The Uncanny Polar Bear: Activists Visually Attack an Overly Emotionalized Image Clone

This essay takes as its starting point an observation on popular culture: The polar bear has become an icon of climate change discourse. Against the backdrop of cultural and visual studies, the text examines the bear’s semiotic shifts, from an “early warning signal” of climate change to the iconoclastic use and disruption of the image by activists, to its use as commercialized “carrier of emotions”—or even “emoticon.” How does context change the polar bear’s message? Following W.J.T. Mitchell’s method of “iconology,” which reconsiders the image as a living thing, this essay takes a look at images of polar bears across the media.