Take Home Writing #1: "Earthlings" Film Review

<Earthlings> Film Review 

          Look at the eye of the person that is seating closest to you. Then look at the eye of the cow in this poster. What do you feel? Do you recognize that the cow’s eye does not have hatred but obedience? The cow’s eye is saying “I will follow human because it is my fate.” Usually, looking at the eye of people or animal has become a habit because it shows how they had lived. I began to watch this clip with the question of why this animal would have this kind of eye.  The clip showed how inhumane animals were being treated as pets, food, leather, entertainment, and science. However, this clip lacks some important ideas to show the true meaning of the cow’s eye.

           First of all, the clip did not show why this is happening. The scene of animals being mistreated was thoroughly shown through hidden cameras and Joaquin Phoenix’s narration. However, the film did not provide the reason why this was happening. The reason why animals are being abused is because of meat demanding society. Recently, the demand of meat has increased rapidly. In the past 10 years, worldwide meat consumption has increased 20% and over the past 40 years, it has tripled. To fulfill the demand, factory farms are increasing. Before, family farms raised cows, pigs, and chicken in a small unit. In order to compete with other family farms they had to produce the best quality. They raised these animals with extreme care and sold them. However, the increase demand made these farms die and instead factory farms appear. The abused scene in the movie is mostly from these factory farm. Factory farms is the process or raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density, where a farm operates as a business. To run a business, animals are raised with the lowest price to produce the most profit. In these farms, animals are treated only as an object, product, money and not as an earthling. The clip lacked to provide the basic reason why this is happening which is because the increase of meat.

           Moreover, the film was focused too much on the emotional part. The logical, emotional, and ethical appeals were not balanced. The scene of people mistreating animals and the last poor moment of dying animals were continuously shown. Of all the brutal scene, the part when people were killing chicken by throwing them on the wall was most impacting. Usually, chickens are killed like that because it tastes most delicious when these chickens are frightened at their last moment having their muscles condensed. I could hear the sound of chickens dying but the people were jumping on them and swearing. Like this part, the film shows these parts stimulating people’s emotion. However, it failed to show the logical and ethical parts of this case. The people who abuse animals must have a reason. For example, the owners of stray animals must have a reason for throwing their pets away. Plus, science experiments are done to animals for a reason. The director argues that it is no use doing these experiments on animals because they are different from human. However, medicine and surgery techniques that we use have developed because of the sacrifice of animals. It was an inevitable process. For some cases, animals had to be treated this but the film did not care to think about this and pleaded for emotion of watchers.

           Lastly, the film did not show why it is bad to treat animals awfully. Animals are used by human for food, leather, entertainment, scientific experiment. The movie repeats arguing that we should not abuse these animals but the reason is not provided. People have different opinion about animals. Some think that we are equal and some think that we are better than them. The people who think that we are superior over these animals mistreat them and enjoy the pain of the animals. Plus, without animals humans can not exist. The documentary begins by saying that the earth is composed of animals, nature, and human. If one of them disappears because of the overwhelming power of one, the three can not exist. For example, when nature becomes too strong, human and animals suffer from natural disorder such as hurricane, typhoons. In addition, if humans takeover animals, several drawbacks would appear. Depicted in the movie “the Rise of the Planet of Apes”, scientific experiment or mad disease can make animals change and attack human. Plus, the factory farms harm the environment  through the heavy use of inputs such as pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers used for feed production.  The film failed to show specific reasons why we should not mistreat animals.

                  All in all, “Earthlings” lacked few things to show the true meaning of the cow’s eye in the poster. It would have been better if the film focused more on basic reason of the abuse of animals, and focus more on ethical and logical parts than emotional parts. Thus, it should have enforced why it is bad to treat animals like this. Besides these three points, the film had truelly affected my habits. After watching this film, I could not eat my mother’s wine roasted pork. I could not forget the scream of the pigs when it was hanging even by smelling and looking at the pork. Also, when I looked at the red blood of the cow, pigs slayed, I wondered if human had the same blood color. It made me feel that human have a different blood color because we are so mericless toward earthlings. It is unavoidable for human to kill animals for meat but when killing these animals it must be done with thanksful mind. We must have interest of how our dinner was made instead of just enjoying it.