Representing the Horse’s Point of View in Films: a Critical Reading of War Horse

Film and media scholars have investigated aesthetic and ethical issues of the “question of the animal.” As argued by Dell’Aversano (2010), the most urgent aim of queer theories is to deconstruct those identities that are perceived and conceived as “normal” or “natural,” by addressing them as results of performances. From this perspective, both queer studies and animal studies can be seen as aiming to dismantle the human-animal boundary. This paper explores the aesthetic and theoretical implications of the representation of horse characters’ point of view in the War Horse film adaptation (2011) and argues that War Horse oscillates between a report of details indicative of horse agency and labour, and the imposition of anthropomorphic categories and horse identities. a combination of film analysis, animal studies, and operative categories from Harvey Sacks’s work will be used to discuss the construction of horse identities and tackle the question of anthropomorphism.