)
Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; and the pollination project, the School of Modern Language, the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, as well as the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech University for co-sponsoring this season. The bed music was composed by Gordon Clarke and the logo designed by Jeremy John. This episode was produced, hosted, and edited by Claudia Hirtenfelder.