Green Porno: Thinking like an animal?

Isabella Rossellini interprets animals' sexuality in her Green Porn videos.

For bed bugs, Rossellini is dressed in a red custom that resembles a bed bug. The story tells us how bed bugs view beds as a living space, how it reproduces, and how it interacts with human bodies for food. The video begins with a knife being caressed on Rossellini’s face. She asks, “What am I? A bed bug?” Rossellini turns from her human custom to her bed bug custom to tell us a story about bed bugs. The setting of the video is imaginative and real. On one hand, Rossellini’s human presence is inevitable because she is obviously dressed as an animal (no one could be fooled). Paper bed bugs and a scale-model of a house are used to create the setting in this story. On the other hand, the story becomes “real” because of the embedded information about animal behavior.

Rossellini takes anthropomorphism to another level. There is a mix of anthropomorphism with animality that makes the videos insightful and provocative. The story is told from both a human and animal perspective. There is something ridiculous about the act, but also very profound. The anthropomorphism is not just to give human qualities to an animal or in this case a bug. It is about an attempt to try to understand bed bug’s perspective of its world.

In A foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, Jakob Von Uexkull, explored this act of animal perspective. Uexkull work is important because he explored how animals experiences life through space. Uexkull argues that certain animals see more than others… How we interact with space is how a world to each creature comes to be. So my world is more rich because I am a mammal that visually sees a lot of objects, while a fly may not be as important because it only sees a few things in its world. While this may be true, I do not agree that because some animals see more, it can be used as a measurement tool to think about intelligence or superiority or even feelings.

Rossellini, to me, makes it a lot more interesting because her stories about animal sexuality are told from a human perspective, but also takes into account animal behavior. She becomes-animal, but she does not ignore her being human. Because of this, the Green Porn videos make us questions how humans have imposed their morals to nature, and our relation to it.