ABSTRACT
Has anyone noticed how many television wildlife programmes seem to be scheduled around mealtimes? It’s a mundane coincidence that illustrates just one of the ways in which we confront the tricky borders between culture and nature in our everyday lives. The feeding habits of the creatures on display and the food on the viewer’s fork collide momentarily in millions of homes. In that moment, the cordon separating the things we call ‘natural’ from those we call ‘cultural’ loses its grip. Which is on the screen and which on the plate? At first glance, the big cat tearing into the flesh of its prey seems to embody nature at its most elemental – a world apart. But look again. This vision of nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ has been carefully framed by the hidden crews and technologies of film-making. They in turn are shaped by the conventions of science and television, which establish our expectations of how a particular type of animal should eat and which aspects of feeding make good viewing. The meal in front of us, on the other hand, is more obviously of human making. But on closer inspection we cannot fail to be reminded that, however haut the cuisine or industrial the ingredients, we share the metabolic urges of our animal kin. Culture and nature, it seems, are not so easy to pin down.
