(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The film Gunda can be seen as a critique of the human view of animals. By rising above nature, above that which is different, man has lost the ability to see what is in it, the many forms of existence that do not resemble our own. The way we look determines the way we act: If we change our views, we change our actions. It is therefore not surprising that sight is precisely the theme of How Gunda sees the world.
Gunda is a distinctly visual film. The film lacks a clear narrative, and it lacks language. Even music is left out. The lack of all these elements forces us to maintain the attentive gaze of the pig. It is also a slow film: the spectator is forced to dwell on the situations, to witness the birth, the play, the feeding and the mother's confusion and despair when the piglets are taken from her. Through the long scenes, we gradually adjust the way we look: We are given an opportunity to open ourselves to the world of the pig, to see it again.
A film that is stripped of an anthropocentric view of animals.
But is it possible to look again? Seeing is not an easy activity; we never see the world with a neutral, receptive gaze. On the other hand, we always see it as something, and our cultural background dictates or shapes what we see. It's hard to get us to see something in a way that transcends our cultural interpretive framework – but that's what the film Gunda demands of the viewer. As Mariken Lauvstad points out [see essay in the post], our culture also conditions what is worth seeing, what is worth our gaze and thus our recognition: “We humans are seldom curious about what we do not consider culturally valuable, but we can easily become curious by dwelling on what we see. "
The eye also has other functions: In the gaze we express our recognition of the other, we meet the other's soul. We talk, for example, about "being seen" as being recognized, being met with humanity. Sight can also be linked to cognition, which is reflected in everyday language, where the expressions "to have insight", "to get an overview" and "to have a revelation" reveal our belief in the connection between sight and knowledge, sight and truth.
In the film Gunda, the director plays in these different ways of looking. We get a chance to see the pig again, and then on the pig's own terms. This encounter with the pig gives us an insight into a form of existence that is fundamentally different from our own. And precisely because it is questioned whether we actually know the nature of the pig, human domination over it is also implicitly problematized. The idea of the pig as a piece of meat is an extremely human idea: it is an abstraction that does not do the pig's distinctive justice. The film alienates us from this thought and introduces us to Gunda. Gunda as a pig and Gunda as an individual. The director has achieved this by avoiding assimilating what is foreign, into familiar, human interpretive frameworks: The pig is allowed to speak for itself.
Anthropocentrism
As spectators to the life of the pig Gunda, we are – perhaps for the first time – witnessing a film that is stripped of an anthropocentric view of animals. Anthropocentrism can be understood not only as a material exploitation of nature and the animal kingdom, but also as a way of looking at it. To see anthropocentric is, as the word implies, to see man as the center of the world, as a measure of the rest. This means that we attribute value to the animals based on whether they are valuable to us. But it also implies an existential (ontological) flattening of these animals, an inability to see how they are different, from each other and from us, that animals have individuality and thus their own world.
In Gunda, the visual serves as a source of knowledge. The knowledge we are left with is not linguistic, but lies in the dumb depiction of the pig's behavior, a kind of being depicted. And when we indulge in the description – and get the opportunity to see the pig again – we also have to take a stand on the ethical consequences. The recognition of its essence becomes our task. We can try to resist, try to remain within our usual ways of looking, but then we also reject the pig's urgent demands on us: to be seen in its individuality, and to be treated accordingly.
See also: This is how Gunda sees the world
