On February 15, I attended a lecture by Rebecca Huss, expert in Animal Law, and had the added privilege of having her visit our Knowing Animals seminar for discussion. She was kind of amazing -- such an ability to remember dates and names and laws and explain them to us very well.
We also read a number of articles that she selected for our class, and below are my notes from those articles.
In her "The Nation" article ("Michael Vick, Racial History and Animal Rights"), Melissa Harris-Perry (Dec 2010) talks about race and its relationship to animals. A few interesting points she makes that I hadn't thought of . . . apparently, PETA also did a campaign comparing black slaves to animals (similar to the Holocaust one) where cattle hang upside down next to hanging black people. She says that you might think black people would be particularly interested in animal welfare since their "interests are profoundly linked" but that since dogs were used to terrorize civil rights demonstrators or capture escaped slaves, perhaps not so much. Plus, there is the glaring inequality that happens all the time, like when pets were evacuated from New Orleans on air-conditioned buses while "tens of thousands of black residents" remained trapped by the storm.
Something I found really interesting that I think might actually relate to my work is the idea of animal hoarders. First of all, the idea of hoarding animals is somewhat funny to me in terms of the word "hoarder" but is of course really sad and disgusting and filthy in reality. Apparently, a lot of people who hoard animals think they are running rescue or shelter organizations and they refuse to believe they are doing anything detrimental to themselves, the animals, and their families. "One study found that the majority of hoarders were female and about half of the hoarders lived in single person households. There are anecdotal reports which indicate that employed animal hoarders are able to live a double life until their homes are investigated. Cats and dogs are the animals that are most frequently involved in hoarding cases." and further down the page, a footnote reminds us that it is not a particular number of animals that defines a hoarder, but an inability to provide adequate care.
Later, she cites a specific case in the footnotes, that says "Chandra Huston, Animal Sanctuary? Gruesome scene inside What is Supposed to be a Sanctuary for Animals: Authorities discover 400-500 dogs Living in Cramped, Filthy Conditions BAXTER BULL (Mountain Hime, Ark.), Oct. 24, 2005", at IA blah blah blah blah and more information about the citation, and then another article on the same thing that is titled "We Know Every Name of Every Dog" which seems kind of an amazing quote. It makes me want to do a similar thing to the hog confinement facility piece with a toy house and 400-500 dogs. . . another toy. Because it is so much like the factory farming, but also not because it doesn't have the veneer of science or the idea of productivity, but really just a crazy person wanting to keep way too many animals. The realtionship to factory farming is so obvious too . . .
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Charles LeDray
Perhaps the very very best thing about the trip to NYC was seeing Charles LeDray's completely magical show at the Whitney, which I have been able to find at least some images of via the wonders of intornets, becuase the book associated with the show (workworkworkwork) is like 45 dollars and the photos are of an installation in maybe London or something anyway. Point is, that the work was amazing. There were basically three components -- these minature clothing pieces, tiny things carved out of bone, and miniscule wheel-thrown pottery. Also, he used to make his own stuffed animals, so there were some weird ones of those too. This is definitely one of those things that I am thrilled to have seen, because it is not nearly as striking in the photos as it was in real life. Breathtaking really. Anyway, here they are:
Imagine this maybe the size of an American girl doll. . . tiny leather gloves
This thrift-store basement tableau thing was the most phenomenal, magical finale of the whole show. It was in a huge room that was completely black, so that the only light came from the little drop ceilings (complete with dust in the lights)
This is a really small mattress . . . like maybe the size of a large sheet of paper? that is sewn perfectly and drapped with all the jackets from a party.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
On "Pets in America: A History" by Katherine C. Grier
On page 5, she mentions a book that I probably would think was interesting, something called "Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets" by Yi Fu Tuan, which talks about the "desire to control and reshape the natural world."
9 She introduces the origin of the word "pet" . . . saying it was used interchangeably with "favorite" which makes a lot of sense I guess.
Defining "pet" is not nearly as interesting in this text as I think it could be. I am reminded of Erica Fudge's question of whether or not a pet is really an animal, which seems much more worthy of probing, since deciding a pet is something exceptional, that they are removed from the category of other animals, makes more sense of why our behaviors towards them are so contradictory to other animals. It also made me think about Koko and her pets, and the various kinds of interspecies pets that we have identified. What are other examples of this behavior, and how is it different from human practice of pet-keeping, and does any kind of interspecies care take place in the wild that at all parallels pet-keeping? A related question emerged later in the book when I was thinking about this idea that pet-keeping teaches children to be gentle and kind to other living things, and how parents often try and show babies how to kindly treat the animal. Does this kind of instruction appear within other animal communities? Like, does a mother bonobo correct her baby if it is being rough with a kitten? I am assuming there would be precious little opportunity for this in the wild, but in a captive setting, do we see similar behavior as human parents? Is empathy or kindness taught to baby primates?
I can't help but read this book in the context of the previous book we read, Foer's "Eating Animals." I think to myself as I read it that the idea of companionship is a much more flattering view of our relationship to animals than the relationship Foer describes in slaughter houses. Pet-keeping, especially in this book, emerges as an incredible kind of vanity, choosing to depict ourselves as kind, compassionate, sacrificing towards helpless animals. I suppose part of why I felt so hostile to this book is that it barely mentions this kind of duplicity (thought, to its credit, it does occasionally talk about the contradictions between other farm animals and the favorites). I am perhaps more angry with the audience, and myself, for taking such self-satisfaction in caring for animals well, in giving them a humane death, in treating their illnesses, and truly loving them, and then persisting in self-imposed ignorance about other ways that animals are treated.
It seems to me that pets serve as an antidote, not only to our forms of cruelty toward other animals, but also as one against our general cruelty or lack of compassion towards other humans. They seem like a buffer to me, a relationship in which we can enact the kind of persons we'd ideally like to be -- kind, compassionate, caring, loving, forgiving, and also in control. These are not things we find ourselves good at on a large scale, and certainly much of our interactions feel beyond our control.
I have the suspicion that, if not always historically, then at least now, our ability to care for, love, pet, show affection to pet animals is some kind of buffer for us. a way to live out kindness toward something, to prove our ability to love and be compassionate, against the uncomfortable knowledge of our compliance in animal testing, meat-eating, and even wars fought in our name. I was at first thinking of how awful this bald contradiction between pet ownership and say meat-eating is, which has been brought up many times before, but from this perspective I suddenly think that maybe this very contradiction in necessary -- its a way to imagine ourselves, for a moment, in a flattering light. to know that we will get up at 5:30 to take the dog out in the snow. To know that we will cry, sob, be lonely and sad when our pet dies is to remind us that we are capable of caring about things. And to be able to touch a pet, to provide ti a comforting, loving touch, fills a deep need that we hardly ever reach with anyone else, a way to show at least SOME animal the kind of compassion we would really prefer to show to all of them. When watching that PETA video, I wanted so desperately . . . my overwhelming urge wasn't specifically to stop the torture, I had no plan for how the pain would be ended, but my immediate reaction was to reach out and touch the cow's face or put my hand on the pig . . . a great desire to touch them and say "it's ok. it will be ok." which is fruitless and silly. but it seems like touch is the place where our non-lingual communication can happen, our only window into telling them something . . . and since there is no access to any of these other animals, i feel like, even more than before, i want to touch the animals I do have access to . . .to transfer my impotent (better word?) touch of kindness to another animal, and replacement.
So, to me, pets seem to occupy a really interesting role that barely gets mentioned in the text.
She has a section called "why pets matter" . . . and I don't think I need convincing, but she does say a few things that I think are good supporting points, including (12) that they are "profoundly voiceless" and that "Social historians have been concerned with recovering the stories of the 'voiceless' members of our society for decades"
I like the way she describes dealing with our contradictions with regard to animals -- "children seem to have absorbed the dissonances with little trouble" (20)
22 - she suggests that the reason people are so uncomfortable with the idea of large dog-breeders or puppy mills is in part because dogs are not supposed to be treated like livestock . . . another intersection with Foer's "let's eat dogs" manifesto thing at the beginning.
This idea that pets are not 'useful' in the strictest sense, especially now (cats and dogs in the past certainly had more of a household function than today) is really interesting as well, since it offers the opportunity to think of relationships with animals not strictly dependent on our benefit I mean, we certainly benefit in terms of pleasure or enjoyment, but our use of the animal does not leave them spent up, like the use of a cow for meat does. They are not diminished by our enjoyment (arguably) . . . . and again, I think proving to ourselves that we can have this kind of relationship with animals is psychologically important to counteracting the deeply selfish motives for our use of other animals. Possibly. And also, I think there is a strange parallel between art, which also isn't strictly utilitarian in any way, and pets.
47 "Dogs are unusually malleable genetically." Is this true? I mean, it does certainly seem this way since there are not 400 breeds of cats, nor are there hamsters 6 times larger than other hamsters. . . but that makes me want to know why. or how. What does it mean, physiologically, to be genetically malleable?
50 - Guinea pigs were apparently "first displayed with the swine; they were later moved to the poultry department." at the Concord town cattle show.
On white mice and rats: "While mice and rats were pursued relentlessly by conscientious housewives as vermin (the ambulatory equivalent of dirt), some children raised white mice and rats. Their whiteness, a recessive genetic trait that could be selected, suggested that the creatures were fundamentally different from their wild cousins." (51) Not to mention that whiteness is OK but brown or blackness is somehow not ok. . . racist.
Apparently, deer were kept by the wealthy as "living lawn ornaments" in "deer parks" in the early 1800's. (55) How lovely!
Samuel Clemens (AKA Mark Twain) apparently was given the duty of naming all his family's many, many pets because he was so good at it, and they had a black cat named Satan. Which I love. (It had one kitten, named Sin). The more I hear about Mark Twain, the more he seems like a downright superbly enjoyable person. I guess he also let all the pets sleep in his bed with him while his wife was away. (104)
One neat thing about this book is that it offers lists of pretty interesting pet names, like Azore, for a deer (55)
She talks about doctoring pets, and how there was no such thing as a small animal vet for a very long time, but with the loss of other urban animals (like horses) they slowly developed small animal practices (due to demand). . . but anyway, the point is that most people doctored their pets themselves, and usually using normal human remedies. On 114, and elsewhere, she points out that this is underlied? (not the right word) by the assumption that animal and human bodies are essentially the same. She takes this to mean that people had a commonsense understanding that animals could feel pain in the way humans do, and can be comforted the way humans do.
161 - From "Letters to Mothers" by Lydia H. Sigourney (1838)
If it [the infant] seizes a kitten by the back, or pulls its hair, show immediately by your own example, how it might be held properly, and soothed into confidence. Draw back the little hand, lifted to strike the dog. Perhaps it may not understand that it thus inflicts pain. But be strenuous in confirming an opposite habit. Do not permit it to kill flies, or to trouble harmless insects. Check the first buddings of those Domitian tastes. Instruct it that the gift of life, to the poor beetle, or the crawling worm, is from the Great Father above, and not to be lightly trodden out. A little boy, who early discovered propensities to cruelty, was so thoroughly weaned from them by his mother, that when attending to infantine lessons in Natural History, long before he was able to read, and hearing of a bird that was fond of catching flies, he lisped, with a kind of horror upon his baby-face, "Oh! Kill flies! will God forgive it?"
171 - Refers to the "Eden of Home" where life was supposed to be a "microcosm of heaven on earth" and that the evangelical Charlotte B. Tonna wrote that animals had "fallen alongside Adam and Eve. Thus restoration of kind relations between humans and animals was an important step toward rebuilding paradise." I love this idea, "Rebuilding Paradise" where we don't eat them or no one feels pain, and this strange effort to like . . remove all predatory behavior and everyone live together in the peaceable kingdom, but in your house. . . or the idea of a little Eden in your home, making a home interior decorated with plant life and abundant food and loving animals . . . (I'm thinking of a miniature house with these characteristics).
Further on this topic, on 172, she says that, while the outside world of commerce and competition was growing more cutthroat, "Domesticity gave the household new importance" as a "refuge from the world of economic competition" and "was amodel of the world as it should be, where physical and economic power was softened, or even supplanted, by moral influence and love." It's a little unclear as to what time period this is talking about, but I gather at the dawn of industrialization perhaps.
173 "Applying domestic values to pubic life meant kindly care for an enlarged 'household circle' of dependent beings who could not fend for themselves in the world: the insane, the worthy poor, the orphan, the aged, the penitent prostitute, the slave--and the animal." Again, this comparison or grouping of "animal" with all kinds of other "others" . . . . And then later (176) this: "The Christianization of human relationships of power over animals as strikingly like earlier attempts to Christianize slavery through an argument for stewardship and restraint on the part of masters to the benefit of their less-civilized human chattel. It also suffered from similar limitations as an argument, since both enslaved people and animal were defined fundamentally by their legal status and value as property rather than by their place in the human heart."
175 - There was an essay from 1867 (no author given) called "An Apology for Dogs" that argued that humans are to dogs as God is to humans, an analogy meant to help people understand stewardship. I like this idea, I like this title, and it makes me think of "about our failure to become god."
179 - Again and again, this idea that cruelty as a child toward animals will lead to cruelty and evil as an adult comes up --here she talks about how you want to bring up a boy that is a kind, sensitive, feeling sort of man. "The inverse, the man who did not feel, was to be feared." I love this phrase. The man who did not feel. That's true -- the man with no empathy, the sociopath, is the man to fear. But also this makes me think of fight club . . . how they perversely had to inflict pain in order to feel anything, and how I think the torture of some animals (and people) amounts to that. She talks about how cock fighting and dog fighting are things men and almost solely men participated in. Why? Where does that aggression come from and is it leaking out the sides, like the sub-terranean fight clubs, because the inbred desire to kill or hunt or whatever is being squelched in the rest of society? Or is that a poor excuse for violence?
210 - There is something called "Picture Lessons: Illustrating Moral Truth" which is "a set of large, colored pictures with didactic caption published by the American Sunday-School Union" which I think sounds like it's begging for me to make a series of these things. I like that they would be large color pictures. (There is an example which isn't all that visually compelling, but whatever. :) I think I should make some series called "picture lessons"
213 - Comparing animals to kids: she brings up that they have numerous physical characteristics that they share like crawling on all fours, inability to talk . . . I think it's interesting that it seems so hard to define animals alone, that they are always "like" something else . . .
She uses a quote about someone saying that having pets "really makes us human" which is just a fascinating thing to say . . . that animals actually MAKE us human, or we are defined by our opposition? Or that, to be human, is to be humane, and our one opportunity to enact that in daily life is with regard to animals? Or how blindly we must ignore the other ways in which our treatment of animals makes us seem more like monsters than "humane" (which is probably also more "human" that we are wanting to admit.)
228 - Talks more about how, even at the end of the 19th century, there was this association between adult violence and childhood maltreatment of animals. Quotes another author "statistics, carefully gathered from training-schools and prisons, that very rew men who in boyhood owned or care for a pet animal . . . are to be found among criminals."
Random reminder: Can I make stereographs? How hard are they to make? COULD I MAKE THEM OF THE PILES OF PIGS, as though they were being disposed of? I feel like one could make one easily by simply moving a camera a bit or something.
230 - quotes Olive Thorne Miller in 1894 in a book on animals as saying "The use of the pet as an aid to health has not been considered as it deserves. No instinct is truer than that of the unmarried woman of lonely life to surround herself with pets. The companionship of cats and birds in solitary lives has unquestionably kept more people than we suspect out of the insane asylum; and if friendless men took kindly to them, there would be fewer misers, drunkards, and criminals than there are now. It seems to be the divinely appointed mission of our furred and feathered friends, who never grow gloomy with care, never suffer from envy, ambition, or any of our soul-destroying vices, to make us forget our worries, to inspire us with hope, and thence with health."
As a way to "focus our reading" we left out several chapters, so let's skip to the epilogue.
She argues in the epilogue that one reason pets are so important, even today, is that we have a "desire to connect to goodness" which I agree with, and which sounds a little more generous of a way to describe what I was thinking when I first started reading the book.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
On "Eating Animals" by Jonathan Safran Foer
13 "Almost always, when I told someone I was writing a book about 'eating animals,' they assumed, even without knowing anything about my views, that it was a case for vegetarianism. It's a telling assumption, one that implies not only that a thorough inquiry into animal agriculture would lead one away from eating meat, but that most people already know that to be the case."
I ended up writing my whole 3-5 page reaction paper for class on this comment - on the significance of the idea that people already know but don't want to. I won't reproduce the whole thing here, but I'll copy a few things that I think might relate to my art-making in particular . . . or could, anyway:
How do we live with this kind of cognitive dissonance on a daily basis? This blatantly self-contradictory kind of statement – the “I don’t want to know (but I really already know)”—is on the one hand completely mystifying, and on the other, completely understandable. I fully relate to this kind of willful ignorance, as I skipped the farming section of Peter Singer's book out of knowledge that it would probably make me change my life, and I wasn't ready for that. Knowledge brings with it responsibility or the obligation to change.
Sidebar:
I want to believe
I do not want to believe, I want to know
I do not want to know (but I do)
This position sets up a different relationship to knowledge than I had thought of before, or than I had heard articulated. In direct contrast to the aims of science (ostensibly) or even the educational system as a whole, it is a rejection of knowledge. As someone engaged in the visual arts, I am interested in what this kind of phenomenon looks like, or how it can be embodied in order to make this refusal tangible. What would a museum display, typically charged with disseminating information, look like if the acts of omission were made obvious?
Again, the key to why this idea is so haunting and distressing is not the rejection of knowledge, but an a priori rejection of knowledge that relies on already knowing. Which, therefore, means it is really an act of forgetting.
What emerges from this whole discussion is this: While Foer builds a massive and complex case for halting one’s meat consumption, based very much on statistics and empirical data, we are still left at the end with the reality that our decisions regarding meat consumption are profoundly and distressingly irrational. Since we are, indeed, generally logical people who can be intellectually swayed with well-supported arguments (like the wealth of information found in this book), we respond instead the way we often do when presented with irrefutable facts: we ignore them, change the subject, or make a joke. Often, people dismiss animal welfare activists as being sentimental, swayed by emotions and illogical. As it has been suggested before, this book calls into question just whose arguments are more irrational, sentimental, or swayed by emotion. If his arguments are taken seriously, and no credible defense of eating meat exists, than those of us who consume it are left to sit uneasily our own contradiction.
In talking about his relationship with his dog, George, he says, '. . . our relationship takes place almost entirely outside of language. She seems to have thoughts and emotions. Sometimes I think I understand them, but often i don't. Like a photograph, she cannot say what she lets me see. She is an embodied secret. And I must be a photograph to her." 24. I thought this was a really interesting turn of phrase and something I'd love to think abut more. "I must be a photograph to her." how are we unintelligible to each other, and yet, depending on whose definition of communication you use, we have a very functional, operational kind of understanding. I mean, we coexist quite well and usually know . . we are no more often confused as to what a dog wants or what a dog is feeling than with a person.
33 - "For every ten tuna, sharks, and other large predatory fish that were in our oceans fifty to a hundred years ago, only one is left." This calls for a painting. :)
Nostalgia for the idealized farming past
34 "More than any set of practices, factory farming is a mind-set: reduce production costs to the absolute minimum and systematically ignore or 'externalize' such costs as environmental degradation, human disease, and animal suffering. For thousands of years, farmers took their cues from natural processes. Factory farming considers nature an obstacle to be overcome." I think this is one comment I could think more about -- the idea of the idealized farmer. Foer narrowly misses over-idealizing it . . . maybe even . . . maybe he does a bit, because of course farmers did not always know all of their animals so intimately, or their relationship was still one of forced labor and consumption. Animals have always been ours to pick and take as we pleased, even though the past certainly looks INCREDIBLY rosy compared to today's reality. As long as we are being relative, then certainly the days of old were truly worth pining for, but I can hear the dissent about farming in general, no matter how historically or traditionally its being practiced. Later, 35 "Factory farming's success depends on consumers' nostalgic images of food production--the fisherman reeling in fish, the pig farmer knowing each of his pigs as individuals, the turkey rancher watching beaks break through eggs--because these images correspond to something we respect and trust."This makes me want to do some kind of painting or drawing that merges Farmer Hoggitt and James Herriot and the idea of this traditional relationship between farmers and animals . . . because I'm sure it's somewhat true, but probably somewhat NOT true. But it makes us feel better.
38 - He talks about sea horses (and Kafka comes up again, which . . . sometimes it seems the world is conspiring to make me read Kafka, so maybe I should just get on with it :)). . . anyway, he says, "We desire to look at them so much that millions die in the aquarium and souvenir trade." I just love that he admits "we desire to look at them" . . . what is this desire and where does it come from? Why do we have the almost inborn desire to touch, pet, cuddle with animals? I don't think its really taught, or maybe it is. I want to understand that.
Another factoid that maybe I should have known but didn't "Animal agriculture makes a 40% greater contribution to global warming than all transportation in the world combined; it is the number one cause of climate change."
A really smart chapter: Words and definitions
His chapter on words-slash-meaning was, in my opinion, a particularly brilliant way to get a lot of information across, much more than you'd typically find in a set of definitions. I thought it was a really smart way of organizing information non-linearly or non-narratively, but still have a lot of editorializing in there (so it was not a completely straightforward glossary). His definition of "anthropocentrism" was particularly good as well:"Anthropocentrism: The conviction that humans are the pinnacle of evolution, the appropriate yardstick by which to measure the lives of other animals, and the rightful owners of everything that lives."
The next entry is a good example of how he really interestingly uses this format: "Anthropodenial: The refusal to concede significant experiential likeness between humans and other animals, as when my son asks if George will be lonely when we leave the house without her, and I say, "George doesn't get lonely." and
"Anthropomorphism: The urge to project human experience onto the other animals, as in when my son asks if George will be lonely." 46
Another fact I didn't know: "Chickens once had a life expectancy of 15 to 20 years, but the modern broiler is typically killed at around six weeks. Their daily growth rate has increased roughly 400 percent." 48
49 - amazing description - he is talking about how they get rid of the baby male egg chickens since they have no function without being bred for meat and without being able to lay eggs. Apparently, they just throw them into plastic containers where they suffocate. "Others are sent fulling conscious through macerators. (picture a wood chipper filled with chicks.)" which to me is like so unbelievably absurd, like popping kittens eyes out or something. . . and yet it is 100% real. That's amazing. It reminds me of Koyonaskotski or however you spell that. I should probably watch that.
He defines "Bycatch" as all the extra things brought in with the fishing nets, and says that there are 145 other species killed while killing tuna. On 49, he lists all of them. It kind of makes me want to do a very complicated drawing with all of them on it. !! on a huge painting or drawing of a tuna.
For his definition of human (which, if you think about it, is about the most ambitious task you can come up with), he lists the things that are uniquely human. I should add them to my list :)
"Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose, keep in touch (or don't), care about birthdays, waste and lose time, brush their teeth, feel nostalgia, scrub stains, have religions and political parties and laws, wear keepsakes, apologize years after an offense, whisper, fear themselves, interpret dreams, hide their genitalia, shave, bury time capsules, and can choose not to eat something for reasons of conscience. The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them." 63
He brings up the discussion of "instinct" and shares some examples of pigeons -- how their amazing homing abilities are written off as "insinct" all the time but "Instinct, though, wouldn't go very far in explaining how pigeons use human transportation routes to navigate. Pigeons follow highways and take particular exists, likely following many of the landmarks as the humans driving below." 64
64 "Scientists have documented a pig language of sorts, and pigs will come when called (to humans or one another), will play with toys (and have favorites), and have been observed coming to the aid of other pigs in distress. Dr. Stanley Curtis, an animal scientist friendly to the industry, empirically evaluated the cognitive abilities of pigs by training them to play a video game with a joystick modified for snouts. They not only learned the game, but did so as fast as chimpanzees, demonstrating a surprising capacity for abstract representation." [ Curtis, by the way, was someone I had heard of, and its because he was the one doing language stuff with pigs here at the U of I . . . he just passed away this year, actually]
65 He then addresses the question of whether or not fish and chickens are stupid (and this reminds me of my very ill-informed essay I was wanting to write called "chickens are stupid" :)) Anyway, amazing thing about fish: "Fish build complex nests, form monogamous relationships, work cooperatively with other species, and use tools. They recognize one another as individuals. . . . They have significant long-term memories, are skilled as passing knowledge to one another through social networks, and can also pass on information generationally. They have what the scientific literature calls 'long-standing 'cultural traditions' for particular pathways to feeding, schooling, resting or mating sites." 65 Really? Why have I never heard any of this! This is amazing! My initial response is that probably some of this is a little less amazing if framed differently, but I trust enough of it to realize I don't actually know anything about fish.
In his definition of PETA, he doesn't mention any of the other controversial things about PETA, like some of their, to be generous, tacky, or more realistically, offensive and insensitive . . campaigns. He seems very positive about pETA and its results, and I don't know that I can agree with that. . . but . .
Another well-done strategy of writing: A story with multiple perspectives
Another of his great structural tactics is to have just a letter that he wrote to Tyson foods.I think the most compelling and inventive section, though, is the one called "hiding slash seeking" that begins with a section called "I am not the kind of person who finds himself on a stranger's farm in the middle of the night" about himself and an animal activist named C getting ready to break into a turkey facility. Great little description: "Adjacent to the sheds is a massive granary, which looks more like something out of Bladerunner than Little House on the Prairie. Metal pipes spiderweb the outsides of the buildings, massive fans protrude and clang, and floodlights plow weirdly discrete pockets of day."85 Then follows a sub-section called "The rescue" which ends with C "rescuing" a baby turkey by killing it as painlessly as she can.
On the marvels of science itself . . .
Side track: There is another great section in which he describes being momentarily just amazed at the orchestration of the whole thing, which I think I can relate to and has to do with this general admiration for science and "progress" in and of itself without consideration of its consequences. "I'm surprised by how easy it is to forget the anonymous life all around and simply admire the technological symphony that so precisely regulates the little world-unto-itself, to see the efficiency and mastery of the machine, and then to understand the birds as extensions of, or cogs in, that machine--not beings, but parts." This is such a great observation, one made more subtly at various other times throughout the text, and again reminds me of the "like clocks." As I contemplate that further, I should definitely take that into account. 88 Again, on 102 "On their own, and with alliances with the government and the scientific community, twentieth-century businessmen planned and executed a series of revolutions in farming. They turned the early-modern philosophical proposition (championed by Descartes) that animals should be viewed as machines into reality for thousands, then millions, and now billions of farmed animals." And then, even later, on 163, he points out how farmers too have been replaced by machines. This is really strange and sad . . . But such an interesting connection.Anyway, back the really great structure of this chapter. He then allows various people to speak for themselves, begging with "I am the kind of person who finds herself on a stranger's farm in the middle of the night." And finally a section, "I am a factory farmer." In the 4th section of this chapter, he tries to go back to the beginning, with a section called "The First Chicken" then "The First Human" and "The First Problem" He describes what chickens were like, how early humans found food, and then what happened with domestication, brining up the "myth of animal consent" that comes up a lot, is often used as justification for how we treat animals, and is pretty interesting on its own. Then, "The Myth of the Myth" and "The First Forgetting." Then, "The First Animal Ethics" and "The First Line Worker"
Forgetting
102 In his section on forgetting, he says that our lack of exposure to animals leads to this forgetting about their welfare, but says "Some have tried to resolve this gap by hunting or butchering an animal themselves, as if those experiences might somehow legitimize the endeavor of eating animals. This is very silly." and says that you don't have to kill someone to understand why it is wrong. I can see his point, but I think I disagree in some way, because I do think that it is somewhat legitimate to say that if there is a problem with forgetting, an you have decided that you do think eating animals is fine, then taking the responsibility of ending the life yourself (rather than paying someone else to do it for you) is in some way admirable, I think. Choosing to face the reality of what your are doing, rather than pretending you don't do it? Or trying to find the old connection to animals that we had, ethical or not?135 - Here's a phenominally gross thing that, alone, should probably prevent you from eating chicken: It is legal for up to 11% of the chickens' weight to be absorbed "cooling bath" water that is chlorinated, feces, and bacteria infested -- known in the industry as "fecal soup" Apparently, it says in fine print on the package just how much fecal soup has been absorbed.
There is the lengthy section about the relationship between factory farming and antibiotics, and the point at the end that basically the reason we don't have a total ban on "non-theraptuic" use of antibiotics, even though public health officials and scientists have called for it many times, is that clearly agribusiness and the pharmaceutical industry are more powerful that our government. That is so scary.
152 - He describes Paradise Locker Meats -- the nearest thing to a really good slaughter facility he can find, and the really pleasant and kind people that work there and own it And he notices the decoration on the walls of the office area (which includes taxidermy) and a bunch of notes from elementary school kids that say "'Thank you very much for the pig eyeballs. I have a fun time dissecting them and learning the different parts of the eye!" 'There were slimy but i had a lot of fun!' "Thanks for the eyes!' -- This is so great and so weird and so amazing . . . I have never stopped to revisit those experiences of my childhood and high school education. Leftover eyes from slaughter that was going to happen anyway, or eyes taken from dead animals, I suppose I'm fine with . . . but I never thought of how barbaric or strange that whole thing is. Those dented and wobbly dulled pans, filled with brown wax like brownies, tons of pin holes, textures and covered with pinholes, the smell of formaldehyde, the thin brown paper towels . . . all of that was so vivid and truly helpful -- I remember sheep eyes and I do believe the tactility of the experience was way more educational than . . . hmm.
159 He says: "A pig from one of the many breeds traditionally used in America was, and is, able to enjoy the outdoors year-round if provided proper shelter and bedding. This is a good thing, not only for avoiding Exxon Valdez-scale ecological disasters. . . but because much of what pigs enjoy doing is best done with access to the outdoors--running, playing, sunning, grazing, and caking themselves in mud and water . . . Today's factory farm pig breeds, by contrast, have been so genetically altered that more often than not they must be raised in climate-controlled buildings, cut off from sun and seasons. We are breeding creatures incapable of surviving in any place other than the most artificial of settings." This makes me think of a Blade Runner-like situation (second Blade Runner reference!!) I could imagine in the future, where all animals are hermetically sealed, and "heritage breeds" are kept in zoos so people can see what a pig looked like . . . where our most common of animals are the endangered ones. Natural pigs, cows, and turkeys seem to be genuinely in danger of extinction to me, and I wonder how one could imagine such a horrific future in a novel or something.
Then there is the very important issue of sympathy for the farmer, which Foer seems to have. . . . he chooses to villanize the huge corporations (not a hard thing to do) and to show farmers as basically forced into a system that they don't really like, and factory workers who become desensitized through their exposure to violence. So he points out that farmers have been essentially forced to have more and more land, more naimsl, etc. and notes that "American farmers are 4 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population." 162
"Not surprisingly, when farmers select for 'motherability' when breeding, and a mother pig's sense of smell is not overpowered by the stench of her own liquified feces beneath her, and her hearing is not impaired by the clanging of metal cages, and she is given space to investigate where her piglets are and exercise her legs so that she can lie down slowly, she finds it easy enough to avoid crushing her young." 165. That says a lot right there. :)
He asks the question of when he should evangelize . . . when should he take a stand and ask others to take that stand with him? Is meat eating wrong for everyone? or Just me? this kind of thing.
I found this book to be a much more personal one, perhaps in part because he allows himself and his family to enter into the book so often, but also because it is really about making a personal, individual decision and then deciding what to do about it, and he allows the reader to consider things for themselves.
32 - His comment about "The choice-obsessed modern West is probably more accommodating to individuals who choose to eat differently than any other culture has ever been, but ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore --"I'm easy; I'll eat anything" -- can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that's good for society." I also think this seguays for me into the question of not being a pretentious a-hole about it, or maybe i should say that I feel like there is a huge amount of guilt that comes along with saying 'I get to CHOOSE what I eat, and I'm going to really be picky" in contrast to someone whose economic situation does NOT allow for choice.
A modest-proposal: Eating dogs
I really liked the Jonathan Swift Modest Proposal type logic going on in the first part, where he asks us to consider eating dogs and compares our treatment of them and other animals. I think that's a very useful strategy and one that I haven't seen employed quite exactly in the same way. either people switch humans and animals (like Peter Singer and others since by saying "well, imagine if we used human infants or the developmentally challenged, since their intellects or capacity for understanding might even be less than some animals" but not often in another animal so explicitly used in such a thorough way to shed light on our practice of eating meat. He ends with a smart little thing about looking away from the stars because our perception is better on the periphery.His logic -- he points out that, in terms of intelligence, dogs fall behind plenty of other animals, like pigs. Certainly, you wouldn't eat your OWN companion animal, but does that mean that you shouldn't eat any animal that falls into that category? (As Fudge says, the Brits eat rabbit pie AND keep them as pets). He points out that dog meat is no more unhealthy than any other type of meat, and that many think it is quite delicious. And, whats perhaps most convincing, he points out that thousands of stray animals are euthanized all the time and their meat is going to waste.Why not deal with the problem of having too many dog carcasses by putting them into food? He then points out our amazing contradictions between the kind of treatment made illegal towards dogs (beating them, electrocuting them, starving them, etc.) and our total lack of concern for the livelihood of livestock.
"If we let dogs be dogs, and breed without interference, we would create a sustainable, local meat supply with low energy inputs that would put even the most efficient grass-fed farming to shame." 28 and "Can't we get over our sentimentality? Dogs are plentiful, good for you, easy to cook, and tasty . . ." He reveals our emotional connection to dogs by arguing for consumption of at the very least the unwanted, euthanized ones that are going to waste.
Some thoughts that I have on the dissonance between science, "progress" and all the horrible things I just read:
One of the really difficult points in the book that comes up throughout is this issue of understanding where the farmer is coming from -- not necessarily understanding how it is that farm workers can do things like put out cigarrette butts in animals faces, etc. but why and how a farmer ends up being part of the factory farming system. In full disclosure, I grew up in a state, similar to this one, in which this kind farming is hugely important to the economy. I attended ISU, my dad works in agronomy, and I still currently am on the payroll for design work that I do that is often funded through projects by Pioneer, Monsanto, etc. Not to mention the masters degree I work for which was created in honor of the man who invented hybrid corn. the point is, most of the time, I have heard the kinds of high-density farming operations as describe din the book as considered to be PROGRESS and advancement, a huge improvement in efficiency and productivity over the past. Now a farmer can do so much more with so much less time . . . .but of course, this is the classic question of science itself -- is mere advancement , more control, more ability, a virtue enough in and of itself? Clearly the life of the animals, health of humans, and environmental toll all suggest that the "advancements" in terms of numbers and capital are not really improvements on many other fronts. It is deeply distressing that our economic system fosters this kind of irresponsible "growth" Later, on 236, he says "It's not that consumers won't buy the animals such farmers raise; it's that farmers can't produce them without reinventing a now destroyed rural infrastructure" (such as the traditional genetic stock, slaughter facilities, transportation, etc.)On a micro-level, divorced from context, its easy to see why people might think this kind of development is progress. its kind of amazing that we can and do purposefully breed mutant animals with the kinds of meat we want. and what amazing and unexpected questions and puzzles for science emerge -- what is stress? what chemicals signify it? what triggers it? From the position of someone who, by virtue of being in graduate school alone, is invested in the idea that learning things for the sake of knowing them is somehow good, I can understand why answering questions about these things, etc. throw in major funding sources and promise of profitability, and it become ever more obvious.
i recognize within myself the influence of our cultural biases and justifications -- the suspicion of those who advocate for animals as being too emotional or sentimental. I have grown up with and around science, and, as most of our culture really, tends to trust science and its "objectivity" with a sort of dogmatic or . . . belief system. It's a belief system, I guess. Even though I am aware of the historical origins and influences on this cultural viewpoint, and have had plenty of evidence to the contrary, I still, distressingly, find myself instinctively or initially dismissive of arguments that seem like they are going to be emotional appeals for animal rights. One thing I think Foer does particularly well, then, is to walk a fine line between making arguments without appeals to overly emotional or sentimental aspects, but to direct them, using the very logic of science, using statistics (creatively illustrated) at every possible opportunity,
I mean Peter singer does this very well - acknowledging the cultural current of dismissal by stating at the beginning of his book that he is not an "animal lover" by any means, doesn't even care for pets, but still sees, though logic and honesty, that the way animals are treated is immoral. Foer manages to make similarly hard-nosed arguments, even while admitting that he is a reluctant dog lover, and was a vegetarian at various times before researching this book. by doing this, he manages a certain amount of sympathy and reserves judgement in away t that is welcoming and helpful for the book (and is really contrasted by the more virulent position of the pETA activist's comments that he reproduces in the text.)
The rancher guy talks about how natural and ubiquitous meat-eating is, and how this is a "powerful indicator" of its morality. I too have had similar thoughts, though I think these arguments are easy to find counter-arguments for. The "naturalistic fallacy" is apparently a commonly noted kind of faulty logic studied in psychology . . . just because something happens in nature doesn't automatically make it good, or good for you, or good for anyone . . .
the marginal land idea is a good point -- I think that is probably true, especially for things like mountain goats or sheep, and that animals act as a "storage" of energy and grain (over the winter, etc.) is a fascinating idea I hadn't thought of before, though certainly a reductive one, aking to the animals as machines (219)
221 - I like how he casts the difference of opinion between animal welfare and animal rights not as much as a clash of ideas as just a clash of what they believe is reasonable, possible, etc. What's realistic. pragmatic.
There is an uncomfortable similarity to evangelism (to me) . . . this not only "making a decision and keeping it to yourself," but advocacy . . . 222 I like that the author admits his discomfort and insecurity about the answers to this question as well -- it seems hard enough to make the kind of decisions on a personal level, or even for one's family, but then to try and decide to what extent you will share this with others. . . I am definitely of the persuasion that worries about being an asshole. And i don't know, i feel a little uncomfortable imposing my own beliefs on other people, and I admit that in some way, I am going to decide with what I want to hear or believe, and discount opposing thoughts.
I think that I tend to agree with the concessions being granted--that in an ideal world, full respect would be granted, but since its not likely, if somethings can be made better, we should work for that. it's the foot in the door, the "here, taste this cake. You like it? Oh, it's vegan" before you ask people to change things that are so socially and culturally important.
I also really appreciate his ability to admit the cultural and social sacrifices that would be made by changing one's eating habits, or what we culturally might have to let go of. traditions are super important, so what kind of replacement can there be? Can we make the value of doing whats' right" or treating animals well so appealing, so meaningful, that its meaning can replace the deep meaning of centuries old traditions? even of short-term family traditions?
the way he rather seamlessly moves between poultry, hogs, and beef, and fish, without labeling each section that way, is really great, by the way
More on forgetting:
this notion of forgetting, of animals being the receptacle of our forgetting or something, is actually really interesting too. He quotes Michael Pollan on p. 228 as saying "Eating industrial meat takes an almost heroic act of not knowing, or, now, forgetting." I guess it is this willful forgetting, and whenever anyone brings that up, it sits very uncomfortably. Because we all know, and Foer even points out, that as soon as you start talking about meat production, animal welfare, you already know what you will hear. The details may be surprising (and I was indeed shocked and surprised many times throughout reading this book), everyone already knows that you DON"T WANT TO KNOW what's in your hot dog.The power of NOT doing. We could just not. I worry about the questions about getting married -- what kind of ceremony would please my family, would I really have to accept Anh as Jacob's best man? Who would be in the wedding? How do I keep myself from wanting to have a ring or buy an expensive dress, or suddenly start allowing all kinds of things? Or we could just not. and solve all of it. We could fight to fix factory farming and lobby and try our hardest to make meat-eating ethical, or we could just not eat it. Just don't do it at all. We could worry about getting pregnant or disease, or we could just not have sex. The were is immense power in just not doing it. :)
231 he mentions how Temple Grandin notes that people can become sadistic after killing too many animals -- which is interesting because it goes back to this very old argument that the reason to be good to animal is that it promotes goodness towards humans, etc.
Perhaps one of the most awful things I read in this book was a quote from a man who worked on the kill floor, who described how common it was for the slaughtered cows to be carrying calves, which are of course still alive and kicking inside their dead mothers. The worst was a three-year old cow that was walking up to the kill line "having her calf right there" . . . There is really nothing to say about this I guess.
"from the genetics up" 240 -- to reinvent the farming from the genetics up - this is interesting -- that we are not throwing out science all together to return to a pre-technology world that is unreal and historical but that our knowledge of genetics can till hold the key - science can still move us forward,
these animals that are destined to a pre-determined END -- originally I was thinking of animal research, but food production is so obvious as well -- it makes me want to make a hug cow of straw and call it "straw dog" :) well not :), more like :(
"if we are not given the option to live without violence. . . " i suddenly see my desire to touch them, to touch dogs perhaps, as some kind of deep-seated need to apologize. To show, though tactiiity and gentleness and kindness, as best as i can communicate through these things, an apology to all animals that I cannot touch. that it seems so important to me to pet them, because they are the only access point I have . . .
263 - He makes the point that our food choices are usually regarded like lifestyle choices akin to fashion or hairstyle, rather than this hugely moral act that it really is. He says that he has yet to find a truly credible defense for eating meat, and that many activists find it so frustrating that there is such a incredible disconnect between "clear thinking and peoples' food choices." I agree, and I think this goes back to the clear irrationality of "I don't want ot know what's in my hot dog. If I did, I'd have to stop eating it" because that means you already know! I totally understand this as I skipped that section of Peter Singer's book out of knowledge that it would probably make me change my life, and I wasn't ready for that. But it is sort of astonishing, isn't it. Willful ignorance. And this is that one aspect of the holocaust comparison that seems really useful in this discourse.
And in the end there is an interview with him and he says "18% of college students are vegetarian now. There are more vegetarians in college than there are Catholics, and there are more vegetarians than any major, except for business, and it's very close, by about 1 percent." Yup.
Small spaces: A few things that are diorama-like
I came across a couple of works that play with scale in a way that is totally unexpected and wonderful.
First, an artist by the name of Dan Lavitt, who does these really odd miniature room things that have some things at a smaller scale and some things at life size scale . . . and then puts people in the spaces . . .
And then this photo from the LaChapelle studio . . .
Sunday, January 23, 2011
On "Animal" by Erica Fudge
In the introduction, she talks about all the contradictions in our relationships with animals, saying they are both "loved and eaten" and this reminded me of Pinchy on the Simpsons and how the moment where Homer is eating Pinchy because he accidentally boiled him for dinner while trying to give him a hot bath on the stove is perhaps one of the greatest jokes and chyrsttalline representations of animal-human relationships I can think of.
"Pinchy would have wanted it this way!"
"Oh god, he's so delicious. I wish Pinchy were here to enjoy this!"
(Here's the full, poorly recorded segment, on youtube)
She begins her first chapter, "Visible and Invisible: Questions of Recognition", with the story of Ham, the chimpanzee who went up in a spacecraft to test any potential problems before the first humans were launched into space. Her telling at the beginning is delightful, noting how NASA folks described him as being a "loveable fellow" and in "good spirits" when he was recovered from the spacecraft, and that he lived 20 years after his flight and was honored with a gravestone at the International Space Hall of Fame. The cover of the book, actually, is his iconic image, huge smile, reaching for an apple.
She immediately illuminates the story with a counter-description of the events, showing how Ham wasn't even a real name, but an acronym, and before he was just a number. His pioneering flight was just a "final check to man-rate" the craft, and he doesn't really even get credit for going to space the way Alan Shepard did a few months later. She also points out that his "smile" could easily be us seeing what we want to see, since teeth-barring is common in chimps for many reasons, including fear, and that there were numerous problems with the flight including the fact that he experienced longer weightlessness than planned, landed in the ocean a ways off from his projected place, and had to wait "100 minutes" to be rescued, while water had entered his capsule. She notes how Ham was a counter to Laika, the Russian dog sent into the space "who died . . . in 1957 when her oxygen supply ran out" . . . and uses these examples to show how we often conveniently mis-interpret animals, or fail to recognize them at all.
In the process of investigating these issues of recognition, she discusses pets, and asks the question of whether they are really an animal at all. It's an interesting question, because she points out that we can easily attribute what we want pets to be thinking to them (the idea that your dog never judges you, unlike your spouse or friends) and that they are comforting because of this, but that we will never know if they are judging us, and we simply get to say whatever we want. (She describes it, not as a refusal to judge but a "breakdown in communication" -- we'll never know what they mean) So they aren't really an animal because we think that they decided not to judge us, that they choose not to, and therefore in some way they are an "ideal human" . . . better than the others around us. This was particularly searing to me as I can recognize my own deep desire to imagine the kindness or purity of dogs and their unconditional regard for us. I, too, desperately want them to love us, just as we want others to love us, and since dogs can't "tell us things we don't want to hear" they are this refuge. But just because we don't hear it, doesn't mean those criticisms aren't there. So what are we to make of this? I also think, in this way, we continue to mold and create dogs into beings of our desire and design, even beyond the very physical notion of breeding them a certain way. We not only have created them to be the animals they are, but we actively create them when we interact with them, to be the kinds of conscious beings that we want them to be. We make their inner world as well.
"About our failure to be god"? I wonder? This always makes me think about love itself -- if we could dismiss their presumed emotions for us as something either generated by our own imaginings, or created through breeding, that they were made to love us, then how is our own sense of love and companionship any different? Weren't we made to love each other, in the sense that we evolved to form lasting, stable bonds in order to best survive? It all seems so very sad to me.
She next discusses the situation, a notably British one I think, created by rabbits, because unlike many animals, which have clear roles within a culture as "edible slash inedible", if you will, rabbits are both food AND pet. She describes how, as a child, her mother re-named rabbit pie "chicken pie" so as not to disturb her daughter, who had rabbits as pets. "A dog is not for eating. . . " she says, but points out the strange paradox of feeding bits of pork to a dog at the tableside.
One little side note in here is her explanation of the origins of the fact that we call live cows "cattle" but their meat "beef" and so on . . . and apparently this came from the Norman invasion, when the people who tended animals spoke English (because they were Saxons) and the people who chiefly ate these animals were French, whose words were adopted into English. I thought that was kind of fascinating. I always assumed that was some kind of intentional trick to separate living animals from food, but it appears that it was a happenstance that simply "aids" in our distinction (36)
She goes on to talk about the example of veal cows -- byproducts of the dairy industry -- that were shipped from the UK to the "mainland" where raising veal wasn't illegal. There, the little calves are kept in crates for like 6 months and fed this iron and fiber-deficient diet, so that they are tender and pale. She describes the uproar of protests about these animals, which I think very much parallels the story of the military testing on beagles described in Singer's Animal Liberation, in contradiction to overall attitudes about meat. She then speculates as to why this curious self-contradiction exists, pointing out that "Fish and chickens, for example, do not have big eyes and long eyelashes, and this is perhaps one reason that the battery farming of eggs is often protested against only by those who have a wider influence in animal welfare." (40) This is going to sound dumb, but I really really really want to make a mounted fish with huge, beautiful taxidermy cow eyes and enormous lashes.
Later in the chapter, she describes a "new anthropocentrism" that has emerged in response to these kinds of protests -- an attitude that vehemently embraces a human-centered standpoint. The examples of this are really obvious, I think, (like PETA . . .people for the eating of tasting animals) and somehow seems to overlap, to me, with a similar reclaiming of manly ideas too . . . like "I like meat! Men like meat!" Tim-the-toolman-taylor style meat consumption . . . the in-your-face-giant-turkey legs of the state fair? I can see the appeal. I think I sort of eluded to it in my essay about taxidermy -- that there is something appealing about reverting to a time period in which it was not necessary or expected to be sensitive to animals or to think morally about your food, when meat eating was celebrated, when you could dismiss concern for animals as an overly sympathetic or sentimental mindset. Like the shark drawing. There is something manly, masculine, strong, empowered, powerful about taking charge and doing-with-what-you-want that has some real origin, I think, and that holds some attraction. Having said all of that, I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, of course, but I admit its appeal and think the term "new anthropocentrism" is a good tag for it. It also seems to align with the same reactionary conservative politics . . . if leftys are veggies, then conservatives love them some meat. Stereotype. So many ways this is reinforced, though, with regard to big business and factory farming and its relationship to conservative politics. Arg.
Anyway, that was a bit of a rant. Back to the book :)
She recounts Peter Singer's very logical argument for a reduction of meat consumption, which I could probably just read myself, but I haven't yet, so I'll say here . . . basically he says that since grains product 10 times as much protein per acre as meat, if Americans were to reduce their mean consumption by only 10%, the grain saved (from being used to feed animals) from all the affluent nations would be enough, "if properly distributed", to essentially end world hunger. I have heard this calculation repeated many times, so I don't think his figures are inaccurate, even though they are very optimistic. She brings this up to show how Singer demonstrates that a very logical argument based on ineffective use of resources is very possible to make without being susceptible to the criticism of "sentimental" attachment to animals or animal cruelty. I like this, partly because it seems less refutable, but also because it helps to free us from the very uncomfortable position, I think, of trying to sort this out on an emotional level. Though I don't necessarily think basing one's decision on emotional responses deserves as much criticism as dismissal as it gets, I do think it can be problematic to keep emotions in check and to understand them. This seems more manageable, and also somewhat more flexible in terms of how to live one's daily life as a less-meat-eating person rather than a strict vegetarian or vegan (at least for the time being in our current state of affairs).
56 - She brings up the question that I've wondered about before regarding fur and indigineous cultures that depend on fur trade (or here, I suppose we could insert whaling, or some other 'cruel' animal practices) and the tenuous position we have put ourselves in as people who feel both obligated to respect native cultures AND obligated to protect animals. She does not offer a solution, and I agree with her that it doesn't seem likely that we'll arrive at a very satisfying one either. But it does seem to be an important question.
70 - on the issue of children and animals, she quotes Freud, who said "Children show no trace of the arrogance which urges adult civilized men to draw hard-and-fast line between their own nature and that of all other animals." Freud seems to say that kids are more akin to animals, anyway, in terms of bodily functions, etc. Though I think this is a good point in that the need to categorize, or the basis for our current taxonomy, is not readily apparent, it must be learned, and so association of human wtih animal is not such an affront to a child, but becomes such to an adult.
76 "We might argue that the desire to comprehend and communicate with animals is infantile, but if we do not have these narratives of communication (and not all of those narratives are written down, of course) then we will lose contact with a large part of our world." She makes the case for anthropomorphism as possibly the only route to which we can have some kind of access to animals, and without the possibility of communicating with them, what is to make us think about how we treat them?
84 - She talks about several movies and books that represent classic children's stories about animals, and one of them, Old Yeller, I had nearly forgotten about. Watching that movie at an early age cemented my extreme desire to be around dogs and probably also firmly first introduced me to a sense of loss and death. Her interpretation of what Old Yeller is meant to teach us is, I would say, not very generous, and I definitely thought differently about its take-away lesson when I was a kid. But what she suggests is really interesting. So, the backdrop is of course that the 15 year old boy, Travis, is left in charge of the farm and his mom and little brother, Arliss, when their dad goes off to fight in the Civil War. The dog arrives, first as the companion of Arliss, but then becomes Travis' dog. "Travis, gains a workmate, and at the end of the film, Travis's shooting of the beloved dog is kind of a liminal moment between childhood and adulthood. Travis has passed the test set by his father, he has run the farm and protected the family, and his helper is no longer needed. . . . To emphasize Travis' journey into adulthood, at the very end of the film, we see that his pup, Young Yeller, comes to replace the lost companion. . . . This disturbing film . . . also recognizes that that relationship cannot last [between child and dog]. At the end of Old Yeller, Travis has learned that all dogs are interchangeable, that an animal may die, but animals live on." Later, she says its about keeping things in perspective: "There is a real (as opposed to fictional) relation to the animal [ comparing it to Lassie Come Home ], this film seems to say, and it is always as well to keep that real relation firmly in mind. The trained dog may be talented, just as the brave dog may be valuable, but dogs, like all animals, serve, and then they die." (Remember, Old Yeller gets rabies after fighting off a rabid wolf to protect the family, and this is why Travis must shoot him.)
Now, my interpretation of this, as a kid and even now, is that being a grown up means taking responsibility for the well-being of something else. That, even though it is hard and painful to have to kill something, a grown up knows then that is what is best for that thing. In other words, its about mercy killings, and knowing that the dog will suffer and eventually die anyway, the right and adult thing to do is to take that responsibility . . . even if it will hurt you more than them. Erica Fudge's interpretation is rather more calous, I think, but might really be accurate. At the least, it does seem to say that the attachment to animals is sentimental.
(side note: This is more or less exactly what I imagine James Herriot to be, perhaps with a little Jimmy Stewart in there for good measure)
Anyway, she goes on to have a refreshingly generous response to Babe (or The Sheep-Pig, as it was originally called in Dick King-Smith's novella). I kind of thought that Babe was great for a number of reasons, but it always seems to be given a critical eye, focusing mostly on that problematic visual comparison to the holocaust. Thankfully, Fudge doesn't even mention this. Instead, she gives a nod to the fact that the story tries to teach "inclusivity" (all animals talk to one another), manners ("Babe wins sheep over through his politeness), "the importance of merit (a pig can be a sheep dog if it can herd sheep; it should not be limited by its species), and, most tellingly, of acceptance. The apparently innate hatred of dogs for sheep, and sheep for dogs, is shown to be based upon a complete lack of understanding on the part of both species." She suggests a parallel between sheep-dogs and sheep and humans and other animals, a notion of "shepherding" or "stewardship" that really means dominance. She also makes mention of language: "At the end of the story, when farmer Hogget and Babe get full marks in the sheep-dog trials, the world is full of noise--from Mrs. Hogget watching it on television at home, from the sheep-pen, from the crowd. King-Smith writes, 'In the hubbub of noise an excitement, two figures stood silently, side by side.' The silence is broken by true words from the monosyllabic farmer, "That'll do." [Which, as an aside, actually made my cry when I read it, and threatens to make me cry now, and I don't know why.] "Saying nothing, but saying everything, the farmer and the pig are an image of a perfect relationship between human and animal; the words are few, mean little, but speak volumes." . . . "an adult who communicates with animals, not through anthropomorphism but through understanding." (87)
There is an interesting discussion, of course, of the role of eating meat in this story as well, and of the function of animals. She talks about the sub-plot of the duck, Ferdinand, who takes it as his responsibility to start crowing, like a rooster, so that he has a function. If he has a function, he reasons, he won't be eaten for dinner. ("Christmas means carnage!!") I also think this idea of becoming a living clock is really great in comparison with the "like clocks" issue. (90)
Also, just the mention of the word "animatronic" . . . somehow it slipped my notice before that the root word of being animated is animal . . . and as we discussed the definition of what exactly we think an animal is the other day, I wonder what roll motion or "animation" has in that definition. It seems . . . seminal? Is that the right word? And yet, other things move and are not even alive, and not all animals really have great control over their motion . . .
In her final chapter, about animals and intelligence, she investigates a lot of the standbys in animal research, including Clever Hans, Kanzi, Nim Chimpsky, sweet-potato washing in Japan, Alex, etc. She points to previous discussions which make the distinction between the "capacity to make sound" or even to communicate feelings or intetions and the capacity to actually have "articulate speech" . . . which I suppose somewhat comes down to the issue of syntax?
In terms of language research (128), she reminds us that it is indeed odd that our efforts only go one way -- that these animals seem so dumb for not being able to understand human language, but if we are so smart, why are none of us fluent in any animal languages at all? Why do we not try to learn their languages instead? This also reminds me of the idea, probably already written about or imagined, of conceiving of the history of primates in research or primates in science from the perspective of THEM being the explorers. That They come to a foreign place where the language is indiscernible, and good-naturedly try to participate as best as they can within the native culture, trying to set up the table for a meal, following the customs of sharing (as Savage-Rumbaugh was describing in Kanzi: Ape on the Brink . . . ) and how truly flexible they have been at acculturating themselves to a strange way of being. So much like early ethnographers or something. So there are all these pioneers, those who first broke the code of human gestural language, who first understood the way we use signs, etc. Its sort of like the way JM Coatzee, via Elizabeth Costello - walks us through the possible thoughts and logic of a chimp faced with the bananas on a string problem: "Why would they put them up so high? Do they not want me to have them? What have I done to make them mad at me and put my food so out of reach? Did I do something wrong?"
133 - In her discussion of culture, she brings up various definitions, and includes Imanishi's "proposal that culture should be defined 'not by technical achievements or value systems, but simply as a form of behavioral transmission that doesn't rest on genetics." I do agree with this, and really like that definition a lot.
138 - Hey, look, a quote of Noam Chomsky! "If you want to find out about an organism, you study what it's good at. If you want to study humans, you study language. If you want to study pigeons, you study their homing instinct." Fudge talks about the issue of us designing our experiments to test only the kinds of intelligences that we as humans posses, and also about the problematic idea that to call something an "instinct" immediately removes any possibility of us considering it as an intelligence (even though we could never get home without a compass or a map, but a pigeon can, easily)
152 - In her discussion on animals in art, she suggests that depicting animals is within this idea of gaining control or dominion over them (which I think I've kind of heard before) and says the intriguing statement, "Framing, in this sense, equates to caging." Not something I'd thought about before.
155 - Discussion of monkey paintings (really, ape paintings). She talks about how Thierry Lenain, someone who studied primate paintings, noted a few important differences between them. "Lenain writes, 'it is not aimed at created a tangible object that will have continuing visible presence after the act of producing is over. Monkeys are totally indifferent to their paintings the moment they're finished.' Later in his study, Lenain argues that 'monkey art is primarily an aspect of play." This is interesting to think about with regards to our inability to approach painting in the same way -- as children, we are capable of that kind of play, but we very quickly develop concern for the "aesthetic qualities" of the finished object. Apparently, an artist named Ranier, investiaged this idea by attempting to re-create paintings done by Chimps to mimic them. (156)
In her conclusion, which she flatly begins with "We should think about animals as animals" which seems awfully concise . . . she makes a really well-said point on 160: "We must have in our minds the fact that our perception is based on our limitations, and the fact that their lives exceed our ability to think about them."
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Concerning Bladerunner and Electric Sheep
Alright, after hearing Bladerunner mentioned in scholarly ways for quite some time now, I figured I should revisit the 1982 Harrison Ford film that my brother was obsessed with and see why on earth a dark, rainy, futuristic movie featuring "replicants" was so darn important.
Let me acknowledge that all of this going to be a thing everyone else knew and I somehow missed, but bear with me anyway.
First, some on the movie.
The beginning is like a really bad detective story in which the narrator tells you things that are already going on. A lot of exlpication. "I was a bladerunner. blah blah" with this sultry music. "I'm not on the force anymore. You know I quit." etc. And sometimes the take-away messages are a little over-the-top, too, like "Too bad she won't live. But then, who does?" (repeated by Edward James Olmos in an echoing voice-over at the end. Or "I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in his last moments, he loved life more than ever, not just his own, but every life." After the android dies.
Something I'm not sure how to make sense of is the love scene between Deckard and Rachel, because he kisses her, she tries to leave, he grabs her violently, shakes her and says, "tell me to kiss you" and, as she is crying, she is obedient. So this idea of her being a slave is really overbearing and I wonder if she is supposed to seem like she has free will at all. She certainly has a vacant expression and much less tenacity than the other androids, especially, in the end, the German-looking one who shows real deep emotion or empathy or something. Rachel cries, but she is still pretty vacant. Anyway, when he returns to her sleeping on his bed/foldout couch whatever, he says "you love me." She dutifully replies "I love you." "You trust me." "I trust you." There is definitely the feeling that she is just saying that. How happy can she be? Apparently, this is a major difference with the book (Deckard is married in the book and does sleep with Rachel, but I don't think they end up together in any way.) In this movie, he takes her with him in a car and they drive to some magical sunshine hilly place, probably in california since I think they might be in San Fran or something for the tokyo/gotham-city-like rest of the movie. Anyway, is he just telling her what to think? Is that any different than the way they are programmed otherwise? Does "love" mean anything to an android? And yes, I'm sure someone has written a dissertation on this already but I haven't thought about it before. :)
The android howls, btw, when he is overcome with emotion at the loss of Priss (Daryl Hannah), and continues to howl throughout the rest of the film until he dies and, somewhat ridiculously, releases a white dove (or pigeon?) he's grabbed at some point on the roof. Anyway, he is also inexplicably wearing nothing but tight boxer-briefs or mini shorts for the remainder of the film, and he says a lovely thing about how all the things that happened to him in his life will disappear like tears in the rain. (It is perpetually raining). So are we to gather that being emotional is to be like an animal? It's also interesting the parallels made between Deckard and the android in the ending scenes, because the android breaks 2 of Deckard's fingers as payback for the death of the two female androids, and then lets him go, and shortly, the android jams a huge nail into his seizing hand, presumably to stop the death (?) that is beginning to set in? (he says "not yet!" and inflicts pain on himself perhaps to stay alive). Or perhaps just to feel? At any rate, both of them clutch and sieze their hands, and the hands seem to be awfully important, since the android earlier killed Tyrell, the inventor, by crushing his head with his bare hands, and then tightly grabs Deckard's hand in order to pull him up from the edge of the roof and save him. Anyway, they are both alternatively moaning or howling as well, Deckard when he tries to re-set his fingers, and the android, in his crazed running around the building, wolflike.
Also, the music (which was generally disturbing since it felt like a seedy saxophone solo in a bad dective movie most of the time, probably intentional, or just a product of the decade) was by Vangelis . . . and Vangelis, of course, did the music of Cosmos . . . and so Vangelis is now the soundtrack to science fiction or something. :)
Ok, so here's the big reveal to me. I had no idea that this movie was based (somewhat loosely) on the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (1968 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick) (AHHH! That's why this movie is so maniacally important to philosphers, etc.) And after reading more in detail about the synopsis of the book, I see why this has been so significant in terms of the identity and characteristics of humanity, as well as the identity and characteristics of animals, and why animal scholars throw this one out a lot. I also wager it has something to do with that wonderful title.
Here are a few important snippets from the wikipedia page:
Finally, here is a totally lovely spinoff-- "Electric Sheep is a distributed computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver. . . . The name "Electric Sheep" is taken from the title of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The title mirrors the nature of the project: computers (androids) who have started running the screensaver begin rendering (dreaming) the fractal movies (sheep)." (From wikipedia)
I love all of this. There are myriad cultural uses of the phrase "electric sheep" but kind of obscure and hidden in band lyrics. I feel like it calls out for more.
Let me acknowledge that all of this going to be a thing everyone else knew and I somehow missed, but bear with me anyway.
First, some on the movie.
The beginning is like a really bad detective story in which the narrator tells you things that are already going on. A lot of exlpication. "I was a bladerunner. blah blah" with this sultry music. "I'm not on the force anymore. You know I quit." etc. And sometimes the take-away messages are a little over-the-top, too, like "Too bad she won't live. But then, who does?" (repeated by Edward James Olmos in an echoing voice-over at the end. Or "I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in his last moments, he loved life more than ever, not just his own, but every life." After the android dies.
(Dead replicant, "retired" after she blasts through a whole bunch of plate glass windows, wearing nothing but a bra ensemble and a clear plastic coat, so you can see her wounds even through the coat) Also, what lovely colors, eh?
Something I'm not sure how to make sense of is the love scene between Deckard and Rachel, because he kisses her, she tries to leave, he grabs her violently, shakes her and says, "tell me to kiss you" and, as she is crying, she is obedient. So this idea of her being a slave is really overbearing and I wonder if she is supposed to seem like she has free will at all. She certainly has a vacant expression and much less tenacity than the other androids, especially, in the end, the German-looking one who shows real deep emotion or empathy or something. Rachel cries, but she is still pretty vacant. Anyway, when he returns to her sleeping on his bed/foldout couch whatever, he says "you love me." She dutifully replies "I love you." "You trust me." "I trust you." There is definitely the feeling that she is just saying that. How happy can she be? Apparently, this is a major difference with the book (Deckard is married in the book and does sleep with Rachel, but I don't think they end up together in any way.) In this movie, he takes her with him in a car and they drive to some magical sunshine hilly place, probably in california since I think they might be in San Fran or something for the tokyo/gotham-city-like rest of the movie. Anyway, is he just telling her what to think? Is that any different than the way they are programmed otherwise? Does "love" mean anything to an android? And yes, I'm sure someone has written a dissertation on this already but I haven't thought about it before. :)
(Sad replicant, returning to the side of his newly shot girlfriend)
The android howls, btw, when he is overcome with emotion at the loss of Priss (Daryl Hannah), and continues to howl throughout the rest of the film until he dies and, somewhat ridiculously, releases a white dove (or pigeon?) he's grabbed at some point on the roof. Anyway, he is also inexplicably wearing nothing but tight boxer-briefs or mini shorts for the remainder of the film, and he says a lovely thing about how all the things that happened to him in his life will disappear like tears in the rain. (It is perpetually raining). So are we to gather that being emotional is to be like an animal? It's also interesting the parallels made between Deckard and the android in the ending scenes, because the android breaks 2 of Deckard's fingers as payback for the death of the two female androids, and then lets him go, and shortly, the android jams a huge nail into his seizing hand, presumably to stop the death (?) that is beginning to set in? (he says "not yet!" and inflicts pain on himself perhaps to stay alive). Or perhaps just to feel? At any rate, both of them clutch and sieze their hands, and the hands seem to be awfully important, since the android earlier killed Tyrell, the inventor, by crushing his head with his bare hands, and then tightly grabs Deckard's hand in order to pull him up from the edge of the roof and save him. Anyway, they are both alternatively moaning or howling as well, Deckard when he tries to re-set his fingers, and the android, in his crazed running around the building, wolflike.
Also, the music (which was generally disturbing since it felt like a seedy saxophone solo in a bad dective movie most of the time, probably intentional, or just a product of the decade) was by Vangelis . . . and Vangelis, of course, did the music of Cosmos . . . and so Vangelis is now the soundtrack to science fiction or something. :)
Ok, so here's the big reveal to me. I had no idea that this movie was based (somewhat loosely) on the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" (1968 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick) (AHHH! That's why this movie is so maniacally important to philosphers, etc.) And after reading more in detail about the synopsis of the book, I see why this has been so significant in terms of the identity and characteristics of humanity, as well as the identity and characteristics of animals, and why animal scholars throw this one out a lot. I also wager it has something to do with that wonderful title.
Here are a few important snippets from the wikipedia page:
"The novel is set in a post-apocalyptic near future, where the Earth and its populations have been damaged greatly by Nuclear War during World War Terminus. Most types of animals are endangered or extinct due to extreme radiation poisoning from the war. To own an animal is a sign of status, but what is emphasized more is the empathic emotions humans experience towards an animal." and "The U.N. encourages emigration to off-world colonies, in hope of preserving the human race from the terminal effects of the fallout. One emigration incentive is giving each emigrant an "andy" — a servant android.
The remaining populace live in cluttered, decaying cities wherein radiation poisoning sickens them and damages their genes. Animals are rare and people are expected to keep them and help preserve them. But many people turn towards the much cheaper synthetic, or electric, animals to keep up the pretense. Rick Deckard owned a sheep, but it died of tetanus, and he replaced it with a synthetic sheep." . . . "As android technology improved, bounty hunters had to apply an empathy test — the Voigt-Kampff — to distinguish humans from androids, by measuring empathetic responses, or lack thereof, from questions designed to evoke an emotional response, often including animal subjects and themes." "Deckard's story is paralleled by that of J.R. Isidore, a driver for an animal repair shop who cannot qualify to leave Earth and so lives alone, with little outside contact other than his Empathy Box. Pris Stratton moves into the building and the lonely Isidore attempts to befriend her. Pris proves to be a runaway android, identical in appearance to Rachael Rosen.
Deckard eventually retires all of the illegal androids, earning him a citation for the record number of kills in one day. He returns home to discover that Rachael Rosen killed his (real) pet goat by pushing it off the roof. He understands that Rachael was taking revenge, and is thankful that the loss is financial; the android could instead have killed his wife."
Finally, here is a totally lovely spinoff-- "Electric Sheep is a distributed computing project for animating and evolving fractal flames, which are in turn distributed to the networked computers, which display them as a screensaver. . . . The name "Electric Sheep" is taken from the title of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The title mirrors the nature of the project: computers (androids) who have started running the screensaver begin rendering (dreaming) the fractal movies (sheep)." (From wikipedia)
I love all of this. There are myriad cultural uses of the phrase "electric sheep" but kind of obscure and hidden in band lyrics. I feel like it calls out for more.
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