Shark Impressions Of Animals Essay

It is Not the Real Shark

What word would you use to describe a tiny dog? Some people might call it cute, while the others might consider pups as naughty and rebellious. Now, how about a shark? What adjectives could you think of? In most cases, people deem sharks as dangerous, threatening and violent animal, but in reality how many of them have actually seen one? In fact, the impressions of a certain type of animal in most people’s mind, are primarily based on how the media portrays them. As an illustration, the impressions of the shark were deeply influenced by “Jaws” and it is probably why almost every person describes them as violent or cold-blooded. In art, animals are portrayed in ways to help convey particular messages to the audience.

For instance, the evolved apes in the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are presented to remind audience of the importance of love and belief between different cultures. Although the portrayal of animals could aid the movie spreading the messages, sometimes the way that movie portrays them could be misleading and unrealistic to the audience.

Since the impression of animals in our mind could directly alter our decisions and actions on them, the incorrect portrayal of animals in movie indeed impacts our society and the

nature profoundly and subtly.
Animals have been portrayed in art by humans for a really long time.

In fact, the history of the portrayal of the animal could be traced back to prehistoric time when people were still residing in caves and hunting animals like horses, reindeers for the food. Hunting was an indispensable part of their daily life because animals were the primary source of food and tools. That’s the reason why hunting was considered as one of the most popular themes in prehistoric art. As early as 3,000 B.C., a rock art from Uruk that demonstrates the king killing a lion using ancient weapons was already created. Later, around 700s and 600s B.C., a series of sculpture which has the similar theme was identified in the palace of Ashurbanipal. Every element of the carving signifies the message of strength and motion (Animals in Art). As we could observe from the ancient art, human beings have been closely bonded with the nature and animals since prehistoric time. Animals became a vital element in our art and were portrayed by us to convey messages to the

audience.
As civilizations flourished, the portrayal of animals became more popular and existed in various forms in different cultures. In Greek culture, some Olympian Gods were correlated to wild animals to symbolize positive and negative features in myths. Just like how the winged horse Pegasus was deemed as a pleasant creature in Greek Gods’ eyes and Cheiron was dubbed as “the greatest educator of his day”, there are instances when “friendly animals” are viewed with compassion, respect, and, at times, companionable friendship (Simonsen). On the other hand, there is a group of unfavorable animals in the Greek myths being portrayed oppositely and they give the audience a fearful and sickening impressions. Simonsen once claimed, “They represent everything that is terrifying and hateful in the animal kingdom, everything that should be feared and avoided by humans.” Animals, that are portrayed negatively, share the common characteristic – they are abnormal and distasteful to human beings. “It is conceivable that what is terrible and repelling about these creatures is not their animal traits but, rather, their abnormalities” (Simonsen).
Additionally, this kind of creatures are even classified and portrayed as monsters. As the author said in the article,
As the art history developed