Earthlings - Academic Film Review

     

Animal Rights and Emotionalism

     Animal Rights? Cruelty of meat-eating? Personally, I’m not a strong advocate of animal protection.  Whenever I hear about people spending hundreds of dollars on buying pet cloths and nail polishing their cats, I feel that there is something wrong going on right now. I get it – animals are in fact great companions of humans and they too are emotional beings. But shouldn’t we reconsider our treatment of animals once again? Should people waste thousands of dollars on pets while dozens of children in sub-Saharan Africa are starving to death every hour? I guess people these days are too fond of their fellow creatures that they sometimes even forget who they are, Homo Sapiens.

     The same phenomenon occurs as a response to the film Earthlings. A true sensation, this renowned documentary film, directed by Shaun Monson and narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, provides us with tremendous shock and revelation. The film is a simple yet emphatic work that drives people to confront the inconvenient truth of how humans treat animals in the industries regarding food, pets, clothing, entertainment and scientific research. However, people have reacted in the wrong way, solely obsessed with emotional responses to the movie. And at the same time, there also many factors within the film that misleads the audience to not engage in serious thinking. For sure, Earthlings brought much sensation, once having become one of the most widely discussed film, but there are also much to critique about its accuracy and limitations in conveying information.

     Earthlings, in general, lacks in three important essential characteristics of a good documentary film - objectivity, thoroughness and tangibility. Talking about objectivity, the film from the very beginning seems to despise the virtue of maintaining a broad, fair perspective. In its introduction, “humans,” “animals,” and finally “nature” are introduced as three key elements of our planet Earth. At first glance the movie seems to talk about the interaction between these three and how we should bolster harmony. However, the subsequent contents are unfortunately represents anything but objectivity. Only picturing the cruelness of humanity with excerpts of videos clips seemingly from hidden cameras, the director, I guess, tries to imprint a negative image of human beings. Of course, it is true that this film is meant to be an expose, but an endless continuation of violent images and brutal scenes doesn’t persuade but only sickens the audience. It seems that weighing both sides and analyzing each one’s problems and significance would have made the over message much more credible. After watching the terrifying videos clips, I felt that this film wasn’t much more than a hodgepodge of slaughterhouse CCTV videos.

     Such problems in objectivity directly lead to Earthling’s dearth of thoroughness. As mentioned above, picturing a comprehensive overview of the issue ensures the viewers that the speaker is not a dogged, arrogant doctrinaire who only knows about his own arguments. Interaction with the opposing arguments is what that truly enhances the quality of discussion. However, this film completely condones possible objections but misleads the audience with insufficient information. The film’s discussion of pets and entertainment neglects the fact that there are many laws and restrictions both domestic and international to protect the basic rights of humans. The movie depicts the perpetrators as representatives of all humans – despite that many of us are thoroughly concerned to legitimize bills for the sake of animals. Moreover, there are numerous restrictions within the scientific community that ensure safe, ethical animal experimentation. In the U.S., for instance, there is the Animal Welfare Act of 1966 (AWA), and in many countries of Europe there are more recent examples in the status quo. Thus the content of Earthlings is too one-sided and insufficient that it doesn’t “inform” but merely “shocks.”

 Lastly, Earthlings doesn’t give any answer to the questions it inquires. One of the major remarks by other critics on this film, the lack of tangible course of action or resolution hinders this work from reaching fruition. The basic reaction to this film goes as following: instant shock and emotional urge to protect the animals; reconsideration of the issue, finding ways to solve the problems in the status quo; realization that the film doesn’t give any answer; dismay, and return to daily life. Since the film discusses a broad range of topics – from pets to scientific research – it seems almost impossible to come up with a solid solution. And without enlightening suggestions to foster activism, the message, the omen Earthlings presents, remains frail and ineffective.

     Therefore, Monson’s crusade for animal rights and protection accomplished its most basic job – to alarm the general public and bring the veiled cruelty of animal treatment in many industries up to the surface. However, as the aforementioned reasons suggest, the documentary needs more information and more analysis. It should make more engagement with possible opposition – “Why is it so important to stop domestication of farm animals?,” “Isn’t it better to test with animals than with humans when developing new medication?” Such inquiries remain unanswered, and I believe many of those who watched the film would have felt the same. To become great - something more than good- Earthlings should be able to persuade even people like me who is skeptical, unwilling to blindly succumb to emotionalism.