“Three primary forces exist on this planet – nature, animals, and human kind. However, it is the human earthling who tends to dominate the earth, oftentimes treating other fellow earthlings and living beings as mere objects.”
Some would argue that Earthlings is the most shocking, thought-provoking and attitude-changing production of the past few years, showing extreme deeds of violence and disrespect towards animals. It is considered one of the most violent films of all time – and it is real.
Narrated by the Academy Award nominee American actor Joaquín Phoenix, and produced by Shaun Monson, Earthlings breaks the solid ground of belief most of us live in, by believing that animals die from a quick, peaceful death. However, there is a darker side to the masked truth that the meat industry makes us believe in, and that is of an agonizing, ruthless, slow death. But why?
Some methods of breeding and killing livestock are less profitable than others. Thus, gruesome methods used in slaughterhouses can be used on behalf of the so-called profit, this is where the concept speciesism comes in. By analogy with sexism and racism, speciesism is a prejudice or attitude that favours the interests of one’s own species members over the members of another.
Vegans at the Melbourne “Walk against Warming,” December 12, 2009, during the Copenhagen Summit on climate change. Image credit: Takver
The ‘vegan-maker’, so the documentary has been aptly nicknamed, has in fact turned many of its viewers into vegans, including the NHL player Georges Laraque, the #17 for the Montreal Canadiens. After watching the film, Laraque wanted to “ensure everyone could see the movie,” so he served as narrator for the French dubbed version.
Earthlings is the first part of a trilogy and took six years to be made, due to the difficulty in getting footage from the industry and resorting to the use of hidden cameras. Shaun Monson stresses that these are not isolated cases and show the industry standard practices. It happens more frequently than one can hardly imagine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce4DJh-L7Ys
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A very good article.
[…] sold for consumption. The film showcases the poor treatment of animals (much like the documentary Earthlings), including chickens genetically engineered to live in tight quarters and cows that are fed […]