Whether today’s modern societies are capitalist, socialism (or capitalism) with Chinese characteristics, non-human animals in these societies are victims of the current unbridled process of the global market economy. Animals become caught up in the eternal loop of production, consumption, and post-consumption - a journey as capital, garbage, or anything else except as sentient beings with affective capacities. One way to look at the emerging field of animal humanities is not only as a discursive engagement to reassess the human-animal divide, but more proactively, as most cultural criticism does, as a way to also generate political or social change.
This article sets out to render a more positive tone by asserting that, in dealing with contemporary systematic creation of animal capital and wasted animal, the film medium is more effective when perceived as an agent of redemption. The documentary genre in particular is capable of helping non-human animals break away from the viscous loop of the capitalist production chain through its visual, investigative, and other cinematic apparatus. In developing the idea of documentary redemption and hope, I first trace, by way of Nicole Shukin’s work, the entanglements of animals in the early film industry where animals are exploited materially by this industry and conceptually exploited for the advancement of a capitalist manufacturing process. Here, I see filmic redemption, at a rudimentary level, as a self-redemptive one: to redress/make amends for the material practice of the traditional film practice through the shift to digital film. The second idea of animal redemption is examined in light of animal documentary activism. What narrative and aesthetic strategies do filmmakers use to prompt post-cinematic change or action? What affects are appropriate for an animal advocacy film? In recognizing the potential negatives of documentaries to traumatize, terrorize, and numb the audience by cataloging the cruel reality of animal violence and suffering, I contend that the documentary genre actualizes its activist potential when it is conceived as a positive and affective technological apparatus of hope and aspiration. The following films (mostly documentaries) from multiple localities will be discussed: The Plastic Cow (India), Three Flower/Tri-Color(China),Twelve Nights (Taiwan), The Ivory Game (Australia), and four Asian Black Bear rescue documentaries from Australia, China, and Vietnam.