{"id":7771,"date":"2019-02-12T07:39:20","date_gmt":"2019-02-12T12:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7771"},"modified":"2019-03-14T08:49:17","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T12:49:17","slug":"the-exploitation-of-tigers-by-writers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7771","title":{"rendered":"The Exploitation of Tigers–by Writers!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Western writers have exploited the tiger, says Aditi Natasha Kini<\/a> in a Literary Hub essay, that goes on to illustrate the interplay of literature and wildlife mismanagement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authors have been mesmerized by the elusive tiger\u2019s beauty, stunned by its cunning, and fascinated by its ferocity. Whereas a lion is social and, according to no less a wildlife expert than Gunther Gebel-Williams, tends to want to get along; tigers don\u2019t care about you, not even about each other at times, as the recent London Zoo tragedy<\/a> attests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alas, our fascination has been deadly for the tigers. \u201cDo\nyou want to kill them because you are afraid\u2014or because you covet their power?\u201d\nKini asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hard to believe in this era of heightened consciousness that\na New York Times<\/em> South Asia bureau chief\n\u201ca few months ago,\u201d Kini says, started writing admiringly about the hunt for a\ntiger deemed menacing to Indian villages. Despite the editor\u2019s \u201cseveral\nbreathless articles,\u201d certainly this writing did not generate the bloodlust of a\ncentury ago, when an estimated 80,000 tigers were slaughtered between 1875 and\n1925.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kini draws a connection between this murderous spree and the\nvilification of tigers in literature and popular culture. They came to be\nportrayed as evil, monstrous, and murderous. Jungle creatures, \u201cespecially\nsinewy marvels of evolution with massive jaws and impressive, though cryptic\nabilities, became a vivid metaphor for the wild\u2014and the colonial drive to\nconquer it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The near-extermination of wild tigers becomes another\nenvironmental depredation that naturally devolves from what Kini calls \u201cthe\nnarrative of human supremacy.\u201d Now, one legacy of that narrative contributes to\nglobal\nwarming<\/a>, and the habitat loss likely to result will provide a further\nthreat to the species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The World Wildlife Fund<\/a>\u2019s estimate that more tigers live in U.S. backyards than in the wild has received fairly wide publicity. Nevertheless, four states\u2014Alabama, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin\u2014have no laws at all<\/a> about keeping dangerous wild animals as \u201cpets,\u201d including this week in an abandoned Houston garage<\/a>. The reduced circumstances in which many of these animals live is the exact opposite of the iconic creatures of fiction. Unless, of course, you\u2019re writing tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I highly recommend John Vaillant\u2019s page-turner of a book about the Amur tigers of far eastern Russia, The Tiger<\/a><\/em>. It\u2019s non-fiction, and the action is heart-stopping. For the latest on this subject–Dane Huckelbridge’s February 2019 book, No Beast So Fierce<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiger photo: Damian Moore, creative commons license<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a>
<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Western writers have exploited the tiger, says Aditi Natasha Kini in a Literary Hub essay, that goes on to illustrate the interplay of literature and wildlife mismanagement. Authors have been mesmerized by the elusive tiger\u2019s beauty, stunned by its cunning, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5957,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Exploitation of Tigers--by Writers! - In both literature and popular culture, tigers have been portrayed as evil, monstrous, and murderous. As a result, they became something else to conquer.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[440,266,261,104],"tags":[1509,416,1508],"class_list":["post-7771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adventure","category-history","category-journalism","category-the-morgue","tag-john-vaillant","tag-real-life","tag-tigers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Tiger.jpg?fit=640%2C426&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-21l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7771"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7797,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7771\/revisions\/7797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}