It took me some time to get around to watching this widely-hailed documentary, because I thought the scenes showing dolphin slaughter would be awful – and they were. Despite, or because of, this shocking footage, this is a work which deserves the plaudits which were heaped on it. The story begins with Ric O’Barry, a fascinating character whose relationship with dolphins began in the 1960s when he was the trainer for the dolphins who performed in Flipper. His moment of revelation came soon after the filming finished, when the dolphins were returned to aquariums where, like any creature in captivity, they were deeply unhappy – to the point that one committed suicide by choosing to stop breathing in his arms. The day afterwards, he was arrested for trying to free a dolphin.
But apart from the biography of a man who feels responsible for the dolphin mania which has resulted in the widespread capturing and use of dolphins for human amusement, and the concomitant deaths of captive or unwanted dolphins, this is a taut documentary in which the tension continually ratchets up, as the participants head to the Japanese town of Taiji and the secret cove of the title, a highly-secured zone forbidden to all but the local fishermen, where the slaughter of dolphins captured by batteries of sound (in another memorable moment, O’Barry says that he hears the banging of the metal poles in his dreams) is carried out. Using hi-tech equipment (from military-grade thermal goggles to cameras disguised as rocks) and low cunning, in constant danger from the local fishermen and the Japanese authorities, the team finally manage to film the slaughter in order to bring it to the attention of the world.
The slaughter of dolphins per se is not the only issue which this film explores – paths which lead away from this locus include fisheries and overfishing, mercury poisoning as a result of water pollution and public policy, dolphin awareness and questions of animal consciousness, whaling as an activity, and Japanese history and the relationship to the West, questions of tradition and ethics, and the cynical plutocracy of international influence. In opening out into such a broad spectrum, the film reminded me of another excellent documentary dealing with marine life – Sharkwater. Some accusations of racism or cultural prejudice toward the Japanese have been made toward the film, and there is perhaps an implication of enlightened Westerners journeying into the dangerous Orient in order to mitigate their barbaric practices, but on the balance I would say this charge is unwarranted – as the work itself demonstrates, most Japanese people are unaware of the slaughter and the dietary danger that it poses to them themselves.
Having said that, I was disappointed that in all of these complexities the question – which is raised by a Japanese advocate of dolphin slaughter – of why these Westerners find it acceptable to kill cows, but not dolphins, is not addressed. It may be the emotional attachment that Westerners have to dolphins as smart and cute animals (premised on Flipper and its inheritance) which make us want to keep dolphins in captivity, but it is these same traits which allow outrage over dolphin slaughter in non-Western countries while our own practices remain unexamined (I’m sure that footage of an industrial slaughterhouse would be equally disturbing and difficult to capture – though it is out there to some extent in works such as Meet Your Meat). I would suggest that, in order to get to the bottom of the relationship between humans and dolphins, so dysfunctional not only for dolphins but also for humans, a broader critique is needed of human relationships with non-human animals and ‘the animal’ more generally.
Nonetheless, this is a well-made, shocking and compelling documentary, one which is only now being screened in Japan itself, and one which makes up part of an increasing movement drawing attention to animal issues (we might also think, for example, of Jonathan Safran Foer’s widely-read Eating Animals) both from ethical and (somewhat more closely related to human self-interest and thus more likely to spur action) from environmental perspectives.
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label animals. Show all posts
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
John Vaillant – The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
Some time ago, I watched a documentary about the coldest inhabited place on earth, a town in Siberia where, if the generator failed, everyone would die within four hours – where the seasonal melting of the highest permafrost caused by the warmth of buildings gave the architecture skewed, Lovecraftian angles – and where the coffins, due to the same process of thawing and refreezing, would gradually make their way to the surface, re-emerging twenty to twenty-five years after the burial.
The world in which the events John Vaillant describes takes place – a remote region of Siberian Manchuria – is similarly surreal. Trees explode in the cold, as the heat and pressure of the sap bursts the frozen exterior, while flora and fauna of the cold North (deer, wolves, pines) mingle with those of the tropical South (leopards, large and exotic insects, and, the animal in question here, tigers). Indeed, Vaillant suggests that the region was a refugium – an isolated area which remained uncovered by snow and ice during pitiless glacial periods. But this is also an area of flux ethnically, in the mingling between ethnic ‘Russians,’ indigenous people, and Chinese; but, even more shapingly, in the aftermath of perestroika and the frontier-capitalist instability which resulted (Vaillant suggests that there are very numerous parallels between this area and the American frontier, both in terms of this lawlessness, human and natural danger, and in terms of colonialisation and resource exploitation). But although this environment may seem bizarre to ‘we moderns,’ in fact, despite the encroachments of nature in the form of logging, mining, roads and guns, life here is in many ways akin to our ancestral patterns, wherein the forces of nature continually pose an existential threat and where hunting (and not agriculture) forms an important part of most successful survival strategies. In this arena, the danger that tigers (and other wild animals) can pose is not just, as more usually, a convenient justification for humans’ meat-eating habits.
This isn’t to say, though, that human-tiger relationships are such that the killing of the tiger is justified. There is, in this area, a long tradition of what can only be described as ‘honourable’ interaction between the human and the tiger – an uneasy ceasefire, but one which generally holds (it may seem anthropomorphic to refer to honour among tigers, so to speak, but even I, someone who usually considers our understanding of the mental and emotional capabilities of animals to be radically undervalued, was astonished by both the clear laws obtaining between human and tiger and the purposiveness and forethought with which tigers here behave). Vaillant’s tale is a story of the breaking of that covenant by a human, and a feline quest for revenge – one in which the circle of human targets grows ever wider, and no-one is safe.
The story, which begins with this particular tiger’s ferocious and well-planned killing of a poacher, traces both the pre-history and the consequences of this moment, and in doing so brings in not only issues of human and tiger (we might combine these in saying ‘animal’) nature, but also politics, environmentalism, colonialism, spirituality and the relationship with land itself. The hard-bitten, hard-drinking, hard-smoking, suicide-prone, stoic characters (almost all men) who make up the human cast are in some sense familiar Russian figures, but at the same time their relationship to the taiga, the way in which they read it and feel a qualitative relationship with it as an entity, partakes in a spirituality which isn’t confined only to those with indigenous heritage in the area (though obviously it functions in different ways for those who have such heritage). In ‘man vs wild’ tales of this kind I usually tend to feel less sympathy with the human characters than the author intends, but in this case, Vaillant presents not only the plight of the Amur tigers but also the travails of these people trapped in a dying society, with few economic opportunities, caught in a pincer between the corruption of Russia’s new elite and the harshness of their natural circumstances. The tiger itself, meanwhile, is a character sprung from a Greek tragedy, wronged, injured, and with furious calculation lashing out at those whose injury can only bring cyclical retribution.
Given that I’m a sucker both for cats and for nature documentaries (especially those set in extreme environments), I may be the ideal audience for a work of this kind, but certainly there was little to forgive in this book, which is well- and tautly-written, deeply atmospheric and incisive (if we put aside a few regrettable diversions into bio-evolutionary speculation and ruminations on human nature). This is a tale both sorrowful and steeped in what I can only term majesty, a report from a front line tense with dualities – arctic and tropical, socialist and capitalist, spiritual and material, colonialist and indigenous, ‘human’ and ‘natural’ – which are both symbolic and prefigurative of ‘our’ present condition.
The world in which the events John Vaillant describes takes place – a remote region of Siberian Manchuria – is similarly surreal. Trees explode in the cold, as the heat and pressure of the sap bursts the frozen exterior, while flora and fauna of the cold North (deer, wolves, pines) mingle with those of the tropical South (leopards, large and exotic insects, and, the animal in question here, tigers). Indeed, Vaillant suggests that the region was a refugium – an isolated area which remained uncovered by snow and ice during pitiless glacial periods. But this is also an area of flux ethnically, in the mingling between ethnic ‘Russians,’ indigenous people, and Chinese; but, even more shapingly, in the aftermath of perestroika and the frontier-capitalist instability which resulted (Vaillant suggests that there are very numerous parallels between this area and the American frontier, both in terms of this lawlessness, human and natural danger, and in terms of colonialisation and resource exploitation). But although this environment may seem bizarre to ‘we moderns,’ in fact, despite the encroachments of nature in the form of logging, mining, roads and guns, life here is in many ways akin to our ancestral patterns, wherein the forces of nature continually pose an existential threat and where hunting (and not agriculture) forms an important part of most successful survival strategies. In this arena, the danger that tigers (and other wild animals) can pose is not just, as more usually, a convenient justification for humans’ meat-eating habits.
This isn’t to say, though, that human-tiger relationships are such that the killing of the tiger is justified. There is, in this area, a long tradition of what can only be described as ‘honourable’ interaction between the human and the tiger – an uneasy ceasefire, but one which generally holds (it may seem anthropomorphic to refer to honour among tigers, so to speak, but even I, someone who usually considers our understanding of the mental and emotional capabilities of animals to be radically undervalued, was astonished by both the clear laws obtaining between human and tiger and the purposiveness and forethought with which tigers here behave). Vaillant’s tale is a story of the breaking of that covenant by a human, and a feline quest for revenge – one in which the circle of human targets grows ever wider, and no-one is safe.
The story, which begins with this particular tiger’s ferocious and well-planned killing of a poacher, traces both the pre-history and the consequences of this moment, and in doing so brings in not only issues of human and tiger (we might combine these in saying ‘animal’) nature, but also politics, environmentalism, colonialism, spirituality and the relationship with land itself. The hard-bitten, hard-drinking, hard-smoking, suicide-prone, stoic characters (almost all men) who make up the human cast are in some sense familiar Russian figures, but at the same time their relationship to the taiga, the way in which they read it and feel a qualitative relationship with it as an entity, partakes in a spirituality which isn’t confined only to those with indigenous heritage in the area (though obviously it functions in different ways for those who have such heritage). In ‘man vs wild’ tales of this kind I usually tend to feel less sympathy with the human characters than the author intends, but in this case, Vaillant presents not only the plight of the Amur tigers but also the travails of these people trapped in a dying society, with few economic opportunities, caught in a pincer between the corruption of Russia’s new elite and the harshness of their natural circumstances. The tiger itself, meanwhile, is a character sprung from a Greek tragedy, wronged, injured, and with furious calculation lashing out at those whose injury can only bring cyclical retribution.
Given that I’m a sucker both for cats and for nature documentaries (especially those set in extreme environments), I may be the ideal audience for a work of this kind, but certainly there was little to forgive in this book, which is well- and tautly-written, deeply atmospheric and incisive (if we put aside a few regrettable diversions into bio-evolutionary speculation and ruminations on human nature). This is a tale both sorrowful and steeped in what I can only term majesty, a report from a front line tense with dualities – arctic and tropical, socialist and capitalist, spiritual and material, colonialist and indigenous, ‘human’ and ‘natural’ – which are both symbolic and prefigurative of ‘our’ present condition.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Jonathan Safran Foer - Eating Animals (2009)
For those who have seen the spread of vegetarianism as reaching its zenith, it’s interesting that the major contribution of meat-eating to global warming is providing a new impetus to vegetarianism, one based on self-interest rather than compassion for others (and therefore, one might assume, providing an argument more likely to be accepted and acted upon). Despite this, many of those who are happy to go on anti-warming marches or install solar panels remain resistant to a basic, and easy, change which might be one of the most significant possible for an individual to take in terms of acting on climate change. I would put this down to what might be termed ‘identity protest’ – a willingness to endorse an identity as a protester (to which, heaven knows, we’re all liable) as long as it doesn’t actually demand any meaningful change in our own lives – in other words, the incorporation of protest as a purchased identity in the context of capitalist social structure. But all this is by the by. From this vantage point, Jonathan Safran Foer’s new work on the meat industry is timely and important, and most important in that it is likely to reach a new audience who have been dismissive of earlier central works such as Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation.
The most successful parts of Foer’s book are the beginning and the end, dealing with his personal experiences with food, bringing in cultural theory from Benjamin to Derrida, and touching on interesting issues such as the continuing sociocultural importance of eating (or refusing to eat) with another, the community and emotional aspects of food practices. The central part of the book, in which he presents the case against factory ‘farming’ both in terms of cruelty and in terms of health consequences for humans in the natural environment and the nature of food produced by industrial methods, will not present factually new information to anyone familiar with the hideous cruelty and the gruesome and disgusting aspects of industrialized animal ‘husbandry,’ but are still shocking even for those who do have such familiarity.
So far, so good. However, to use an appropriate metaphor, there are a number of elephants in Foer’s room. The first of these is capitalism. Foer spends a great deal of time with non-factory farmers, for whom he evidently has a great deal of admiration – and although he acknowledges that even in this context killing is problematic, and that any argument for meat-eating supports the factory system, what is most in evidence here is a characteristically American desire for a pre-capitalist system of community agriculture which contains an inherent ethic of care – and while there is certainly some truth to this evaluative comparison of past and present, in terms of human health impact as well as cruelty, one wonders whether this basically conservative-nostalgic perspective is somewhat overstated (indeed, a deep and peculiarly American nostalgia, whether for old-fashioned farming communities or for the family circle and celebrations such as Thanksgiving – according to Foer, despite the crimes of the past, ‘the holday that encompasses all others,’ one about which ‘there is nothing specifically American’ as a celebration of American ideals). Essentially, the reason for the existence of factory ‘farming’ (and, incidentally, a contribution to the cruelty practiced in factory farms and slaugherhouses due to the dehumanisation and exploitation of workers) is the social system of industrialized capitalism and bureaucratic management, and while Foer recognizes this in terms of the problems in the industry, he does not address the question of whether a better system (if that is indeed to be the goal) is possible within that structure. Indeed, in demonstrating the way in which labels like ‘cage-free’ are false, and in documenting the takeover of Niman meats, Foer points to this conclusion.
But this issue points to a deeper problem – the status of animals with regard to humans. Why should we consider that, as long as animals have had an acceptably comfortable life and a sudden death, it is acceptable to kill them for the unnecessary pleasure of our palates (this issue – the pleasure of palate as a concern overriding morality – is one Foer does raise)? In numerous places Foer cautions that we should not think of animals as (morally) equal or equivalent to humans – but if not, why not? I would argue that it is thinking of animals as somehow lesser or inferior, morally or otherwise, which gives moral license to use them instrumentally, and that while this view persists we - or rather, they - have no chance of decent treatment. The old canard is also brought out that we are ‘unable to avoid violence and therefore should do it more humanely, ’ but again, it is not explained why this is so, or, if indeed it is so, why this would legitimize any killing we choose to do. Given Foer’s extensive research, it would have been nice to see at least a little more consideration of ethics as a subject in regard to these issues (a topic on which much has been written) – and in terms of Foer’s interesting but somewhat facile engagement with theorists such as Derrida and Benjamin, I would have been interested to see his approach to these issues. On the philosophical note, the issue of gender is also one which could be more closely examined, given the connection, on the one hand, between meat-eating and masculinity and on the other, in practice toward animals (females as machines for re/production, males for slaughter).
Another central issue, and one which has sometimes been neglected, is brought into focus here (though being the scholarly type I am I would have liked to see further historico-social exploration rather than Foer’s meandering approach) – the social nature of eating, even in our society in which this centrality, and eating as an act of community and social bonding, has been gradually elided and fetishised as a boutique activity for special occasions. It is still difficult to reject the food another offers you, to refuse to partake in the community of the table, and such refusal is often experienced as a hurtful rejection and an insult. This is a deeper question than that of social conformity to custom, although that is one which also plays a significant role (imagine the response to meat-eating which might arise in someone brought up in a veg/etari/an society – somewhat like most people’s presently to murderous cannibalism, I would imagine). The abovementioned nostalgia expressed by Foer dovetails with this aspect of food practice as one which still plays a greater role in social relations than we might assume. Nonetheless, as the conclusion points out, it is the social aspect of eating, the way in which our own choices influence others, which makes a change of diet an act which has effects beyond those of an individual boycott.
A final unconsidered question is the milk and dairy industry, and the issue of pets – Foer relates the complexities of his relationship with his own dog, but there is no exploration of the cruelties of milk, egg and honey production (or wool, silk and leather), or the perspective that the relationship between humanely farmed animals and their 'owners,' or between pets and their 'owners,' is in a best-case scenario one of benign slavery and dependence. And why go vegetarian if one is to feed meat to a cat or dog? Indeed, for this reader at least, slavery is a theme which often comes to mind while reading this work, from the too-convenient ‘knowledge’ of inequality which justifies turning a being into a thing, to the widespread invisibility of the moral aspect of the problem, and the issue of kindness or humane practice as one which invisible-ises the problem rather than resolves it (despite issues of pragmatism). This similarity, indeed, has been extensively explored by Marjorie Spiegel - while the fact of the connection between killing animals and killing humans has likewise had proponents such as Charles Patterson and David Sztybel, in particular his paper 'Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust?'. Unlike the case of slavery, however, short of technology which today is unimaginable it seems unlikely that animals will ever be given the opportunity to voice their sufferings in the way that slaves could – for the ‘humanely farmed’ but slaughtered turkey to talk back to the farmer.
Despite these flaws (not to mention the perpetuation of the thoroughly exploded myth of Hitler as a vegetarian), this is an important book and one which brings out some important and under-considered points. While many of these originate with other thinkers, in weaving them together Foer nevertheless does the reader a service. He takes to task ‘humane omnivores’ such as Michael Pollan, quoting B. R. Myers on a common, but little-noted, intellectual sleight-of-hand when discussing eating animals: 'One debates the other side in a rational manner until pushed into a corner. Then one simply drops the argument and slips away, pretending that one has not fallen short of reason but instead transcended it. The irreconcilability of one’s belief with reason is then held up as a great mystery, the humble readiness to live with which puts one above lesser minds and their cheap certainties.' On a similar note, the argument that it is (more) acceptable to eat animals when one has demonstrated oneself capable of hunting and killing them personally is also characterized as a ‘forgetting,’ one which is greater than that undertaken by everyday consumer meat-eating because it pretends to have addressed the question.
As one who has done a fair amount of reading and thinking on this issue, I am not the book’s intended audience. Without obviating the seriousness of the problems I raise above, it may nonetheless be, if not necessary, at least pragmatic, to avoid philosophical complexity and ethical consistency in the name of reaching out to a larger audience, and in putting thought-experiments (like a meatless Thanksgiving) which may reach where logical argument cannot. Indeed, where pragmatism should end is a highly vexed question in the case of meat-eating – is it more positive, for example, to encourage one meat-free day a week with the aim of reaching more people, rather than encouraging a more ethically acceptable vegetarianism which is also more alienating and easily dismissed? The case of the vegan who builds slaughterhouses, which Foer presents here, exemplifies these difficulties, although for me they are not so 'difficult' as it is convenient to make them appear – one asks oneself how one would behave if one was advocating for humans. Nonetheless, Foer’s enthusiasm is apparent throughout, and for all its shortcomings this is a highly accessible book, and as enjoyable as a work detailing the gruesome treatment of animals ever can be, one which will reach a wider audience than other works on animal rights or animal ethics, and one which will change behaviour – and as such, it is an important contribution.
The most successful parts of Foer’s book are the beginning and the end, dealing with his personal experiences with food, bringing in cultural theory from Benjamin to Derrida, and touching on interesting issues such as the continuing sociocultural importance of eating (or refusing to eat) with another, the community and emotional aspects of food practices. The central part of the book, in which he presents the case against factory ‘farming’ both in terms of cruelty and in terms of health consequences for humans in the natural environment and the nature of food produced by industrial methods, will not present factually new information to anyone familiar with the hideous cruelty and the gruesome and disgusting aspects of industrialized animal ‘husbandry,’ but are still shocking even for those who do have such familiarity.
So far, so good. However, to use an appropriate metaphor, there are a number of elephants in Foer’s room. The first of these is capitalism. Foer spends a great deal of time with non-factory farmers, for whom he evidently has a great deal of admiration – and although he acknowledges that even in this context killing is problematic, and that any argument for meat-eating supports the factory system, what is most in evidence here is a characteristically American desire for a pre-capitalist system of community agriculture which contains an inherent ethic of care – and while there is certainly some truth to this evaluative comparison of past and present, in terms of human health impact as well as cruelty, one wonders whether this basically conservative-nostalgic perspective is somewhat overstated (indeed, a deep and peculiarly American nostalgia, whether for old-fashioned farming communities or for the family circle and celebrations such as Thanksgiving – according to Foer, despite the crimes of the past, ‘the holday that encompasses all others,’ one about which ‘there is nothing specifically American’ as a celebration of American ideals). Essentially, the reason for the existence of factory ‘farming’ (and, incidentally, a contribution to the cruelty practiced in factory farms and slaugherhouses due to the dehumanisation and exploitation of workers) is the social system of industrialized capitalism and bureaucratic management, and while Foer recognizes this in terms of the problems in the industry, he does not address the question of whether a better system (if that is indeed to be the goal) is possible within that structure. Indeed, in demonstrating the way in which labels like ‘cage-free’ are false, and in documenting the takeover of Niman meats, Foer points to this conclusion.
But this issue points to a deeper problem – the status of animals with regard to humans. Why should we consider that, as long as animals have had an acceptably comfortable life and a sudden death, it is acceptable to kill them for the unnecessary pleasure of our palates (this issue – the pleasure of palate as a concern overriding morality – is one Foer does raise)? In numerous places Foer cautions that we should not think of animals as (morally) equal or equivalent to humans – but if not, why not? I would argue that it is thinking of animals as somehow lesser or inferior, morally or otherwise, which gives moral license to use them instrumentally, and that while this view persists we - or rather, they - have no chance of decent treatment. The old canard is also brought out that we are ‘unable to avoid violence and therefore should do it more humanely, ’ but again, it is not explained why this is so, or, if indeed it is so, why this would legitimize any killing we choose to do. Given Foer’s extensive research, it would have been nice to see at least a little more consideration of ethics as a subject in regard to these issues (a topic on which much has been written) – and in terms of Foer’s interesting but somewhat facile engagement with theorists such as Derrida and Benjamin, I would have been interested to see his approach to these issues. On the philosophical note, the issue of gender is also one which could be more closely examined, given the connection, on the one hand, between meat-eating and masculinity and on the other, in practice toward animals (females as machines for re/production, males for slaughter).
Another central issue, and one which has sometimes been neglected, is brought into focus here (though being the scholarly type I am I would have liked to see further historico-social exploration rather than Foer’s meandering approach) – the social nature of eating, even in our society in which this centrality, and eating as an act of community and social bonding, has been gradually elided and fetishised as a boutique activity for special occasions. It is still difficult to reject the food another offers you, to refuse to partake in the community of the table, and such refusal is often experienced as a hurtful rejection and an insult. This is a deeper question than that of social conformity to custom, although that is one which also plays a significant role (imagine the response to meat-eating which might arise in someone brought up in a veg/etari/an society – somewhat like most people’s presently to murderous cannibalism, I would imagine). The abovementioned nostalgia expressed by Foer dovetails with this aspect of food practice as one which still plays a greater role in social relations than we might assume. Nonetheless, as the conclusion points out, it is the social aspect of eating, the way in which our own choices influence others, which makes a change of diet an act which has effects beyond those of an individual boycott.
A final unconsidered question is the milk and dairy industry, and the issue of pets – Foer relates the complexities of his relationship with his own dog, but there is no exploration of the cruelties of milk, egg and honey production (or wool, silk and leather), or the perspective that the relationship between humanely farmed animals and their 'owners,' or between pets and their 'owners,' is in a best-case scenario one of benign slavery and dependence. And why go vegetarian if one is to feed meat to a cat or dog? Indeed, for this reader at least, slavery is a theme which often comes to mind while reading this work, from the too-convenient ‘knowledge’ of inequality which justifies turning a being into a thing, to the widespread invisibility of the moral aspect of the problem, and the issue of kindness or humane practice as one which invisible-ises the problem rather than resolves it (despite issues of pragmatism). This similarity, indeed, has been extensively explored by Marjorie Spiegel - while the fact of the connection between killing animals and killing humans has likewise had proponents such as Charles Patterson and David Sztybel, in particular his paper 'Can the Treatment of Animals Be Compared to the Holocaust?'. Unlike the case of slavery, however, short of technology which today is unimaginable it seems unlikely that animals will ever be given the opportunity to voice their sufferings in the way that slaves could – for the ‘humanely farmed’ but slaughtered turkey to talk back to the farmer.
Despite these flaws (not to mention the perpetuation of the thoroughly exploded myth of Hitler as a vegetarian), this is an important book and one which brings out some important and under-considered points. While many of these originate with other thinkers, in weaving them together Foer nevertheless does the reader a service. He takes to task ‘humane omnivores’ such as Michael Pollan, quoting B. R. Myers on a common, but little-noted, intellectual sleight-of-hand when discussing eating animals: 'One debates the other side in a rational manner until pushed into a corner. Then one simply drops the argument and slips away, pretending that one has not fallen short of reason but instead transcended it. The irreconcilability of one’s belief with reason is then held up as a great mystery, the humble readiness to live with which puts one above lesser minds and their cheap certainties.' On a similar note, the argument that it is (more) acceptable to eat animals when one has demonstrated oneself capable of hunting and killing them personally is also characterized as a ‘forgetting,’ one which is greater than that undertaken by everyday consumer meat-eating because it pretends to have addressed the question.
As one who has done a fair amount of reading and thinking on this issue, I am not the book’s intended audience. Without obviating the seriousness of the problems I raise above, it may nonetheless be, if not necessary, at least pragmatic, to avoid philosophical complexity and ethical consistency in the name of reaching out to a larger audience, and in putting thought-experiments (like a meatless Thanksgiving) which may reach where logical argument cannot. Indeed, where pragmatism should end is a highly vexed question in the case of meat-eating – is it more positive, for example, to encourage one meat-free day a week with the aim of reaching more people, rather than encouraging a more ethically acceptable vegetarianism which is also more alienating and easily dismissed? The case of the vegan who builds slaughterhouses, which Foer presents here, exemplifies these difficulties, although for me they are not so 'difficult' as it is convenient to make them appear – one asks oneself how one would behave if one was advocating for humans. Nonetheless, Foer’s enthusiasm is apparent throughout, and for all its shortcomings this is a highly accessible book, and as enjoyable as a work detailing the gruesome treatment of animals ever can be, one which will reach a wider audience than other works on animal rights or animal ethics, and one which will change behaviour – and as such, it is an important contribution.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Werner Herzog - Grizzly Man (2005)
I'll come right out and admit it - this is the first Herzog film I've seen, though Aguirre and Nosferatu have been on my list for some time. But, if this film is anything to go by, everyone who recommended his work to me was right about the depth of the impression it leaves on the viewer. Despite its flaws, GM is one of the most thought-provoking films I've seen for quite some time.
The documentary, narrated by Herzog himself and featuring a haunting acoustic guitar soundtrack by Richard Thompson, follows the story of Timothy Treadwell, the 'grizzly man' of the title. Treadwell was devoted to grizzly bears, and spent every summer for thirteen years with the bears, until, in 2003, he and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed and eaten by a grizzly. For the six years previously, Treadwell had been documenting his sojourns on camera. This footage makes up a great deal of the doco; the rest is interviews with those who knew Timothy or were involved in the events around his death, as well as some gorgeous landscape shots of the Alaskan wilderness where Treadwell lived with the bears.
Treadwell himself is a bizarre, irritating and fascinating character. An actor and a former alcoholic and heavy drug user, he seems to have had a 'conversion' experience which turned him into the 'grizzly man' (who nonetheless took his childhood stuffed bear with him into the wilderness). But his life involved a great deal of myth-making, from his name (which he had changed from 'Timothy Dexter'), to his origins (he claimed to have been born in Australia), to the fact that in the film he took of himself (intended for his own documentary) he consistently concealed the fact that he was not always alone in the wilderness, but was accompanied by Huguenard.
The film's greatest flaw, to my mind, is Herzog's intrusive, heavily accented narration, which is often portentous and pretentious, and adds little to the tragic and beautiful story which unfolds around Treadwell. The material Herzog presents could easily stand alone, and his observations, whether on the random beauty of the shots of the wilderness captured between Treadwell's gung-ho on-film heroics, or his criticisms of Treadwell's very obvious flaws and absurdities, are redundant. There is also a particularly objectionable, crypto-voyeuristic scene in which Herzog is played the six-minute sound recording of the deaths of Treadwell and Huguenard (the camera had been running, but with the lens cap on), after which he tells Jewel Palovak (Treadwell's close friend, and the possessor of the tape and his other effects) that she must never listen to it, that she must destroy it, and that she must never look at the autopsy photographs of Treadwell (his remains and those of Huguenard were for the most part recovered from the stomach of the bear who killed them, which was shot when Treadwell's death was discovered).
Nonetheless, the questions the film raises are even more fascinating than the sheer beauty of the footage of grizzlies and foxes at play. The essential issue here revolves around the relationship between humans and 'nature'. Treadwell came more and more to loathe 'the human world', as he called it, and this was eventually to lead to his death: when returning from Alaska he got into an altercation regarding his plane ticket, and he therefore decided to return to the wilderness, staying later in the season than he ever had before and thus encountering hostile and starving bears with whom he had not previously come in contact. But his view of both 'nature' and of the human role was hopelessly utopian, and this, combined with a massive ego which led to a heavy overestimation of his own capacity to avoid conflict with the grizzlies, was a fatal flaw.
Treadwell, complete with Prince Valiant haircut (concealing his receding hairline), saw himself as a 'kind warrior' and a 'samurai' who, unlike anyone else in the world, was capable of interacting with grizzlies on their own terms. In this attitude, however, we see how monumental was his arrogance, and the way in which his project was all about himself, rather than about the bears. A telling moment is one in which he tells a fox he has named 'Timmy' that he (the fox) is 'master of all the bears and all the foxes'; telling also is the way in which his monologue (which is a bizarre, over-enthusiastic stream of childish enthusiasm and comic-book phraseology, punctuated by exaggerated emotional tantrums) constantly draws on concepts of 'mastery' and martial analogies. One can't help agreeing with the indigenous curator of an Alaskan museum that Treadwell's interactions with the bears (which included a great deal of close contact), contrary to his protestations of love (and he was also a tireless educator, giving free speeches to schoolchildren about bear protection) were the ultimate in disrespect, inasmuch as he did not respect the boundary between their domain and his own.
But why should we consider what Treadwell was doing, living among the bears, more reprehensible than the actions of figures such as Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey? While I'm not usually one to champion 'scientific objectivity', this discourse seems to have placed a distance between the abovementioned scientists and the objects of their research which Treadwell, as a self-conceived eco-warrior figure, did not possess (we might also add that, while ego must not be overlooked as a motivation in scientific work, Treadwell's self-aggrandisement seems to have grown from the 'conversion experience' which led to his self-mythologising as 'the grizzly man'). Gender issues also seem relevant, in terms of Treadwell's militaristic conception of his role in mediating between the 'grizzly world' and the 'human world', and in his macho conception of his ability to handle the grizzlies. Having said this, such an interaction is always problematic; Fossey herself seems to have begun to lose the plot in the final period of her interaction with gorillas in Rwanda, dressing up, for example, as a traditional evil spirit in order to scare off poachers and others from the gorilla habitat; and in this case, too, such behaviour may well have contributed to her death.
The publicisation of the work of individuals like Fossey and Goodall led to a much greater public appreciation of the inherent value of the lives of the animals they studied, and therefore can be seen as positive in this regard. However, if GM can be said to have a moral, the one I drew was that the best thing humans can do for wild animals is to leave them alone. Treadwell's utopian view of nature is certainly more benign than an attitude which explicitly values humans above other animals and sees nature as nothing more than a justifiably exploitable resource (indeed, a resource which it is morally incumbent upon humans to subjugate and exploit); but it certainly did him no good, and arguably harmed his cause (drawing a great deal of ire, and the intrusion of 'Treadwell-hunters' into the wilderness on at least one occasion). Here we might also think of the fate of Steve Irwin.
In opposition to Treadwell's naive boys' own fantasies with an eco-twist, Herzog's view, as expressed in the narratorial voice, is the diametric opposite: that 'nature' is a harsh chaos, and that animals are nothing more than mindless eating machines (and, as mentioned above, I failed to see the necessity for this judgmental and heavy-handed intrusion). These two points of view draw on what we might call 'equal and opposite' binary traditions in the Western conception of 'nature': that it is either a hideous, dangerous realm, ultimately hostile to humanity; or that it is a morally and literally unspoiled wilderness which is a paradise for humans. Either concept sees Westerners (as opposed to, for example, 'noble savages') as somehow 'outside' of the realm of 'nature' which they 'encounter' in certain circumstances. Both of these views seem to me equally reductionist, and both revolve around a conception of humans as 'central' to an external 'nature' which can lead to nothing but harm, whether through benign or malign intentions toward that 'nature'.
Ultimately, whatever its flaws, this documentary is beautiful, haunting, maddening and thought-provoking; the intensity of any one of these aspects alone would make it worthwhile watching, but all together, they add up to an experience which, appropriately, enriches the viewer's mental landscape.
The documentary, narrated by Herzog himself and featuring a haunting acoustic guitar soundtrack by Richard Thompson, follows the story of Timothy Treadwell, the 'grizzly man' of the title. Treadwell was devoted to grizzly bears, and spent every summer for thirteen years with the bears, until, in 2003, he and his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, were killed and eaten by a grizzly. For the six years previously, Treadwell had been documenting his sojourns on camera. This footage makes up a great deal of the doco; the rest is interviews with those who knew Timothy or were involved in the events around his death, as well as some gorgeous landscape shots of the Alaskan wilderness where Treadwell lived with the bears.
Treadwell himself is a bizarre, irritating and fascinating character. An actor and a former alcoholic and heavy drug user, he seems to have had a 'conversion' experience which turned him into the 'grizzly man' (who nonetheless took his childhood stuffed bear with him into the wilderness). But his life involved a great deal of myth-making, from his name (which he had changed from 'Timothy Dexter'), to his origins (he claimed to have been born in Australia), to the fact that in the film he took of himself (intended for his own documentary) he consistently concealed the fact that he was not always alone in the wilderness, but was accompanied by Huguenard.
The film's greatest flaw, to my mind, is Herzog's intrusive, heavily accented narration, which is often portentous and pretentious, and adds little to the tragic and beautiful story which unfolds around Treadwell. The material Herzog presents could easily stand alone, and his observations, whether on the random beauty of the shots of the wilderness captured between Treadwell's gung-ho on-film heroics, or his criticisms of Treadwell's very obvious flaws and absurdities, are redundant. There is also a particularly objectionable, crypto-voyeuristic scene in which Herzog is played the six-minute sound recording of the deaths of Treadwell and Huguenard (the camera had been running, but with the lens cap on), after which he tells Jewel Palovak (Treadwell's close friend, and the possessor of the tape and his other effects) that she must never listen to it, that she must destroy it, and that she must never look at the autopsy photographs of Treadwell (his remains and those of Huguenard were for the most part recovered from the stomach of the bear who killed them, which was shot when Treadwell's death was discovered).
Nonetheless, the questions the film raises are even more fascinating than the sheer beauty of the footage of grizzlies and foxes at play. The essential issue here revolves around the relationship between humans and 'nature'. Treadwell came more and more to loathe 'the human world', as he called it, and this was eventually to lead to his death: when returning from Alaska he got into an altercation regarding his plane ticket, and he therefore decided to return to the wilderness, staying later in the season than he ever had before and thus encountering hostile and starving bears with whom he had not previously come in contact. But his view of both 'nature' and of the human role was hopelessly utopian, and this, combined with a massive ego which led to a heavy overestimation of his own capacity to avoid conflict with the grizzlies, was a fatal flaw.
Treadwell, complete with Prince Valiant haircut (concealing his receding hairline), saw himself as a 'kind warrior' and a 'samurai' who, unlike anyone else in the world, was capable of interacting with grizzlies on their own terms. In this attitude, however, we see how monumental was his arrogance, and the way in which his project was all about himself, rather than about the bears. A telling moment is one in which he tells a fox he has named 'Timmy' that he (the fox) is 'master of all the bears and all the foxes'; telling also is the way in which his monologue (which is a bizarre, over-enthusiastic stream of childish enthusiasm and comic-book phraseology, punctuated by exaggerated emotional tantrums) constantly draws on concepts of 'mastery' and martial analogies. One can't help agreeing with the indigenous curator of an Alaskan museum that Treadwell's interactions with the bears (which included a great deal of close contact), contrary to his protestations of love (and he was also a tireless educator, giving free speeches to schoolchildren about bear protection) were the ultimate in disrespect, inasmuch as he did not respect the boundary between their domain and his own.
But why should we consider what Treadwell was doing, living among the bears, more reprehensible than the actions of figures such as Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey? While I'm not usually one to champion 'scientific objectivity', this discourse seems to have placed a distance between the abovementioned scientists and the objects of their research which Treadwell, as a self-conceived eco-warrior figure, did not possess (we might also add that, while ego must not be overlooked as a motivation in scientific work, Treadwell's self-aggrandisement seems to have grown from the 'conversion experience' which led to his self-mythologising as 'the grizzly man'). Gender issues also seem relevant, in terms of Treadwell's militaristic conception of his role in mediating between the 'grizzly world' and the 'human world', and in his macho conception of his ability to handle the grizzlies. Having said this, such an interaction is always problematic; Fossey herself seems to have begun to lose the plot in the final period of her interaction with gorillas in Rwanda, dressing up, for example, as a traditional evil spirit in order to scare off poachers and others from the gorilla habitat; and in this case, too, such behaviour may well have contributed to her death.
The publicisation of the work of individuals like Fossey and Goodall led to a much greater public appreciation of the inherent value of the lives of the animals they studied, and therefore can be seen as positive in this regard. However, if GM can be said to have a moral, the one I drew was that the best thing humans can do for wild animals is to leave them alone. Treadwell's utopian view of nature is certainly more benign than an attitude which explicitly values humans above other animals and sees nature as nothing more than a justifiably exploitable resource (indeed, a resource which it is morally incumbent upon humans to subjugate and exploit); but it certainly did him no good, and arguably harmed his cause (drawing a great deal of ire, and the intrusion of 'Treadwell-hunters' into the wilderness on at least one occasion). Here we might also think of the fate of Steve Irwin.
In opposition to Treadwell's naive boys' own fantasies with an eco-twist, Herzog's view, as expressed in the narratorial voice, is the diametric opposite: that 'nature' is a harsh chaos, and that animals are nothing more than mindless eating machines (and, as mentioned above, I failed to see the necessity for this judgmental and heavy-handed intrusion). These two points of view draw on what we might call 'equal and opposite' binary traditions in the Western conception of 'nature': that it is either a hideous, dangerous realm, ultimately hostile to humanity; or that it is a morally and literally unspoiled wilderness which is a paradise for humans. Either concept sees Westerners (as opposed to, for example, 'noble savages') as somehow 'outside' of the realm of 'nature' which they 'encounter' in certain circumstances. Both of these views seem to me equally reductionist, and both revolve around a conception of humans as 'central' to an external 'nature' which can lead to nothing but harm, whether through benign or malign intentions toward that 'nature'.
Ultimately, whatever its flaws, this documentary is beautiful, haunting, maddening and thought-provoking; the intensity of any one of these aspects alone would make it worthwhile watching, but all together, they add up to an experience which, appropriately, enriches the viewer's mental landscape.
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