Academic Film Review: Earthling (Junior Writing)

Decent but not 5 star…

           In a plain-designed one story building, hundreds of cows are stuck in a limited space. Some of them cry ardently, while others stumble as if they have not received enough feeds recently. At the corner, a group of men are moving cows to somewhere else, probably to the place where cows are killed and processed to become a nice cutted meat. This is just one of the numerous scenes that appear on the documentary “Earthlings”, written and directed by Shaun Monson. This 90 minute clip eagerly highlights the need to change people’s attitude toward living creatures by showing undercover videos that were filmed in places where cameras would normally never be allowed. Images are truly graphic, strongly affecting viewers on how our society treats animals in such an inhumane way. The documentary’s effort to raise public concern on the issue of animal rights, which always received much attention, is very clear. With some further improvements, however, the documentary would be able to more effectively contribute to the protection of animal rights.

           First of all, Shaun Monson used some effective strategies in order to raise public concerns in the film. Separating it in 5 parts, Monson shows how animals are treated and used as pets, food, clothing, entertainment and for scientific research. This division into 5 effectively illustrates how animals are used in each of these distinctive fields. Also, the clips are indeed so graphic that they are very effective, even too much, in telling viewers how specifically animals are slaughtered for food and used for various purposes. A comment on IMDB by ‘dushyant chaturvedi’ says “Many of the scenes are more disturbing than any of the movies which contain so called graphic scenes.” Vivid images shown in the documentary were definitely shocking to many viewers, who had possibly avoided knowing how exactly a cow raised in Illinois is processed to become a nicely-cooked steak in their everyday meals. For me, since I have watched many gore videos, the film was not so seriously disturbing except for a few scenes. However, it is probable that many viewers were shocked after watching this film, proving its long-lasting effect on emphasizing the cruelty of human beings in the treatment of animals.

           Aside from shocking images, there is one important question I would like to ask regarding the second part “food”. What is the exact message there (the food part)? Is it that we should refrain from eating meat products and become vegetarian? Or is it just that we should be more aware of how we treat other living beings? In fact, both of these seem to work, but a lot of people and internet websites are quoting this documentary in order to support vegetarianism. This is clearly shown in several vegetarian sites such as NoMeatAthlete or VegParadise. Actually, the Director Shaun Monson himself claimed that he is a vegan vegetarian. If the correct message of the film is the former, I can’t willingly agree with him anymore. In short, eating meat is a truly natural behavior considering that in an ecosystem, for example, species of tertiary consumer such as eagles and tigers eat species of primary consumer. According to the food chain model, human being’s behavior of eating other animals in lower parts of the ladder is very natural. To take an extreme approach, if we ought to become vegetarian, lions should not eat pronghorn and tiger should not hunt for rabbits. This is not saying vegetarianism is absurd; vegetarians would have their own reasons for their course of actions. In any case, the act of maintaining a meat diet is nothing to be criticized. What matters is how we eat animals and how we treat them in the food industry. People can possibly come up with more gentle methods of killing and transporting animals. For example, in Korea, the most widespread method for cow slaughter is using electric guns, which instantly kill cows. However, from the film, a lot of slaughterhouses in United States seem to kill livestock in brutal ways such as beating and poking by knife multiple times. Thus, in order to realistically care for animal rights, we need to think about how animals are killed, not necessarily whether we should eat them or not.

     As concerns vegetarianism, I would say that the film has not affected me very much; however, I do feel some sympathy with the fact that society frequently treats animals without any deliberation or “educated thoughts”. People enjoy animal circus for their ephemeral pleasures but rarely think how these animals are treated behind the curtain. Pierre Parisien, the head artistic director of the circus ‘Cirque du Soleil’ once claimed “We will never have animals in our shows. They are animals not performers, they should be in the jungle.” Looking at how animals are improperly treated just to fulfill human being’s need of temporary enjoyment, I believe people can at least try not to abuse them and provide adequate cares.

           Overall, I would say the documentary Earthlings was “a good try”, although there is surely a room for improvements. The film succeeded in giving a big shock to those who were previously indifferent with the issues by providing violent, but veridical images on how animals are mistreated. One step further, the documentary can be improved by also dealing with solutions, not only just problems. It covers neither how to possibly reduce the amount of whale-hunting taking place in Japanese shores nor how to effectively regulate the fur industry. By giving out some plausible solutions on these current matters, Monson would be able to not only attract people’s attention on the issue of animal rights, but also encourage them to take actions! Indeed, the most important matter is “how to solve”, because we already know “what to solve”. As a common high school student interested in studying life science, I believe Earthlings is decent but two-percent lacking at the same time.