Friday, July 16, 2010

Veg Documentaries #1

Last night, I had an urge to watch a documentary. Ha, ha, what a dork, I know. But listen. I had always looked down upon documentaries as boring lectures that don't deserve to be sold in DVD-form. However, I've opened my eyes to the land of documentaries that support veganism. I'm talking Food Inc., Fast Food Nation, Super-Size Me, and Earthlings (which I've continually avoided due to the warnings I've received). Growing up, I was never allowed to eat fast food, and now that I'm older and know about nutrition, I'm damn well happy I wasn't. Super-Size Me nearly made me sick when I first saw it four or five years ago. Quick note: the girlfriend in Super-Size Me was a vegan chef. Holla! Anyways, last night I was perusing the vegan internet, and realized that there are so many documentaries I haven't seen. So, I drove to my local Blockbuster and picked up a copy of Food, Inc. Now, mind you, I've seen PETA videos, so I was expecting something slightly stomach-churning. As Ellen Degeneres once said on her show, it's like a Disney movie compared to Earthlings. Now, I haven't seen Earthlings yet, but it was exactly as Ellen said. It certainly got the point of big business and industry across, but I thought it should have had a bit more oomph to it. As a starter movie for an American family, though, I'd say it's a pretty good movie to get the gears moving in peoples' heads. For myself, the only thing it made me think about was the issue of genetically modified soybeans taking over the industry. It irked me that I could be supporting the snuffing out of business for smaller soybean farmers by buying my Vanilla Silk.

In one scene, they showed a slaughterhouse where they were slitting throats and dividing beef parts, and I found myself angrily blurting out, "What makes them think they can just cut up something that walks around?". Seriously. What gives humans the right? We're not created to kill things bigger than us. Poor cows are so freaking cute and even hold grudges..why the fuck is it okay to stuff them in a house, powerfeed them, and then send them down an assembly line to be chopped up? They're animals! Animals walk, have relationships, have babies, and it makes them happy. Just because they don't speak our language doesn't give anyone the right to chop them up and package them with a picture of a happy cartoon cow.

As was said in the novel A Separate Peace, "It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but instead by something ignorant in the human heart." Humans are ignorant. Not only is meat and dairy shitty for you, it comes from an animal. If all pigs spoke English and had college degrees and we were the ones oinking, they might be eating us. America needs to see beyond its traditions, cravings, and laziness. Animals do have feelings, they do feel pain when they are killed, and a life in a slaughterhouse is like living in Auschwitz. Yes, like a concentration camp from the Holocaust. Either you're starved or force-fed, forced into labor, and killed on an assembly line. If it's morally wrong to do that to humans, why is it not morally wrong to do it to animals? Would you send your jumpy new puppy down an assembly line to be chopped and sorted? Did you just shit your pants and look over to your puppy chewing on your new Toms? Yeah, I thought so.

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