Animal rights are an issue very near and dear to my heart. I
have always been an animal lover, and quite frankly, cannot understand when
people say they do not also love animals. It is a great shame that animals are
so commonly only valued for their usefulness to humans, because they have so
many benefits to the ecosystems and environment around us. As a devout vegan
and “cruelty-free”
advocate, I am constantly
looking for ways to show others the light and positivity in my beliefs, and how
practices such as these better the world as a whole. When I talk to people
about these sort of things they usually are either completely empathetic or
immediately on the defense. I find in their responses that there is either a
complete indifference to the way animals are treated, a lot of sympathy and
respect for them, or a pompous outlook that all other beings besides humans are
inferior. While I do believe there is
some truth to the idea of a “rank of hierarchy” among the species of the world,
I further believe that each and every life is sacred and every organism should
be treated with respect. I believe it is important for us to co-exist
peacefully with all of the live forms around us, meaning a positive regard for
animals is key.
There are numerous aspects that contribute to the way we
view animals and how we treat them. Our attitudes are compiled from our
teachings, our past experiences, and the way the media and outside world
portrays them to us. If you look closely at the thousands of advertisements
constantly surrounding you, you may be greatly surprised at how often animals
are utilized to convey their desired message. We are constantly being fed ideas and
different viewpoints about other species, and we may not even realize, but it
effects how we treat them and scale their value. We can find these messages in
books, movies, and various other sources of literature and media, and they are
each variably effective at delivering different messages.
Growing up, there were always animals in my home. I believe
because of this I always had a positive outlook on them, but it wasn’t until I
was much older did I become aware of the way many animals are treated in
society. In the novel Communicating Nature author Julia B. Corbett argues that the presence of animals around
adolescents as they grow up is very influential on their view of them. When I
was young, I always wanted to go to the circus because elephants were my
favorite, but I didn’t know that by going to the circus I was supporting the
people who put them in chains and forced them to perform. It wasn’t clear to me
that the elephants were suffering, because the circus ads made it seem like
great fun that the elephants were enjoying too. I mean they were standing on
their heads and throwing a ball around, that’s totally fun, right? Wrong. This
was complete animal abuse. This is an example of the idea Corbett presents of “using
nature as a shorthand.” The elephants were being used as a selling tool. The
circus company was using the common love for elephants to sell their tickets,
and using the animals as their own playthings. People think of elephants as
huge, majestic creatures that are found far away in the wild that many would
never get the chance to see up close. The circus gives you a chance not only to
see them up close, but to watch them do tricks! This was for a very long time a
very good marketing strategy for circuses; however, the common view of them is
beginning to change.
Recently, animal advocacy has become more popular. In the
case of the circus elephant, protests and petitions have lobbied with Ringling
Bros., one of the biggest circuses in America, and have convinced them to stop
using elephants for performance. In an articled titled Novelists Applaud Ringling Bro.’s Decision
to Stop Using Elephants, written by Ron Charles and published in The Washington Post this past Tuesday,
Ringling Bros. promised to stop using all elephants currently in their
possession by 2018 and to not purchase any more. The elephants already existing
within the circus will live out the rest of their lives in a preserve where
they will never be forced to perform again. This was a humungous win for animal
rights activists and elephants everywhere. It is the direct result of effective
positive communication. Had the population of people lobbying for change not
existed and shared their message, one can assume elephants for generations to
come would be subjected to a circus life of shame and abuse. It is interesting
to see how the switch in public opinion occurred from loving elephants in the
circus to hating them there, and we can see the power of the people’s voice. Another
example being, the movie How I Became an
Elephant, produced in 2012, which delivered a similar message about the
treatment of elephants. Following a young girls journey to South East Asia in
order to team up with The Elephant Lady and learn about saving the elephant
population, How I Became an Elephant
was moving and sparked change and a huge reaction with it’s hard-hitting and
devastating footage. Just like the circus protesting, this movie moved people
to make a difference. This has all contributed to the change in public regard
for elephants. Every time an article, advertisement, picture, or any other type
of media was produced supporting the freeing and ethical treatment of circus
elephants, the conversation changed and new action resulted from it.
Elephants are not the only animals that have been subjected
to such exploitation or cruel treatment. The
Cove, a documentary that is also very meaningful to me, covers an issue of
this sort. Centered on the regular dolphin slaughtering’s that happen on
account of Japanese hunting practices, The
Cove is told from a marine biologist’s point of view. A group of animal activists,
including former actor Rick O’Barry who before realizing the mistake in it,
originally helped capture the first five dolphins ever in captivity, travel to
Japan in hopes of filming the slaughterings and sharing it with the rest of the
world. The team certainly finds what they were looking for. Shortly after
arriving in Japan they find the place of such slaughtering’s, a cove off the
coast of Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. After numerous run-ins with Japanese
officials, the team is warned that if they are caught filming what happens in
the secret cove they will be arrested. The team then decides to venture into
the cove under the fall of night to place secret cameras in the rocks. The
cameras capture a typical day’s slaughtering the next day and the team watches
it from their computers. The footage is horrifying. Dolphins are herded into
the cove by boats, separating mothers, children, and families, and are stabbed
by fisherman with tritons until they either die or bleed out too much and can
not fight back. They are then rounded up in the boats and taken away to be sold
to the rest of the Japanese population to eat. After the killings, the entire cove
is a deep red from the blood of the dolphins.
The scene was one of the most tragic things I had ever personally
seen. But this is why The Cove was so
effective at communicating its message. Yes, it is not hard to convince people
that something is bad when it is already very obviously downright horrific, but
to present such real, hard-hitting evidence is what makes people pay attention.
It sparked emotion within the viewer. It appealed to something other than just
logic, which I think is very important when it comes to discussions on animal rights.
So often people will look at animals for their numerical value, such as saying
well, its okay that these dolphins are dying because the numbers aren’t
detrimental. However, when you see the actions that are leading to these dolphins’
deaths, like the red water or the crying of mothers as their babies are
harpooned, it changes your view. Bottom line being, if someone had simply
published a paper on statistical facts relating to dolphin populations and
their importance in the ecosystem, hardly any people would listen and even
fewer would act, but if you instead produce a movie like The Cove, things happen.
Romanticizing animals is another strategy I think that makes
people feel more sympathetic to their situations. I do not mean just giving
animals human characteristics or classifying them by the cultural associations
and values, as discussed in Communicating
Nature where Corbett explains this is like labeling a car as ‘tough as a
ram’, but by showing readers the beauty in these animals and their existence.
In “Am I Blue?” author Alice Walker does exactly this. She tells the story of a
horse that lived in the pasture near her home.
She bonded with the animal often feeding him and spending time with him.
One day Blue’s - the horse’s - owners brought a female horse to live with him,
in hopes that he would impregnate her. This does indeed happen, and then the female
horse is taken away. This seems plenty fine to the people only concerned with
the female horse giving birth, however, Walker sees how much this has hurt the
male horse. He fell in love and was devastated when he was left alone again.
Walker talks about the emotion she sees in the horses’ eyes and how she can
tell his is experiencing deep emotional pain. She develops her ideas through
anthropomorphism, allowing the reader to connect or relate to the animal in a
way they would another person. She talks about how people do not consider
animal’s feelings enough, which I believe to be very true. The reader is led to
feel incredible sympathy for the horse, something that would not happen without
Walkers emotional description of him and his feelings. This led me as a reader
to once again question our relationship to animals and how we view them, which
made this piece very powerful at conveying a message.
As you can see, there are many different ways people go
about fighting for animal rights through literature. Numerous different tactics
are used in both advertising as well as public outreach to alter the way we
view animals and treat them. Whether animals are depicted in a positive or
negative way, it all has an effect on our relationship with them, and our
relationship with them affects the rest of the world. Since animals cannot
speak, it is our job to be their voice, and that is why communication is so
important when it comes to these issues.
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