Representing Animals

Tag: Blog Post#2

Blot Post #2 Looking into an enslaved monkey’s eyes

September 16, 2014 / / 3 Comments

 

Blog Post #2        Looking into an enslaved monkey’s eyes

Shanghai-monkey    I chose an image from Wikipedia that is a good representation to the modern human-animal relationship. In the picture, a man and a monkey are on the street. The man with a bowl in his hand is begging for money. The really shocking thing about this image is that the man is also holding a rope that surrounds a monkey’s neck. Obviously, the man is leading the monkey. There is smile on the man’s face. The monkey appears to be suffering because he is clenching his fist around the rope. This picture represents a modernized slavery. The only difference is that this is human enslaving animal not human enslaving human.

In Berger’s essay “Why look at animals?” John Berger discusses the enslavement of animals, he quoted Buffo in his work, “ To the same degree as man has raised himself above the state of nature, animals have fallen below it: conquered and turned into slaves”. In this image, the man is at a higher level than the animal. Perhaps the man is being mistreated in real life; he is living at the bottom of human society. However, he could easily vent his anger on the monkey. Mistreating the monkey makes the man feel satisfied that there is always something that underneath him. As Berger says, “They are creatures of their owner’s way of life, the pet completes him”. The monkey is a testimony to the dark side of humanity: how human is willing to scarify another species to fulfill their own satisfaction.

Also the reasons why the man in the picture wants to bring a monkey when begging are worth exploiting. Sadly, the street where the man is begging with the monkey is just a few miles away from my home and I have seen beggars with monkeys more the once in China. Normally, the man trained the monkey to do some tricks or maybe just made the money to make the same begging gesture. Some pedestrians might find the monkey “cute” or “funny” and give the man some money. To the man, the monkey’s value is purely instrumental. The monkey is just served as a tool to make money for the man. The intrinsic value of the monkey is being neglected completely. In Alice Walker’s essay “Am I blue?” she talked about how human has forgotten animal’s right completely, “there are those who never once have even considered animals’ rights: those who has been taught that animals actually want to be used and abused by us”. The reason why this kind of begging is alive not only comes from the man who abuses the animal, but also comes from the indifference to the mistreatment to the animal from the whole society. The whole society is marginalizing animal.

 

 

 

 

 

Sources for the post:

“Shanghai-monkey” by F3rn4nd0 – File: Shanghai man with monkey.jpg. Via Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shanghai-monkey.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Shanghai-monkey.jpg

 

John Berger. “About Looking”. Pantheon Books, 1980 print. Sept 10 2014

 

Walker, Alice. “Am I Blue.” Human Rights Anthology. Ed. Lee Peralta. New York: Columbia U. Press, 1995. 438-445. Sept 16 2014

No Longer Man’s Best Friend

September 15, 2014 / / 0 Comments

The Far Side

Although my time in class has not dramatically affected my attitudes and views regarding human-animal relationships, it has encouraged me to put much more time and effort into thinking about and analyzing the source of these views and their underlying components. When I came across a Far Side comic drawn by cartoonist Gary Larson, I found myself searching for details that would tell me more about what Larson was attempting to say about human-animal relationships.

The comic depicts a domestic scene with a couple eating dinner in their living room and the family dog on the floor nearby. The dog is highly anthropomorphized, standing upright on two legs and wearing an angry expression that would be more at home on a human face than a canine one. The dog is wielding a revolver pistol and aiming it directly at his owner, and the caption reads, “’Hey, bucko…I’m through begging.’” Although they are being held up by their dog over food, neither human in the image appears at all concerned. The man looks at the dog with a blank expression and his mouth full of food, while his wife seated opposite him doesn’t even give the dog any heed.

Before joining this class, I would have found the image moderately amusing and moved on to other ventures. However, now that I have spent time in class thinking in much more depth about human-animal relationships, this seems to be an exaggerated example of the impact that exploitation at the hands of humans can have on animal psyche. The dog is clearly fed up with his low-ranking position in the household and his use as a novelty as a pet. Blue, the horse in Alice Walker’s Am I Blue?, experiences the same feelings as he is left alone in his field until he is wanted for human purposes, be them riding or breeding. Even when under these circumstances, Blue is treated as an object and not as a living being since the children who ride him, “ride furiously for ten or fifteen minutes, then get off, slap Blue on the flanks, and not be seen again for a month or more.” His mate is also taken away immediately after he impregnates her, hammering home the point that Blue is simply seen as a tool by his owners. Like Gary Larson’s dog, Blue also becomes fed up with this and snaps after his mate is removed, wearing, “the look of disgust with human beings, with life; the look of hatred.” Both the Far Side comic and Am I Blue? Are making the point that when their intrinsic value is ignored in favor of their instrumental value, irreversibile damage is done to the human-animal relationship.

 

Sources for the Post:

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f3/e6/f8/f3e6f810211343108914aa115b1c37b4.jpg

 

Regan, Tom, and Alice Walker. “Am I Blue?” Other Nations: Animals in Modern Literature. Waco, Tex.: Baylor UP, 2010. 182-187. Print.

Horse Riding

September 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

horseriding After reading Berger and Walker, I have begun to think of holding a horse in captivity for recreational purposes in a different light. The image that I have selected, shown above, depicts a competitive rider forcing a horse to jump over an obstacle. This image comes from the Chestnut Hill Farm website which is a farm that offers equestrian lessons. It appears that the horse is her property and that the rider is the slave-owner whereas the horse is her slave. This image glorifies the sport of competitive riding. The assumption is that the purpose of the horse is for the control of the rider. The better control the rider has of the horse, the more successful the rider is considered.  After reading Walker’s essay, I noticed the firm grip that this woman has on the reins of the horse. That is not something that I would have noticed before and I wonder if it is an indicator of the power struggle between her and the horse.

I found Walker’s analogy between animal captivity and historical slavery interesting and wondered how it could apply to this image.  After reading Walker’s work, when I look at this picture I think about what the horse may be feeling or what may be going through the horse’s mind. Previously, I would not have focused on the horse or even thought how the horse may be emotionally affected by being held captive for the purpose of being ridden. After reading Berger and Walker, I find myself viewing this image from the animal’s point of view which has raised several questions for me.

The horse has been reduced and marginalized in order to fulfill the rider’s recreational needs. This is comparable to Berger’s ideas about how we reduce and marginalize animals by keeping them in zoos for our own entertainment. This interpretation of the image is different from how I previously viewed equestrianism. I used to think that it was exciting and fun. I even considered it something that I was interested in doing because I love horses. However, after reading Berger I realized that truly loving an animal does not involve marginalizing that animal. Berger’s view that capitalism is a large cause behind the reason we view animals for their instrumental value struck me and made me wonder if that idea could be applicable to the mission of Chestnut Hill Farms. Chestnut Hill is capitalizing on the horse’s majestic nature by making the sport look beautiful and graceful in this image. The image is focusing on the instrumental value of the horse while completely ignoring its intrinsic value.

Often, we treat animals the way we treat human beings in many aspects. My interpretation of this image human-animal relationships after reading Berger and Walker caused me to think about human-human relationships in a similar context. For example, human slaves were sold as gladiators during Ancient Roman times for the entertainment of the people. Similarly, animals such as horses are being sold for recreational purposes as well. Berger and Walker have gotten me thinking about whether keeping animals (both human and non-human) captive for recreational purposes is ethical. It also raised the difficult question of whether it is possible to have an animal as a pet and still give it full life. This is a question I have begun thinking about after reading Berger and Walker but have still not come up with an answer to because I do not believe that there is one simple answer to this question. I believe that the ability to give a pet full life has to do with how the animal is treated as well as if the owner views the animal for its intrinsic or instrumental value.

References:

Chestnut Hill Farm, 2014. Web. 10 Sept. 2014.

John Berger. “About Looking”. Pantheon Books, 1980. Print.

Walker, Alice. “Am I Blue.” Human Rights Anthology. Ed. Lee Peralta. New York: Columbia U. Press, 1995. 438-445. Print.

 

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