9311571 Mitman In the 19th century, the gun was an indispensable part of natural history. By the early 20th century, the careers of many young naturalists were shaped by the camera instead. Film rapidly and readily became a methodological tool among scientific disciplines that had relied primarily on field practices of observation and description, and transported natural history disciplines, such as animal behavior, into highly mediated spaces of 20th century experimental life sciences. Film served as an important bridge between natural history and experimental biology. On the one hand, it could accommodate the realism so central to the practices of the museum diorama and the study of nature in the wild. On the other hand, it enabled the biologist to use the more interventionist techniques of the laboratory: now movements and behaviors were recorded on a medium that could be slowed down, analyzed, spliced and edited. However, unlike other technologies that were created and developed specifically for scientists in labs, film had its primary function, namely, its utility as an art and entertainment form, defined outside the cultural domain of science. Scientists in using film could not escape its entertainment role. Hollywood had overridingly defined the terms by which the media could be utilized, seen, and understood, and no one who partook in this technology could evade its influence. Research films on wildlife behavior often incorporated elements of drama and popular spectacle, thus highlighting the permeability of boundaries between scientific and popular culture. Dr. Mitman is continuing his exploration of the study and representation of animals as scientific and popular spectacle through a focus on natural history and animal behavior films. The study begins with the 1920s travelogue tradition. An important function of the natural history film for the spectator in cities is the recreation of the animal's natural habitat. However, the importance of film for the research scientist served different ends. Within the science of animal behavior, nature on screen provided an important methodological means for the dissection and analysis of nature in the field. From the travelogue tradition, this project then moves into the area of experimental practice to examine how film helped orient and shape the filed of animal behavior studies. The project ends with an analysis of how animals as scientific spectacle became appropriated and transformed by 1950s American public culture, as evidence by the success of tourist attractions like Marineland and the popularity of television series and films such as "Adventure," "Zoo Parade," and Disney's "True-Life Adventures," seen by millions of families in the comforts of their homes. Throughout, the project challenges a diffusionist model of science popularization and points historically to the ways in which the visual aesthetic of film has profoundly shaped public understanding and expectations of animals in their natural environments. ***
