My cell phone is just not that into me, and neither is the lab rat

For a practical example of how things are actors, one could point to the movie "He's just not that into you." Cell phones are major characters in the movie, as recalcitrant, confusing, and connecting as the human characters. I don't think there's any reciprocal contribution to theory to be drawn from this movie, at least not by me, but as a minor contribution to pedagogy I thought I would throw this out there. As far learning about human intimacy, just go to a coffee shop.

What was more interesting was a PSA in the adverts at the beginning. Side by side it shows a man smoking and a mouse in a plexiglass cage. The cage has a hole in it out of which the mouse can lean to sip from a dispenser marked "nicotine." Every time the man smokes the mouse pops out to get a fix too. The voice over says something like "cigarette companies make cigarettes addictive for a reason. Don't let them control you."

The simplicity of the image makes this a particularly ambivalent and revealing ad. At a surface level the man and the mouse are the same: the question is how other discourses surrounding them reinforce or cleave that identification. Biologically, the ad suggests they are also the same, or at least that they share biologicity. Humans and mice can become chemically addicted and the resultant behavior is the same. This raises the other half of the natureculture complex, social determination of behavior.

Both mouse and man are presented without others. I see this as a way to emphasize the biological substrate and implicitly distinguish human agency from biological imperatives. What offers a far better explanation of the mouse's "determination" is that it is trapped in a cage with only one opening, and a jug of nicotine is right there. The worker seems to be blue collar, suggesting social reasons for his habit.

I kind of like this ad because its simplicity makes its ambivalence rise to the top. The direct parallel raises the question, if one adopts any kind of critical attitude--and anti-smoking ads spur adolescent criticism like no other--of how these cases are or are not alike. As in my previous post on how horror movies display reactionary ethics, this kind of iconic manipulation of an animal shows the use of force needed to make animals less than humans. If the critique of cigarette companies is valid then 1) it is also wrong to use mice in product development and testing and 2) it is wrong to construct animals as biological machines, even if that construction can function against cigarette companies.

I looked for the video briefly on youtube but gave up. If anyone finds it I'll post it.