Banksy fans were delighted in August, as nine animal-themed murals by the street artist appeared across London in as many days. Speculation is rife about what deeper meanings may lie behind the new artworks. Yet, according to Pest Control (the body that authenticates Banksy’s work) far too much has been made of them already.
I’m a sociologist, not an art critic, but I don’t think the murals are deep meditations on the nature of society. Nor do I think some coded political message will reveal itself now that all the images can be viewed together. The murals have captured the public imagination, not because they’re artistic masterpieces, but because they play with something beyond the world of pop art – our love, fear and fascination with animals.
In the late-1990s, American sociologists Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders developed the idea of the “sociozoologic scale” to explain how we view different animals. The scale lets us place animals into categories, like “pet”, “food”, or “vermin”, based on their perceived usefulness to society.
