Author: oneillb

If there is one relationship with animals I have always loved, it is that between man and falcon.  The relationship is very stoic compared to some; one in which the man responsible for the falcon simply releases the bird and watches it soar around before ultimately laying waste to a small animal or bird.  This is exactly what a falcon would do normally, just in this case it is brought to the hunting ground by a human being, follows some of his calls, and does not reap the full benefits of its kill.

The video I watched was exactly this relationship on screen.  Several men go to a large field, one walks out with a falcon, removes its head cover and simply watches it do its thing.  The camera man shows the hunter fitting himself with a orange hunting coat, an action which screams “things are getting serious.”  The video is embellished by a very loud, intense choice of music.  The camera angles and movements are also very dramatic, choosing to highlight scenes with lots of action and employ slow, daunting pans when there isn’t too much going on.  There is this overwhelming sense of preparation for a big event, almost comically so, as we get ready to watch this beautiful bird go out and kill something.  Low angles on the male hunter give him a sense of power and purpose in the shot, preparing us for this massive hunting escapade.  And then, all at once, he releases the bird, and further the actions of the man are dramatized, switching between close ups on his face and wide shots of him moving around the ground and peering into the sky, watching his beautiful bird begin the hunt.

What’s funny to me about this video is that there is so much focus on the hunter, it’s easy to forget that the bird is doing literally all the hunting.  Sure, there is some training that can be applied to a bird to make it do your bidding, and there are plenty of videos all over YouTube on the art of falconry (which are awesome and I recommend looking into them), but ultimately the experience that the hunter is getting from watching the bird hunt is a similar sort of voyeurism that Malamud talks about in his analysis of zoo spectatorship.  To be so close to this magnificent bird while it hunts is simply to live vicariously through its actions, not to have any actual ownership of the kill.  And I will admit, even though I understand that the fun comes in being so close and yet so far from death, I still enjoy the hell out of it.  Watching a bird hunt is one of the most gorgeous and terrifying things I’ve ever seen.  You can watch the falcon lock on to its target a little later on in the video, swooping in at a dazzling speed to overwhelm the helpless duck from above and send it sprawling to the earth.  The raptor then swoops down to the site of the wounded duck and literally squeezes the life out of it with its razor sharp talons in an emphatic yet calm way.  The duck’s death is cold and remorseless – just another bird broken by the hunting dominance of the peregrine falcon.

I’m being pretty bold in calling one’s observation of the hunt voyeuristic, especially given that Malamud himself is talking about more of a sick, masturbatory pleasure from watching animals do things in confined spaces.  But I believe that in videos such as this in which a bird is being used for both intrinsic and instrumental purposes, there is a certain form of arousal, one that comes from witnessing a murder of some sort.  We call a human killing a human murder, and we call a falcon killing a duck “awesome.”  Is it so ridiculous to think that there is a vicarious pleasure to be had from watching a bird commit a crime against another bird that we could never commit against another human?  I think videos like this are posted to satisfy the guilty pleasures of those who want to observe death from a comfortable distance, watching the subservient bird do the deadliest deed with no regrets.  The falcon is an ice cold killer, and maybe that’s exactly what the hunter and the viewer wishes he could be for those four minutes.

The product that I have chosen to use is Starkist Tuna Fillet.  I found this tiny little tin in Wawa, and couldn’t help but laugh a little bit when I looked down and saw a big, blue, smiling fish looking at me with its fin directing my attention towards the product’s label.  My first reaction was to recognize immediately that this fish, however blatantly silly it may be, is certainly no tuna.  I think it is important to really see this difference, so here is what an actual Tuna looks like:

Sure, tuna can be blueish on the outside, but nothing like the image on the tin- this is some made up cartoon character.  Just from the outside, I wouldn’t feel too ridiculous in making an assumption that the contents of the tin would be some sort of blue silly puddy.  Further, the fish looks as though it is possibly female, given the pink hair bow, and has impaired sight, judging from the pair of glasses resting in front of its eyes.  Perhaps this misrepresentation and blatant anthropomorphism of the fish is intentional; perhaps it is a way of drawing the mind away from the very concept of the diced up tuna inside.

Next, bringing this image into the context of what Foer has written about the manner in which fish, especially tuna, are caught, it is all the more hysterical (in a dark sense) to see this smiling blue creature looking up at me.  According to Foer, this smiling tuna is essentially representing a species which is the focus of a human genocide.  Foer shows that our tuna fishing is unsustainable and reckless, and literally employs techniques borrowed from war-time capital.  So the net takeaway is basically that this happy, blue, female fish is the poster child for a devastated species, not to mention the other dozens of species that are also devastated as a result of a excessively broad fishing techniques.  Without even establishing an opinion on the subject of industrial fishing, just imagine for a moment the smiling face of someone like Flo from the Progressive Insurance TV commercials pasted on top of a massive crate holding dead human bodies that were the recent defenseless casualties of a massacre, advertising the transport and morgue services.

“We happily bring you deceased human beings quicker and cheaper than anyone else!”

I don’t want to act like I’m somehow equating the severity of those two situations, but really, the same concept applies to an extent – it’s just a little weird to put the smiling face of a given species on top of a tin full of its obliterated remains.  Sure, they’re just fish.  But the really messed up thing is that that advertisement is essentially expecting you to understand the death of something as a smiling, happy event, and that somehow the dead tuna is encouraging you to eat it – giving you a justification which is something along the lines of, “well if the Tuna doesn’t seem to mind, I guess I shouldn’t!”

The business is operating under the understanding that their customers legitimately don’t care in the slightest about the fact that an organic, living thing was killed to support their own organic existence.  I’m one of those annoying people who isn’t really for or against the industrial level consumption of land or sea creatures (I still eat fish and meat but constantly question the fact that I do), but I do believe that there should be some level of outward respect given to something that was graced, as we were, with the ability to live on this earth in its own element.  I’d like to think that even in the midst of the massive economies of scale (a doubling of inputs such as labor or capital into an industry resulting in a more than doubling of output to bring about massive profits) achieved in the fishing and farming industries, there is still a way to respect the life of the deceased organism and avoid anthropomorphism of it without losing significant demand for it.  Maybe no picture at all, or maybe just the standard image of a tuna that I provided above.  When I look at this tin of tuna, I’m not really moved astronomically one way or the other, but I do feel myself grimacing a little and thinking, “ok, this is a little bit excessive and unnecessary.  Maybe this could be done differently.”

Of all the animal subjects of human anthropomorphism, cats are among some of the most blatantly personified.  We see in cats a human sassy-ness and individuality that isn’t really obvious in too many other day to day creatures, as dogs, for example, seem to possess qualities more along the lines of eagerness to please and loyalty to group or a family.  While there are certainly instances in which cats are stripped of what Alice Walker might choose call their “catness,” there are also moments in which they are portrayed almost unintentionally equally to humans, but in a distinctly cat-ish way.  The example that I would like to use is one of many animal videos on youtube labeled “Funny cat compilation” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmnyORo_slM.  Give it a quick watch.

At a first glance, this could seem to many as a demeaning representation of cats.  These cats are doing things that are downright stupid for the most part.  Pouncing on things that aren’t alive, trying to play a guitar, etc.  With the wrong point of view, it could seem as though the objective of this video was to further hoist ourselves as humans onto an even higher pedestal than the one we already seem to occupy above animals.  I would argue, however, that this video is in many respects one of the truest examples of a human appreciation of cats for exactly the animals that they are, just expressed in the context of a human habitat.

The age old characteristics of cats that we have objectively known to be true, such as curiosity, physical balance, and slyness are seen to fail in some way. Yet, in spite of this failure, what is really happening when we choose to laugh at videos such as these is a deep appreciation for an animal that we have dared to consider one of our greatest companions as a race over the years. Without really bestowing our own characteristics on the cat, we watch it try and fail to do cat things. There really is a whole lot of good in what I would call a symbiotic relationship between humans and domesticated pets. I would go as far as to say it’s a pretty beautiful thing at times. However naive that may seem, I wasn’t feeling cynical today.

Hello everyone, I’m Brian O’Neill and I’m a Junior from Wayland, Massachusetts.  I’m a film and media studies major with Spanish minor, and I also write for The Lafayette sports section.  Writing has always been my favorite academic activity at school considering I’m god awful at math and wouldn’t last 30 seconds as any major that required computing of any sort.  So here I am, doing my best to represent animals with the rest of you!

As for my relationship with animals, well, let’s just say that I’ve always wanted a dog, and probably would have one if not for a set of crippling factors.  I myself am allergic to dogs, and cats, and some other fluffy or furry animals with dander of some sort, including (but not limited to) horses and donkeys and what not.  My allergy to cats is much worse than my allergy to dogs, and the outcome of being too close to a cat can end with a few frantic inhaler hits and an eye drop in each eye.  My issue with dogs is much more subtle, but all the more frustrating.  It would seem for a time that being near a dog, or even just in the same house as a dog, is fine, and often times I’m led into a false sense of security thinking that I’m safe from the impending misery that will soon catch up to me.  This doesn’t even come close to stopping me from playing with dogs though – I will always give a happy puppy a treat and a head scratch and just deal with the consequences.  As a matter of fact, I frequent videos such as these https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY9Vs7dnQPM in order to explore my hypoallergenic options.

Beyond animals, I am a huge sports fan, and I adamantly follow both Soccer and Football.  I write for the Men’s Soccer team here at Lafayette.