The contemporary theorist Akira Mizuna Lippitt gave another theory on the relation of man and beast, a theory more informed by the techno-culture of contemporary society. In his book “The Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife,” Lippitt presents an extraordinary idea: animals do not have a language, so they cannot die. Since the animal is unable to understand language, then the animal cannot conceptualize its own death. Lippitt applies this idea to our world, in considering the increased disappearance of the wild animal as a result of human activity; the fleeting animal figure has been transferred to the film image that informs our experience of the wild beast. According to Lippitt, the film image produces an uncanny reproduction of the living in its animation. Lippitt also explains that the image always retains a material connection to the actual creature that was once alive. He goes on to talk about the anxiety felt by a person watching the animal image on-screen and feeling the presence of the moving creature in its filmic form. Arguably then, the wild animal and the technologically enhanced modern civilized human being are still bound together in a digital coexistence. There is an incredibly profound understanding to the significance of the film medium, the representation of the animal figure, our language and what cannot be put into words when we watch an animal image onscreen. Lippitt provides an enlightening scrutiny on the interworking of these ideas. Lippitt’s closely examines the eye of the camera gazing into the eye of the predator and renders the psychological experience of the film viewer in that moment, who senses the impulsive-deathly gaze of the wild animal staring back.  This same experience gets reported on by Pi, in his encounter with wild animals on the boat and the exchange of instinctual gazes.  A cross comparison between the human interpretation of wild life in film and Pi’s own study of the animal’s in their predator-prey interaction, can be performed in a class lesson.

So this brings me to “Life of Pi” in the classroom. The religious pondering in this novel and the close examination of animal-human relations that are creatively combined in this fiction novel touches on the theories of Lippitt.  In a class of adolescents, who have been immersed in a techno-culture world since they can remember, many students will have an experience of wilderness via the electronic image. Therefore they are conditioned to understand the concept of the wild animal in the context of the technology age. I propose that Lippit’s theories get applied to the analysis of Life of Pi during classroom lessons in high schools. Since the high school students have grown-up in a more technologically informed world, they will be able to interpret the complex theories of film theorists such as Lippitt and be able to expand on these concepts, because of their already advanced understanding of the media world. This will give a new potential to the interpretation of Life of Pi through the application of Lippitt’s theories and other film/media theorist by high school students.    

Nature in Literacy and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism. http://books.google.ca/books?id=Bx6raCjQL88C&pg=PA29&dq=Lippitt+Electric+Animal&hl=en&ei=vK6qTLi2Hom8sQOeqajgAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Lippitt%20Electric%20Animal&f=false

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/L/lippit_electric.html

http://animalvoices.ca/2008/02/12/electric-animal-interview-with-dr-akira-lippit/ (SEE LINK TO LIPPITT INTERVIEW)