The end of extinction?: playing the devil's advocate for designer Thylacines and theme park ecosystems in the age of pan-entertainment

The end of extinction?Playing the devil's advocate for designer Thylacines and themepark ecosystems in the age of pan-entertainment

Phil Bagust, Lecturer, School of Communication and Information Studies, Magill Campus, University of South Australia - January 2001

Abstract

The 1999 announcement by the Australian Museum regarding the possible cloning of the long [presumed] extinct marsupial predator the Thylacine [popularly known as the ‘Tasmanian Tiger’] produced widespread reactions in both the popular and specialist press. The story synthesised technical and ethical elements of the cloning debate and used them to re-energise an already powerful Australian ‘bush myth’ in public discourse. More than that however, the author contends that this is an exemplar of the kind of polemic that is being increasingly driven, not by science, religion or liberal-humanist governmentality, but by the spectacular ‘simulation’ agendas of the ‘media/promotional/entertainment’ complex.

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The end of extinction?Playing the devil's advocate for designer Thylacines and themepark ecosystems in the age of pan-entertainment

1. Supine Thylacine: the power of the myth personified in the image [in Beresford & Bailey, 1981]

“…Today, we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift…”[Ex U.S. President Bill Clinton on the Human Genome Project, http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/New/html/genome-20000626.html]

'High Strangeness'

Watching the famous film [TPWS, 2000] is a strangely unnervingexperience that is only enhanced by the flaws expected on any very old black and white footage. The beast paces its cage inthat strange stiff gait, apparently unhappy in its captivity. For most part, its canine nature is remarkable, but then comesa movement or gesture that is less dog-like than kangaroo-like, as if one's predetermined ideas about the animal world need to be erased to receive this strange new information. At

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one point it yawns, displaying an almost unnatural gape - and then, for a shattering instant, those black eyes, so compellingly the eyes of a predator, stare at the camera and the unbreachable gulf between the viewer and the viewed is sheeted home. Here clearly is an animal not within the range - even in an age of relentlessly acquisitive global media - ofnormal human experience.

Which indeed, it is not. Because this is the famous film of ‘Benjamin’ the last captive Thylacine [Thylacinus cynocephalus] - the so-called Tasmanian Tiger, made at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart in 1933. This last captive animal died in 1936, thus propelling the world's largest marsupial predator into the realm of the Dodo as another animal victim of Europe's exploitative global expansionism, and into the quasi-paranormal realm of the ‘Loch Ness Monster’ in the popular imagination. People still see 'tigers' to this day in Tasmania, and on the Australian mainland [where it has supposedly been extinct for several thousand years] for that matter - on quiet isolated backroads on cold, wet nights, a striped apparition caught momentarily in the beams of their 4WD. For most 'experts' however, the Thylacine is gone forever, a tragic exemplar of the price nature has paid in thecreation of our global industrial society.

The strange feelings invoked by watching that film are magnified by the fact that it exists at all. No movie - that technology that so convincingly 'brings to life' a long strip of celluloid photographs - exists of the New Zealand Moa, or the Dodo, or the Passenger Pigeon, for these species were driven to extinction before the invention of that crucial technology of 'objective' representation. Looking at the film, those moving simulacra, it is hard not to feel the same close affinity to and empathy with the tiger we feel for long dead relatives caught on a home video. This same feeling seems often to be present even in our strange ‘one way’ relationships with media personalities, Internet friends or indeed any other 'relationships' sustained by the intriguing willingness of our senses to convince us that long distance [in both time and space] communications are no different to the face-to-face interaction that has characterised most previous human experience.

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Yet the ability of those time and distance defeating technologies to construct artificial worlds, so crucial to today's increasingly entertainment driven economy, may be in part one of the driving forces behind a far more radical proposal in 'simulation'. The recent suggestion by Dr. Mike Archer from the National Museum of Australia, that the Thylacine could and should be cloned, using reconstructed DNA sourced from several Thylacine fetuses held preserved in alcohol - has unleashed a wave of both ‘Jurassic Park’ fascination and hope, and of Frankenstein-like revulsion within the Australian [and the global] community. And this controversy, fascinating as it is, may well be just a precursor example of the kind of 'simulation wars' we are likely to experience in the near future as we acquire the skills to both simulate and recreate the natural [unnatural?] order via the seemingly disparate technologies of digital modeling [‘virtual reality’] and genetic engineering. I hope to demonstrate in this paper that our increasingly sophisticated dialogue with the latter is fast becoming a major 'organising principle' informing our responses to the former:

"...Archer's plan floats somewhere in the twilight zone between the solid reality of Scottish researcher Professor Ian Wilmut's successful attempt to clone a large mammal - Dolly the sheep - and the dreamspun dinosaurs of Stephen Spielberg’s 'Jurassic Park' films, rewoven from fragmentary strands of DNA preserved in the blood of insects trapped in ancient amber..." [Neill, p44, 1999]

In this short passage journalist Graeme Neill, writing for thepopular Australian weekly 'The Bulletin' illuminates some of the ways the world community has tried to make sense of this story. First, 'The Twilight Zone' is introduced. Since the popularity of that television show in the early 1960s the words have become cultural shorthand for references to the spooky, the unexplained, and the paranormal. The 1990s equivalent, both in its sense of a mysterious 'other reality' that resists examination and explanation by rational science, and in its underlying paranoid 'trust no-one' weltanschauung, is,of course, 'The X-files', which has itself ventured into the realm of mysterious animals ['cryptozoology'] on several occasions. Secondly, Steven Spielberg’s 'Jurassic Park' filmsare mentioned, both because of their unparalleled ability to simulate 'on the screen' an otherwise inaccessible [except, of

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course, in the imagination] reality - that of the deep past - and because of the importance that his films have had in framing popular responses to the progress of genetic engineering.What is the 'grand paradigm' by which a globally connected, technophilic society sets its ethical rudder though the complexities of issues like the re-animation of an extinct species? Until perhaps the 19th century it was the church that would have had moral authority in these issues. The liberal humanist elements of rational science and democratic governmentality most certainly would have played a dominant role in forming our responses to these issues in more recent years. However, decades into the relativist/postmodernist revolution in critical thinking, with the power and respect afforded these great institutions considerably diminished, andwith popular, promotional culture well and truly in the ascendancy, what 'world views' are being invoked both by Professor Archer's enthusiastic proposal and by the subsequentcritical reaction to it? This paper hopes to investigate someof these issues and frame some, possibly novel, critical responses to them.

Competing agendas – the struggle for the ethical high ground

The difference in tone between the statements coming from the Australian Museum and the subsequent reaction to them in the popular and intellectual press has been striking. The museum invoked both:

1] National pride, a kind of modernist scientific positivism, with some hints of a libertarian 'go west young man' competitive expansionism:

"...The benefit of returning the tiger to a viable population would be incalculable..." said Don Colgan, head of evolutionary biology departmentof the Australian Museum. "...it would be a triumph for Australian science..." [http://www.wirednews.com/news/medtech/0,1286,21690,00.html]

"...This is the biological equivalent of man taking his first steps on the moon...We're in uncharted waters here...At this point, we're far ahead of any other similar project in the world..."[Archer M in Taggart S, 2000]

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“…Speaking at a public lecture, Dr Donnellan said he believed bringing theThylacine back to life was similar to the space race…”[Devlin, 2000, p17]

2] And somewhat surprisingly, a quasi-religious moral imperative invoking perhaps, not divine intervention but the very earthly 'god-like' power of genetic engineering:

"...We've discovered the miracle bottle in which this time capsule is just waiting to pop back into life...It's not God's will that the Thylacine went extinct. We did it..." [Archer M in Woodward J, 1999]

Perhaps not unexpectedly - given the apparent ongoing underlying level of public unease about the moral implicationsof this 'tinkering with the building blocks of life' that surrounds for instance, the Genetically Modified [GM] food issue – the general public’s reaction to Archer's announcementwas for the most part negative. These arguments were based broadly around:

1] The concern, even revulsion, that any Thylacines produced would be, lacking a reasonably intact ecosystem to return to, little more than 'circus freaks':

"...Even assuming the cloning is possible, where could this poor creature possibly survive but in the contemporary equivalent of a glass case? Dubbo Zoo perhaps? On an isolated island? Behind a big fence? Its vastly altered predator-prey relationships would include being stalked by scientists and documentary makers..."[http://www.smh.com.au/news/0005/15/text/features13.htm]

2] The notion that it would be a foolish waste of scarce conservation resources to divert millions of dollars towards an extinct species when so many animals still alive but threatened are in need of assistance:

"...This is just boys playing with genetic toys..." said Michael Lynch, manager of the Tasmanian Conservation Trust in Hobart. "...We could better take that money and put it into saving the species we humans already are driving to extinction every year..."[http://www.wirednews.com/news/medtech/0,1286,21690,00.html]

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3] The frequently expressed view that this was just an easy ‘techno-fix’ that didn't address the fundamental reasons for ongoing extinctions [human destruction of the ecosystem]:

"...if we humans cannot find ways to live in harmony with these creatures in their natural state, then, perhaps, we don't deserve a world with them..."[Wetheim M, 2000]

"...Bringing back the Thylacine was to somehow assuage our collective guilt over the environmental degradation of the past 200 years..."[http://www.smh.com.au/news/0005/15/text/features13.htm]

4] The response from the religious community, frequently looking to sacred texts for guidance:

“…what is God’s view on this technology, and what should we do and believe about it as Christians?…” [Munro, 1999, p2]

“…when we turn to the bible and seek God’s mind on the matter, I believe it becomes even more clear that the cloning of human beings, and probably the cloning of animals too, is a thing outside God’s will for his creatures…” [ibid, p4]

Of course, there is popular unease about the rate of technological change in many areas of society at present, but wishing that something could ‘just go away’ is unlikely to make it happen. Certain things, nuclear power being a good example, are latent within natural systems, and only need the application of human creativity to be unleashed in ‘unnatural’, socially mediated, often socially ambivalent ways. From that perspective we need to proceed from a position that accepts that the only real barriers to the general deployment of cloning technology are technical, not social ones.

There is an element of the P.T. Barnum about Mike Archer, withhis media-friendly demeanor and deliberately provocative 'soundbyte' rhetoric. He may be a scientist first, but his promotional persona is never far from the surface. Museums for research and education? Well yes, but in this age of 'user pays' and government cutbacks, 'bums on seats' are

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increasingly important and ‘infotainment’ might well representthe magic elixir of survival in a marketplace that must pit fossils and stuffed diorama animals against the increasing verisimilitude of post 'Jurassic Park' Hollywood. Thus one can easily envisage a huge global live TV event being stitchedup with the networks to record the live birth of the first cloned Thylacine pup to its surrogate Tasmanian Devil 'mother'. Think of the advertising revenue, think of the spectacle! Appalling. Irresistible.

'Unnatural selection'

Regardless of where one sits on the cloning enthusiasm/repulsion spectrum, the most striking thing about these responses has been the lack of column inches given to the role of the media/entertainment complex in driving the Thylacine polemic. The responses outlined show regret for thepast, and enthusiasm for the 'techno-fix' that genetic engineering potentially provides, but most of all an intense desire to deal with 'real existing animals and ecosystems in nature' instead of what is seen to be 'unnatural selection'.

This culture has a schizophrenic relationship with 'nature'. In spite of the unprecedented exposure of the planet's ecosystems to the gaze of the media/entertainment complex, in our daily lives, nature is externalised like never before. Natural systems simply have little obvious relevance to suburbia and even less to the ‘wired’ inner cities. Gardens are, almost by definition, entirely artificial constructs, chosen for their aesthetic fitness, not their survivability 'in the wild'. Water comes out of a tap - not from the atmospheric water cycle. Food comes from the supermarket, notfrom hunting and foraging. The animals around us are companion animals, selected for their compatibility in artificial surroundings, that have nothing to do with the assemblage of 'natural animals' indigenous to that locality. Pollution generally ‘goes somewhere else’, and a loss of localbiodiversity can reassuringly be symbolically ‘compensated for’ by watching a television documentary or going on an ecotourism adventure. In our global culture we trade animal and plant materials [including pathogens] freely and often without thought to the local genetic variation and biodiversity that has developed over eons. It is unlikely that a single square metre of Australia has escaped human

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modification in the last 200 years. In short, we have assembled an artificial ecosystem around us, we deny our part in the destruction of biodiversity to guarantee our materiallybountiful lifestyles, and yet continue to assure ourselves, increasingly via media representations, that ‘nature inviolate’ still exists somewhere outside the cities in which we live.

It could be argued that in externalising nature this way we have quarantined ourselves from taking our rightful responsibility as top predators and disturbers on this planet.By persisting with this ‘quarantining’ we maintain the myth that it is nature that is ultimately in control. Thus humanity is always reduced to helplessness in the face of a hurricane, tornado, drought or fire and we persist in denying our responsibility in redefining what is selected for survivaland what is marked for extinction. Every time an unfortunate swimmer is taken by a shark or a luckless golfer is killed by lightning the media reinforces the untruth that we are still helpless before nature, and therefore nature is something thatstill needs to be feared, ‘tamed’ and even ‘punished’. By being horrified at the thought of 'artificially' reintroducingthe Thylacine into the Australian ecosystem we deny the reality that its ecosystem is already an artificial construct in the sense that we are responsible for what animals and plants are selected for survival.

Imagine if, against all odds, a population of live Thylacines were discovered somewhere in Tasmania today. Once located they would inevitably be living in a state of extreme artificiality, poked and prodded by teams of zoologists, television crews and eco-tourists. The region would probably be declared a national park. Funding would be procured. A black market trade in Thylacines would threaten as its status as a beautiful rare prize for the ultra-rich was realised.

This is precisely what has happened since the 1994 discovery of the ‘dinosaur tree’, the 'Wollemi Pine' [Wollemia nobilis], near Sydney. Now that the trees are known to the global marketplace what is going to keep them safe and sequestered in‘a state of nature’? Nothing. Their still-secret valley location will eventually become widely known. Their survival ultimately is only guaranteed by introducing them into the most altered environments - city parks [where they currently

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need to be protected by steel cages and electronic security systems], and even private gardens. Their media fame and prominence as ‘living fossils’ guarantees continued research funding. In a way, their extreme specialisation in the wild, hanging on for thousands of years in one small valley, problematises the tree's continued survival in a world newly dominated by adaptable homophilic weeds. To a certain extent,it is now the compelling story of its very rarity that guarantees the trees survival, not just because it is a uniquepart of a genetic heritage, but because it is a ‘star’.

Any intervention to save a threatened species represents a major intervention/disruption of ‘natural processes’. In thissense every national park and conservation reserve represents a kind of gigantic exercise in themepark-ism - a recognition that natural assemblages cannot survive modern human cultures without constant intervention. Yet do we [can we?] change ourculture to accord with these natural processes? We do not.

In his recent book about invasive plants in Australia, Tim Low[2000] despairs at the relentless invasion of foreign plants into the country, but finally, regretfully accepts that this is inevitable in a global, restlessly mobile human society. In a sense, a whole new ecosystem is coming into being that isbetter adapted to this new regime of permanent and continual disturbance than the old. We are entering a world where plantand animal [and even human] ‘specialists’ have no place left to hide, but where fast adapting 'weed' species can procure advantage in human altered landscapes.

G. Pascal Zachary [2000] has recently written about the trend towards global ‘weediness’ in human society in this way:

“…Mixing is the new norm. The hybrid is hip. Mighty is the mongrel. This is no passing fashion. Rather it is deep change. Say good-bye to the pure, the straight, the smooth. Forget the original, the primordial, the one. Mixing trumps isolation…” [Zachary G, 2000, p1]

Although Zachary is writing about human culture, not ‘nature’ as such, the increasing hegemony of human social systems over natural systems forces us to consider the inevitable effects of one upon the other. It is human culture and the institutions of marketing, the media and liassez-faire economics that are now beginning at once to champion hybridisation and

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mongrelisation [including the so-called science of bionomics, see Borsook, 2000] - cultural ‘weediness’ if you will, while at the same time finding a new place for at least a few of themost ‘charismatic’ plant and animal specialists otherwise unable to cope with the global economy's capacity for relentless acquisitiveness and 'churn'. As the survival of these plants and animals increasingly becomes, not an imperative of the long-established principles of ecosystem biodiversity and natural selection [with their focus on isolation and relative stability], but an outcome of their 'relative fitness' as commodities for a global infotainment audience, a strange new ecosystem may well emerge. In this schema the reanimated Thylacine, like the Wollemi Pine, will be very well adapted to its environment! Pandas, Whales, Penguins and Koalas are 'charismatic mega-fauna' that will probably all thrive in this mediated environment if not in their ‘natural’ one. The Woolly Mammoth, that extinct, hirsute relative of the African Elephant whose preserved remains are so often found frozen in the icy wastes of the northern tundra, could by extension, be a true infotainment superstar, it's possible reanimation from long frozen sperm likely to cause a sensation only a few notches below that of the arrival of a 'real live' Tyrannosaurus Rex at your local ‘Disney World’.

Thylacines and the ‘theming’ of everyday life

As has already been noted, the popular reaction to the idea ofa re-animated Thylacine has been at least partly one of uneaseand even repugnance, and particularly repugnance towards the unnatural 'themepark' environment it is presumed it would be forced to live in. It is interesting that, although we are immersed in them, themed environments are popularly seen to beinferior to [and as a natural extension less 'authentic' than]'natural' environments. It is also interesting that the idea that this arbitrary division exists as more than a concept is still so pervasive.

American author Robert Gottdiener [1997] has investigated our seeming ambivalence towards heavily mediated urban 'themed' environments such as shopping malls, theme parks and Las Vegas, and it is worth spending some time investigating his observations because it is this author's contention that they

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equally apply to our relationship with what is popularly considered to be 'unmediated' nature.

For Gottdiener 'themed' environments are an almost inevitable outcome of late modernism, as signified by:

• A transition from rural, agrarian to urban, industrial environments based on mass production,• Products becoming ubiquitous due to the development of a promotional/consumption based society, • Resulting in the ‘hyperdevelopment’ of symbolic mechanisms of desire that replace 'use' [utilitarian] values with ‘sign’ [mediated desire based] values, • All promulgated by the notion of the 'consumer self' - that is self actualisation through multiple possible consumer identities.

Gottdiener reminds us that any human signifying system - that is the active process of meaning making - can be thought of asproducing a 'themed' environment. Thus, even aboriginal peoples can be conceived of as having lived in a 'fully themed' animistic space where every place and individual had aconnotative symbol attached to it. Over time, as signification became more systematised and materially objectified the role of nature became less important and that of societies more important. The transition continues to thisday with the added feature that meaning making systems are:

"…increasingly characterised by systems of signs that seek to motivate consumption and are tied to the pursuit of profit…" [Gottdiener, 1997, p20]

One may well ask what any of this has to do with the Thylacine. The point is that mass consumption, promotional cultures and consumer identities result in popular meaning making systems based on fashion, apparent novelty, and the active appropriation of uncommodified sign systems. Nature and natural processes, although largely absent from Gottdiener's analysis, are not immune to this socially mediated process:

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"…Government regulation and construction redesign have worked over natural wonders, such as Niagara Falls…and the Grand Canyon national park…to heighten the theme of mother nature in an idealised sense…" [ibid, p3]

Our culture's ability to 'strip mine', repackage and recirculate signs and meanings means that today's consumer hasto choose from a hyperabunadance of 'signifying repertoires'. In this environment, Gottdiener notes that:

"…original meanings no longer matter. Instead only their material manifestations as signs count. Stripped of their deep-level meanings, [theimages, as objects] become sign-vehicles for individual and group self expression…" [ibid, p144]

Some of these sign groupings still have power in society, particularly that sign grouping that appeals to the ‘authenticity’ of untrammeled, unmediated nature. Of course, the contemporary interest in the environment is largely based on a highly mediated [and increasingly profitable and commodified] representation of its most spectacular and appealing aspects. The fact that so many of us feel uneasy about human 'interventions' into nature underscores the success of this 'sign complex' in informing our environmental sensibilities, possibly as much as they are also informed by well meaning warnings from the ecological sciences:

"…in contrast to previous historical periods, today's environmental symbolism is derived from our popular culture - from common themes that can be found in films, popular music and novels…Our present themed environment merges fluidly with contemporary, commercialised popular culture and the entertainment media…" [ibid, p3]

Thylacines are one of the most spectacular and desirable 'signsystems' of wildness and untrammeled nature it is possible to conceive. The ironic fact that their re-animation, if it is possible at all, will be one of the most technologically invasive acts in history is likely, in the final analysis, to be brushed aside in the rush for movie rights, merchandising rights and even reproductive rights. Such is life in the global themepark.

In fact, as has already been suggested, even if by some unlikely miracle a colony of surviving Thylacines were

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discovered in the wild tomorrow, these animals would immediately be subject to the most intense surveillance and quantitative analysis science could bring to bear. Even existing as it would within the discursive aegis of 'rational,objective science', it is hard to imagine a more 'unnatural' situation. Inevitably, in time, the animals would also be subject to the most intense scrutiny by the global media entertainment complex. What a boon to the Cascade Brewery's advertising campaign [see illustration 2 below] this would be!

2. The power of a great story and cool refreshment:

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the advertiser's dream 'star' brand as a triumph over 'physical extinction'['The Age' Weekend Magazine, Jan 6-7, 2001]

Dream societies, entertainment economies and 'star power'

It would now be useful to refer to two writers who are blatantly part of the media/marketing/entertainment complex. For reasons that should become clear, they may both have something to say about nature in the era of pan-entertainment.

For Rolf Jensen [1999], the old cycles of nature, punctuated as they were by frequent catastrophic events, no longer apply.Human societies, heavily mediated by electronic communication technologies and biological enhancement call the shots. Shorter, ever-changing, ‘non-biological’ time frames are in effect. And products, experiences, lifestyles [and perhaps, as will be argued, even species] are selected for fitness [consumption] based on the emotional resonance of the 'story' they tell.

For instance, talking about free range eggs, but with a message that could be applied to any commodity, Jensen talks about how these new consumers will be:

"...willing to pay more for the story about animal ethics, about rustic romanticism, about the good old days...Both kinds of eggs are similar in quality, but consumers prefer the eggs with the better story..." [Jensen, 1999, p3]

This will increasingly be a society that re-imagines tribal myths, rituals and stories. These will not be 'authentic' in the way that we think of aboriginal societies’ stories being authentic, but in terms of willingly suspended disbelief, for the moment or hour or day of a commodified 'experience' of authenticity, it will be enough.

"...The organisation of society will gravitate toward value communities of limited size...These kinds of communities will become more widespread in the Dream Society...to an increasing extent, it will be comparable to tribes...communities of interest flocking to share their passion..." [ibid, p11]

This is Jensen’s ‘post-information’ society, not in the sense that information will disappear, far from it, but in the sensethat information will be so ubiquitous and normalised that it

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will have little saleable 'added value' - the added value willcome from the 'authentic experience', something that will be ever-mutable and hard to predict. This is a society where, ifpresent trends continue:

"...our faith in progress will have disappeared. The vast majority of people living in the affluent countries will turn their gaze back in time, longing for the past..." [ibid, p23]

Strangely, we will use the high-tech tools of simulation to immerse ourselves both in the past and perhaps in an imagined future more fascinating and appalling than we can hope for in 'real life'. More than the real life technological hardware itself, it will be the stories behind the hardware that will be compelling. Here, society, and life itself, becomes a theatre plot, a chain of commodified but compelling scenarios,Hollywood internalised and Warhol more than vindicated.

Will Jensen’s future be Thylacine friendly? To some extent yes. But it will also be fragmented. Biological science would like society to pull in one direction, based on for instance, its findings on global climate change. However thismay be increasingly difficult to achieve unless the myths and stories associated with this unfolding scenario are compellingenough for enough people. It is also feasible that seemingly bizarre scenarios could play out based on a different kind of story - for instance the resumption of Thylacine hunting in a rejuvenated and restocked Tasmanian ‘game park’. New human ‘tribes’ could live both ‘deep green’ lives and the lives of the rapacious pioneer, and the same people might do both things at different times. Theme parks where the tropical rainforest lived anew could vie for attention with theme parksthat offered an 'authentic' post-atomic war experience. This ‘dream’ future would therefore be neither necessarily pro or anti nature, in fact it would be both [and all shades of grey in between] at once:

"...This society for the future is preferred at the moment by many citizens and some futurists. Some go as far as to say that unless our future is green, we won't have any at all...The green approach is part of the dream society - one story among many that will determine the future - but it is not an overall theory. When whales are no longer food, but beautiful animals that people sail to sea in order to photograph, the a new story is unfolding. A green story to be sure, but still a story. The green movement

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will be able to explain only part of the changes taking place in the market of the future..." [ibid, p47]

The persuasiveness of rational science, political ideology, church dogma, or even authoritarian terror may not be enough to steer a clear ethical path through this scenario. It is the bards, the story tellers [even if they are corporate 'brands'] who will resume their historical importance in the dream society - perhaps we had better hope that most of them tell ecologically benign stories!

“…Nature is part of the adventure market. Nature has moved from being merely a source of food and raw materials in the late twentieth century, toward becoming – in the affluent countries – a source of stories…”[ibid, p59]

“…The battle of the twenty-first century will be fought on a microfront where the bone of contention is the individual’s attention. Not in the sense of gaining acceptance of an entire system of ideas, just the conviction regarding specific questions…The market for convictions has exploded…Ecology, environment, human rights, ethics, animal welfare, smoking, genetic engineering…it can come as a surprise to no-one that companies will gradually enter the market for convictions…a new type of political participation has seen the light of day…” [ibid, p109]

Jensen himself almost certainly has political affiliations that this author would probably find somewhat odious, and although his matter-of-fact glibness, particularly regarding the fate of governmentality, irritates, some of the trends he outlines are hard to contest. He describes a landscape where spending power and the ability to ‘realise the dream’, will bethe equivalent of a citizen’s vote. Leaving aside the obviouschallenges this poses for the notion of ‘one vote one value’, how does one respond to, for instance, the environmental and ethical issues of the cloning of the Thylacine, in such a fickle, contingent, creatively destructive [to appropriate the popular neo-liberal mantra] ideological environment?

Michael J. Wolf's recent book 'The Entertainment Economy' [1999] expands on these themes. Behind its breezy, uncriticalacceptance of pan-promotionalism and a so-American reverence for the ‘unique insight’ of the individual entrepreneur lurks the very relevant debate surrounding media convergence. This is not just the coming together of different media delivery

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technologies, but the extension of the notion of 'star power' as a business and cultural model beyond Hollywood to all sortsof other cultural artifacts and institutions.

Wolf's essential thesis is that when ‘utility value’ in products become almost meaningless in a saturated economy populated by increasingly cynical and ‘media-hip’ consumers, advertisers must rely not just on selling dreams, but must also provide an 'entertainment bonus' for the potential customer that may have very little to do with the product purchased:

"…The result is a world of commerce where the lines between entertainment and nonentertainment are increasingly blurred…Consumers are looking for the E-Factor in every product…that's E as in Entertainment. It's an extremely effective way of standing out from the rest of the pack…" [Wolf, 1999, pp26-27]

For Wolf, it is these entertainment experiences [commodified 'fun'] that are increasingly filling the 'meaning hollows' left in busy two-income lifestyles by the decline in other communal experiences like organised religion. Fuelled by global wiring-up and the consolidation of giant entertainment multinationals like Disney offering synergised 'total infotainment' experiences at themeparks, cinema multiplexes, fantasy casinos and on cruise ships, and utilising the comprehensive 'preemptive' merchandising of lifestyles as wellas physical merchandise ['tie-ins'], the business payoff follows because this new 'belonging experience' is thoroughly commodified from its inception.

More than that however, Wolf contends that the factor that makes one entertainment experience 'stand out from the pack' will be, increasingly [as the cost of the delivery technology decreases as a percentage of total product cost] the 'star power' of the entertainment vehicle. While the mysterious factor that makes one entertainment experience a cultural phenomenon and another a non-event remains elusive, for Wolf the 'star vehicle' model that makes some Hollywood films sure-fire hits can be increasingly extended to other industries, products, ideas and brands:

"…You watch a television show because George Clooney is in it. You buy a dress because Donna Karan made it. You buy a computer because Intel is

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inside. Brand and stars have become the same thing. Stars attract us to entertainment products. Brands attract us to entertainment products…" [ibid, p28]

So for Wolf, the recent surge in global stockmarkets has as much to do with their success as 'star vehicles' as they do with the underlying strength of any nation's ‘real’ economy. The success of the Virgin business empire has as much to do with Richard Branson's star appeal as it has with its businessmodel. Even the supposedly 'unmediated' nature experience is vulnerable to this process, as Wolf introduces us to Recreational Equipment Incorporated, the giant American adventure equipment retailer that operates outdoor theme parksthat commodify the entire hiking, biking, kayaking and climbing experience 'in house'. The point being not just thata formerly relatively uncommodifed experience has become commodified, but that the brand vehicle itself increasingly assumes the cultural import and influence of the Hollywood 'star'.

Allied to the star vehicle notion is the idea of the 'hit', that is, the entertainment product that becomes a ‘phenomenon’:

"…A hit is more than an economic success; it also provides the cultural context in which people see themselves…In every case there is an emotional connection with the audience at the same time there is a fulfillment of a common need - a need so strong that it changes the culture…" [ibid, p157, p161]

So, once again, what exactly does this have to do with the Thylacine and the ongoing debate about its possible genetic resurrection? For starters it exposes the ‘born again’ Thylacine to the short term product cycle exigencies of any other consumer good. And that 'product' will succeed in the 'marketplace' only as long as it is 'cool'. Although it is hard to imagine a more unnatural form of 'fitness selection', we may nevertheless be facing this kind of scenario in the near future.

Wolf makes the point that technological advances in the verisimilitude of spectacular entertainment delivery have led to an increased audience expectation for the 'wow' factor. Thus the monumentally expensive SFX wonders of a 'Jurassic

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Park' have been rapidly normalised by audiences for whom ‘reality’ in virtual effects is never real enough. For the present then, mere technology cannot substitute for content. The ‘authentic’ experience is still the privileged one. And content is still ‘king’. The Thylacine may be a compelling star vehicle as a mediated memory, but it could be incredibly compelling phenomenon as an authentic living animal. In the Thylacine’s case, advanced genetic techniques will be the delivery vehicle, but as miraculous as it may initially seem, that technology too may be rapidly normalised. It will be theaffective/infotainment/star power of the beast and its mythos that will exercise financial and cultural clout in our imagination. Finally, the Thylacine is a symbol of freedom, a signifier of a lost world that people dream of visiting but increasingly are willing to accept a substituted mediated construct for. That combination of dream, symbolism and 'star/brand' power iswhat people will be purchasing. And for Wolf, it’s those powerful ideas that count.

Conclusion: '...We can rebuild him, we have the technology...'

Question: What happens if the Disney Corporation offers $100 million to any genetics laboratory that can produce a live Thylacine? Leaving the [very formidable] technical considerations aside, how would this 'deal' manifest itself? What kind of synergies might develop with other media deliverysystems? How long would it take before the hamburger chain toy merchandising, the IMAX films, the themepark displays and even the marketing of Thylacines as a 'branded pet' begins?

To many, these scenarios will no doubt sound nightmarish. Many might well be convinced that this kind of world view represents a one-way ticket to the radical impoverishment of the Earth's biome - probably hastening humanity's own extinction in the process. The author, not being an ecologist, is in no position to argue the case. If the pre-eminent institution of power on the globe was science then biodiversity ecosystem theory might well represent a way for the bourgeoisie to understand the world and forge a path to sustainability. Unfortunately this seems not to be the case. Increasingly it is entertainment, meaningful stories, and the

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individual meaning-fulfillment that follows that might well select for ‘fitness’ in the new media ecosystem.

For those working in the ecological sciences and in the environment movement, this conflating of ‘natural’ and ‘social’ systems will surely be an anathema. But the sciencesare not necessarily at the rudder of this society - market forces and neo-liberal agendas are. The sciences are only at the oars, doing the 'grunt work'. Will their cautionary input, as important as it is, be enough to change the boat’s direction? The ecologist may well say, in response to this, ‘that’s all very well, but what does this have to do with external ecological limits and how we as a people respond to them - surely we cannot allow something as important as the survival of entire ecosystems to be decided by something as ‘frivolous’ as popular, promotional culture?’ The author would suggest that society may well not respond to them, even in the face of perilous human-induced change, in a way that science might regard as ‘logical’. People have always organised their lives around great stories, not the relativelyrecent discovery of logic. If religion, the state and even science have lost the art of ‘organising’ the Thylacine's story for us, if we no longer find the tales they tell compelling or revelatory, then we will probably let the entertainment industry fill the meaning vacuum.

None of this is meant to suggest in any way that the author believes that this 'branding of everything' is necessarily a good thing. Naomi Klein [2000], for instance, has recently written forcefully about some of the pernicious effects of thenew 'brand fiefdoms'. It is however, a phenomenon - this blend of pan promotionalism, mediated infotainment and 'star power' - that we need to acknowledge is breaking out of its 'traditional' confines and is 'infecting' the activities of almost every human institution.

We will consume the Thylacine, not just the stories and myths of its decline to extinction [as is the case at present], but the new stories and myths of its possible strange resurrection, just like we will consume the stories and the images of the Amazon rainforest, or the Wollemi Pine, or perhaps even a reanimated Woolly Mammoth - because they have acompelling story to tell and we want to be entertained and transported to a world that is not our own. Strangely, in

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accepting this, in accepting our impure motives for valuing and not forgetting, in accepting this rupture with the forces that shaped the prehuman world, we accept not just our own nature within ‘nature’, but also our own awesome responsibility in shaping the strange new perilous ecosystem of simulation, pleasure and terror that we are bringing into being. Clearly, more theoretical work now needs to be undertaken to consider how our non-media institutions, particularly of government, can live, work and [especially] conserve in this strange new ‘entertainment environment’.

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Beresford, Quentin & Bailey, Garry 1981 'Search for the Tasmanian Tiger' [supine tiger photograph - uncredited] Blubber Head Press Hobart.

Boorsook, Paulina 2000 ‘Cyberselfish’ Little, Brown & Co. London.

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Devlin, Rebekah 2000 ‘Late tiger may tread again in a leapforward’ in The Age November 4 p17.

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