I attended a talk this semester called “Coats and Collars: Fashions for Animals in the Early Modern Period” that was held at Lafayette College. The talk was given by Dr. John Black Friedman who works at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at The Ohio State University.
Dr. Friedman began to discuss the prominence of animal accessories at modern pet shops such as rhinestone collars and doggie sweaters. He stated that the reason we dress up our dogs in such a way is to assert their identity. We like to individualize our dogs. I thought this was interesting because the dog himself does not feel a need to assert his own identity. Instead, it is the owner who is projecting his or her own needs to be recognized as an individual onto the dog.
It is not just today that we feel a need to dress up our pets in order to show their identity, which is a projected version of our own identity. For example, dogs in the medieval period often wore the family coat of arms shown on their collar. We have evidence of this from various tapestries made during this era that showcased royal dogs. Some dogs also wore heavy gold collars to assert their owner’s wealth.
This class helped me realize that using dogs in order to assert your own wealth and/or identity means that you are viewing your pet instrumentally and not intrinsically.
References:
Friedman, John Black. “Coats and Collars: Fashions for Animals in the Early Modern Period.” Lafayette College. Skillman Library. 10 November 2014. Guest Lecture.
Today I stumbled upon one of Science Daily’s latest articles which discusses new research that has been recently published about how goats show positive emotions. Apparently, when a goat is happy it points its ears forward, keeps its tail up, and produces more stable calls.
So why does this matter?
We often talk about what stresses and animal out but the ultimate goal of animal welfare is not just to eliminate stressors, but to actually keep animals happy. By knowing what signs to look for in a happy animal, we can promote agricultural behaviors that promote positive emotions within an animal. Also, learning more about animals’ emotions helps us to appreciate them as sentient beings.
This video is a trailer for Disney’s movie Earth. The video begins by acknowledging the similarities between us and animals, because we both inhabit the same planet. This beginning made me feel like this video was trying to demonstrate the spiritual oneness that Alice Walker mentions in “Am I Blue?” when she states “People…daily forget, all that animals try to tell us. ‘Everything you do to us will happen to you; we are your teachers, as you are ours. We are one lesson’ ” (186).
This trailer shows various wild animals including polar bears, whales, and penguins in their natural habitats. Although there are also adult animals shown, many of the animals shown are babies. Humans are drawn to baby animals because they are cute and Disney is capitalizing on that natural appreciation for young animals. No humans are depicted in the video, although there is a human narrator. The human narrator has an objective voice and seems to be removed from the animals. There is very little text in this video and the text that is present states “Join three families on an amazing journey” which implies an interaction between the audience member and the animals. This contradicts the fact that the narrator seems to be trying to capture the behaviors of animals without interacting with them. This reflects the oxymoronic nature of the phrase the “activity of spectatorship” (Malamud 220). By participating in spectatorship, the viewer wants to develop a relationship with the animals without disturbing them by interacting with them. However, trying to create this relationship is futile because “one cannot enter into any relationship with [an animal] which is mutual, reciprocal, or symmetrical, insofar and so long as one treats it voyeuristically” (Malamud 230). No real interaction exists between the audience of the movie and these wild animals. Rarely, if ever, are the animals shown looking into the camera which is an example of the way that “animals deflate the human gaze we conceive as so puissant, by cutting us in return – refusing to dignify or acknowledge our self-important ritual of looking” (Malamud 222).
The music in this trailer consists of two songs. The first song is fast-paced and sounds like the type of music that you would expect to find in an action movie whereas the second song is slower, more melodious, and sounds heartwarming. These two songs appeal to the audience in two different ways. The first song serves the purpose of generating excitement. In this trailer, the animals are always shown doing something that would be exciting to watch. Sharks jump out of the water to feed, elephants are running in herds, and some young animals are taking their first steps. In the natural world, the animals may be more commonly found sleeping, relaxing, or otherwise remaining in one place. However, if animals were documented as they actually were instead of only including the most exciting parts of their lives then profits for the movie would decrease because no one would have the patience to watch an inactive animal. Most would get bored watching an animal behave the way it normally would. Due to the fact that humans want instant gratification and thus want to see the animals immediately do something compelling, the process of selectively choosing the most thrilling nature footage is what makes nature documentaries so successful. The fast-paced music accentuates the action-packed footage in order to create a distortion of reality. This editing process perpetuates “an imperial relation toward the realm of nature, and its subordination to our whims” (Malamud 228). The heartwarming song encourages viewers to empathize with the animals and to reflect on the spiritual oneness mentioned in the beginning of the trailer.
Although nature documentaries like Disney’s Earth distort reality due to the “neat editing, the musical background, the contextualizing ‘nature’ voice with its cultural biases, and the artificial concentration of action” (Malamud 234), they offer a “greater potential for people to understand how animals really exist” than most other alternatives (Malamud 234). By recognizing the oneness between humans and animals and trying to interfere in the animals’ environments and lives as little as possible, Earth advocates animal welfare and the appreciation of the intrinsic value of animals. I agree with Malamud in his essay “Zoo Spectatorship” when he states that “the benefits [of nature documentaries] outweigh the drawbacks” (234).
References:
Kalof, Linda, and Amy J. Fitzgerald. “Zoo Spectatorship.” The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings. Oxford: Berg, 2007. 219-36. Print.
Nudoggy. “Earth-Official Movie Trailer [HD].” Online Video Clip. YouTube. YouTube, 31 Mar. 2009. Web. 3 Nov. 2014.
Walker, Alice. “Am I Blue?” Other Nations: Animals in Modern Literature. By Tom Regan and Andrew Linzey. Waco, TX: Baylor UP, 2010. 182-87. Print.
I attended a Marvelstone lecture by Garrett Fagan called “Watching the Fighters: Exploring the Roman Fascination with Gladiatorial Combat.” Some of the things that he mentioned related to this class such as the wild beast spectacles that Romans performed and enjoyed. I asked Dr. Fagan about how the ancient Romans treated the animals that they used for wild beast spectacles and said that they were mistreated. Many carnivores were starved because hungry animals are more likely to attack. Since it is not in most animals’ nature to attack human beings, they were often whipped to coax them into attacking.
In his talk, Dr. Fagan mentioned that the wild beast spectacles that occurred in Rome are not that different from modern-day bull-fighting in Spanish-American countries and the dog fights that occur in some countries today. He also mentioned that psychologically, people must consider something righteous and justified in order to enjoy it. This is why it is important to analyze and gain awareness about the things that we find pleasure in. I think this is especially applicable to eating animals. For example, in “Am I Blue?” by Alice Walker, she puts down her chicken after gaining awareness and changing her mind about the righteousness of eating meat. The reason Roman gladiators found killing these wild beasts justified because they thought of them as predators who could potentially hurt humans. They also killed some herbivores and they justified this by claiming that these animals were a threat to Roman farmers’ crops.
Dr. Fagan also stated that violence only occurs when confrontational tension/fear (CTF) is overcome. Unfortunately, people often overcome CTF by victimizing the weak. The reason that we victimize animals may be due to the fact that they cannot speak up for themselves and thus it is easy to take advantage of them.
Another interesting fact that I discovered while researching Roman gladiators is that despite how violent they were to other living beings, they were actually recently discovered to be vegetarians!
Overall, Dr. Fagan’s talk has helped me continue to think about why our society is collectively violent against animals.
References:
Fagan, Garrett. “Watching the Fighters: Exploring the Roman Fascination with Gladiatorial Combat.” Lafayette College. Kirby Hall of Civil Rights, Easton, PA. 24 Oct. 2014. Guest Lecture.
Howard, Jacqueline. “Ancient Bones Show Roman Gladiators Ate Vegetarian Diet, Drank A Weird Tonic.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 22 Oct. 2014. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.
Walker, Alice. “Am I Blue?” Other Nations: Animals in Modern Literature. By Tom Regan and Andrew Linzey. Waco, TX: Baylor UP, 2010. 182-87. Print.
My family subscribes to Time magazine and I noticed that the most recent Time article’s front page story “How to Eat Now” is relevant to what we have discussed in class. Although this article does not discuss the healthfulness of eating animals versus eating vegetarian food, it mentions that home-cooked meals are much more healthy than food that is pre-cooked, processed, or ordered at restaurants. The article notes that the more connected we are to the origins of the food we eat, the better it is for our health. I think Foer would agree with this article, especially when it stated that:
“We have allowed others to feed us, rather than taking charge of feeding ourselves. For the sake of our health, our well-being, our palates and the environment, that has to change” (52).
By feeding ourselves, we are becoming more connected with the food we eat and in control of what we put into our bodies. The more aware we are of what we eat, the healthier we will be.
References:
Bittman, Mark. “How to Eat Now.” Time 20 Oct. 2014: 48-54. Print.
Today I attended a talk that was related to the bird exhibition currently being held at Williams Art Center that commemorates the hundredth anniversary of the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon. This talk was given by two Lafayette Biology professors, Dr. Butler and Dr. Rothenberger. In this post, I would like to tell those of you who missed the talk about what I learned from it and how it connects to what we are learning in class.
I would like to pose a question to you: How many times have you walked into a sliding door? The answer is probably several times, even though you are a human being with a knowledge of doors and windows. One can only imagine how many times birds, who lack this knowledge, crash into sliding doors and windows. Since birds are flying so quickly, many of their crashes are fatal. Windows are the primary cause of bird mortality. Between 100 million and 1 billion birds die from collisions with windows each year. However, the Lafayette Department of Biology is currently working with the Department of Civil Engineering and EREN (Educational Research and Educational Network) on developing ways to lower the number of bird mortalities at Lafayette. You can help them with this by emailing Dr. Mike Butler with a picture/location each time you find a dead bird on campus.
The interesting thing to take away from this is that windows, although a human invention, are not a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. This talk was different from the lecture previously given by Michael Pestel because it contrasted Berger’s idea that our disconnection from animals and consequent reduction of them is a product of the Industrial Revolution. According to Dr. Rothenberger, overexploitation of animals by humans occurred well before the Industrial Revolution. For example, the Steller’s Sea Cow was hunted to extinction in 1768, a mere twenty-seven years after the discovery of the species. Another example are the Moa birds which were hunted to extinction in 1400.
Although clearly humans have diminished the welfare of animals and caused mass extinctions, none of the books that we have read in class seem to consider the possibility of reversing our past mistakes. Dr. Rothenberger discussed the possibility of resurrection of extinct species via three methods: backbreeding, cloning, and synthesis. Backbreeding is a form of artificial selction to achieve an animal breed that resembles an extinct species, cloning is creating a viable embryo from a body cell and an egg cell, and synthesis involves using fragments of the DNA of certain extrinct species to synthesize the genes for certain traits and then splice those genes with the genes of a related species. However, the ethics of these processes are highly controversial and some experts question whether it will be practical. For me, the idea of resurrection just raises further unanswerable questions such as: How will we reintroduce these species to the environment? How will they interact with present species? Who will take care of them to prevent their re-extinction? Since these questions do not seem to have practical answers, my conclusion from this talk is that it will be very inefficient to try to resurrect an extinct species and resurrection may end up causing more problems than it solves.
For those of you interested in learning more about this topic, there will be another talk called the “Ethics of De-extinction” at 7 PM on 10/27 in Oechle 224! I am going and I hope to see you there.
This is a picture showing how decals that prevent bird-window collisions work.
References:
Berger, John. “Why Look at Animals?” About Looking. New York: Pantheon, 1980. 3-28. Print.
“Bird Window Collisions – Tips on How To Prevent Wild Birds From Crashing Into Your Windows.” Birdwatching-Bliss.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.
Butler, Mike and Megan Rothenberger. “The Loss and Resurrection of Species.” Lafayette College. Williams Arts Center, Easton, PA. 16 Oct. 2014. Lecture.
This is a picture of an infected pig. I certainly would not feel comfortable eating that! Yet that is what someone may unknowingly eat since humans are so separated from the origins of their meat.
This article was really scary because it states that Ebola can be transmitted from pigs to primates. We have discussed in class how similar pigs are to human beings in terms of intelligence but they also are very similar to humans in terms of anatomy. This is why some Biology and Anatomy classes use fetal pig dissections as part of their curriculum. Knowledge of this makes me worried that it is possible to contract many illnesses from the pork that we eat. According to this article, “‘Pigs are remarkably versatile animals when it comes to acquiring and transmitting infections,’ said Tara Smith from the University of Iowa, who studies emerging infectious diseases and was not involved in this study. ‘They have been implicated in the spread of a variety of nasty zoonotic viruses: influenzas, Nipah virus, possibly Hendra virus, and now at least two types of Ebola.'”
A lot of the antibiotic and drug treatments that we force our meat to undergo may reduce the healthiness of humans. I have been thinking about this a lot since Foer warned that we are overdue for another pandemic.
References:
“Ebola from Pigs to Monkeys.” The Scientist. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Eating Animals. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print.
This article states that the FDA tried to stop the excessive use of antibiotics on farm animals but couldn’t because of opposition from pharmaceutical and agricultural industries!
This sour cream container has a picture of a cow grazing on it. The cow is not being anthropomorphized in any way. The cow appears to be healthy and eating fresh grass. This picture makes it seem like the cow used to make the sour cream was given plenty of grass to eat and exercise. The terms “Great Value” and “fat free” also appear on the container.
I had previously not thought about or even noticed this image on my sour cream before. However, after reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer I have begun to see its significance. This image is being used to manipulate the consumer in order to increase market sales. The field of grass in this image extends around the whole container in order for the consumer to imagine that a free-range cow is being used to create this product. According to Foer, “the free-range label is bullshit” (61). The reason that this image would increase market sales is because, as Foer notes, most humans like to imagine that they are eating a “happy” cow due to the fact that most consumers care are ethical and have respect for the animals that they consume. Unfortunately, due to images like the one shown above, they are misinformed. The most access to the outdoors and large green fields that the majority of the cows used to make sour cream get is through a window. Although we would like to think that the cow that aided in the production of the sour cream that ended up on our plates was given access to plenty of food and light, as the cow that is depicted in the picture above is, the truth is that “factory farms commonly manipulate food and light to increase productivity, often at the expense of the animals’ welfare” (Foer 59). The “Great Value” being indicated on this sour cream container points to the low cost of sour cream. However, this low cost is due to increased productivity caused by industrialized farming which Foer would argue is not a great value at all. The term “fat free” is on the container for marketing purposes because many Americans are concerned with becoming overweight. There is a higher obesity rate in America now than ever before due to increased consumption of animal products, which tend to be full of fat. The increase in demand for fat-free foods, like the one shown in the image above, has paralleled the obesity rate. Although this container says that the sour cream is fat free, that does not mean the sour cream suddenly becomes healthy. Instead, the fat often replaced by other substances, such as artificial trans-fats, in order to make the food taste good. These synthetic trans-fats are often more unhealthy than the natural fats that the animal product possesses. Even though this kind of food is unhealthy, it is still produced because our demand for animal food products has “created a food industry whose primary concern isn’t feeding people” (Foer 209). Instead, its primary concern is making as much profit as possible even if it means sacrificing human and animal health.
The reason factory farms do not prioritize animal welfare is because they value animals only in an instrumental sense and not intrinsically. They want as much product as possible for as cheap as possible so that they can increase their profits. In his essay “Why Look at Animals?” John Berger argues that capitalism and the Industrial Revolution are to be blamed for “animals required for food [being] processed like manufactured commodities” (Berger 13).
Treating farm animals well is important because the health of what we eat directly impacts our own health. For example, the epizootic “mad cow disease” was caused by feeding meat and bone meal (MBM) to naturally herbivorous cattle. This disease was spread to humans via the ingestion of products coming from infected cows. Alice Walker comments on this human-animal connection in “Am I Blue?” when she talks about “forgetting”:“People…daily forget, all that animals try to tell us. ‘Everything you do to us will happen to you; we are your teachers, as you are ours. We are one lesson’ ” ( Walker 186). This is why it is important for the public to be informed of the truth about what we put into our mouths. However, truly free-range cattle would decrease profits for many food production companies so they are using images like the one above to trick consumers into thinking they are consuming a product from a free-range cow.
References:
Berger, John. “Why Look at Animals?” About Looking. New York: Pantheon, 1980. 3-28. Print.
“BSE: Disease control & eradication – Causes of BSE”.Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs. July 2009.
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Eating Animals. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print.
“The Truth about Low-fat Foods.” BBC Good Food. BBC, n.d. Web. 03 Oct. 2014.
Walker, Alice. “Am I Blue?” Other Nations: Animals in Modern Literature. By Tom Regan and Andrew Linzey. Waco, TX: Baylor UP, 2010. 182-87. Print.
I recently attended a talk given by artist Micheal Pestel. Pestel’s work is based largely on appreciating the birds in our lives that we often take for granted. His work also carries messages about the problems of bird extinction and how humans have a diminished relationship with nature. In his talk, Pestel discussed how birds helped him combine his love of music and art. He said that “to you they are birds, but to me they are voices in the forest.” By stating this, he was trying to show that he had a strong relationship with birds. By referring to them as voices, they were no longer considered animals and thus no longer considered second-class citizens of the Earth. He then emulated their voices by using several different flutes to make bird sounds.
Pestel’s views often align with Berger’s. For example, Pestel mentioned in his talk that three things killed the passenger pigeon: the locomotive, the telegraph, and the gun. He stated that these man-made inventions will now forever carry the shadow of causing a mass extinction. Berger showed a similar disdain for the Industrial Revolution and its consequences in his novel About Looking when he wrote that “the 19th century, in western Europe and North America, saw the beginning of a process, today being completed by 20th century corporate capitalism, by which every tradition which has previously mediated between man and nature was broken” (3). Pestel mentioned that we stopped treating the world as our tribal ancestors did and believes that we have lost our relationship with nature because of the printed word. He thinks that we can regain the lost voices of animals by transforming our own language and own experience. He calls this “listening in with our mouths.” Although Pestel did not mention any specific ways that we can transform our language to help us understand animals more, one way that I think we can do so is by eliminating the human/animal binary from our language. We can do this by not lumping all non-human animals into the one category “animal” because this categorization promotes a view of self vs. other in which one must be inherently superior as opposed to viewing other creatures as equals living together harmoniously on Earth.
References:
Berger, John. About Looking. New York: Pantheon, 1980. Print.
Pestel, Michael. “Brown Bag Artist’s talk: Michael Pestel: Requiem, Ectopistes, Migratorius.” Lafayette College. Williams Center of the Arts, Easton, PA. 17 Sept. 2014. Guest Lecture.
I attended a talk this semester called “Coats and Collars: Fashions for Animals in the Early Modern Period” that was held at Lafayette College. The talk was given by Dr. John Black Friedman who works at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at The Ohio State University.
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