Earthlings Part II

My experience while watching the second part of earthlings was somehow very different from the first. That first day, I was affected equally by everything that I saw, and my emotional responses were due to shock and gradual accumulation of similar feelings. In contrast, the second day I swung back and forth between two extremes. In some instances, I found myself numb, resigned, and overall less connected with the suffering I was witnessing than I’d been a couple of days before. In others, I found myself upon what seemed like the very brink of my ability to hurt and feel, which was overwhelming and almost unbearable.

The instances in which I was less connected with the suffering I was watching were during the fishing clip and in some areas during the segment on animal testing. The fishing segment, unlike what had been shown previously, attempted to make you hate commercial fishing more because of the health risks it could place you and others in than for the animals themselves. “Just remember how much irretrievable waste and contaminated sediments are dumped into our oceans.” (Anthology 209) This is obviously a legitimate argument, as was the issues brought up about overfishing, but my ability to connect with the creatures themselves were inhibited because I was worried about myself more than them. I felt selfish for thinking this way. But it’s difficult to empathize with a fish. I find it much harder to put myself into the place of a fish than I do with another mammal. Their minds and lives are so alien to our own that it seems nearly impossible to imagine life as a fish.

The emotions I experienced during the animal-testing segment were extremely stratified. One of the worst images I saw during the film was one of a Chihuahua that had undergone testing. It had stitches of some kind in its head, looked starved and neglected. But when the cameraman looked at it, the dog wagged its tail feebly, believing it was finally about to get some attention. My eyes stung and then fogged over, and I had to look down for a minute to regain my composure. I fail to see how testing on a dog would be necessary for the cure of human disease. Not only that, but much of the testing done is solely for cosmetic purposes. We are literally willing to subject another being to a life of torment so that we can look good when we go out. That is despicable. However, the breakdown with animal testing for me is that some of it might actually be necessary. Trauma experimentation on baboons? No. Infectious disease research? Possibly. I don’t know. I’d like to say there was a better way, but what is the alternative?  So here I felt numb and resigned, and ashamed for not having a better answer.

The defining moment of this film for me, the one that has changed everything, occurred during the segment on the fur trade. “WE SEE A CHINESE FUR FARM WHERE AN ANIMAL IS SKINNED ALIVE. ONCE THE SKIN IS REMOVED IT LAYS IN A BLOODY HEAP; ITS EYES STILL BLINKING IN SHOCK.” (Anthology 215) The fox was skinned alive. How dare they. How fucking dare they. I couldn’t take that. It took everything I had not to jump up, to scream, to leave the room. It was beyond cruel, beyond reason and comprehension.  And we are allowing this. “There is complicity.” I had to go home this weekend, and when asked by my family to explain why I’d elected not to order meat at a restaurant, the very memory of this image left me almost speechless. I couldn’t even tell my mother and sister, and when I explained this to my father, it was in barely more than a choked whisper. Because telling someone else meant acknowledging that what I’d seen had actually occurred, that it wasn’t just some horrible dream.

 Knowing how little at this time I can do to change this horrific truth makes me feel more helpless and angry than I can express. But seeing these things did change my perception, rip the veil from my eyes. I can no longer ignore it, and now feel that it is my moral obligation to actively try and change this. Yes, right now there’s not a lot I can do. But I can make choices that do not condone this behavior, and I can try to tell others about what I saw. (not like the PETA people) And someday, there will be something more I can do.