EARTHLINGS
Nature, Animals, Humankind: Make The Connection
Reviewed by Margaret Setter

This 90-minute documentary is not only an artistic triumph. It is also an outstanding campaigning tool, easily the best I’ve come across for advancing the work of animal rights advocates/activists. The 90minutes of footage are divided into 18 self-contained parts that make it ideal for teaching purposes as well as stimulating group discussion and debate.

Narrated by Joaquin Phoenix and directed by Shaun Monson, the documentary won first prize for best feature film in the category Animal Rights/Advocacy at the California Artivist Film Festival in 2005.

The introduction shows early satellite footage of Planet Earth, which appears as a luminous, azure sphere serenely suspended in space. As it rotates, landmasses come into view, surrounded by bodies of water, the entire planet suffused with the light and warmth of the sun.

One US astronaut expressed his wonderment and joy in the following words: “Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty - but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet”.

Likewise, the first German in space wrote: Before I flew I was already aware of how small and vulnerable our planet is; but only when I saw it from space, in all its ineffable beauty and fragility, did I realize that human kind's most urgent task is to cherish and preserve it for future generations. - Sigmund Jähn, citizen of the former German Democratic Republic, 1961.

From space, Planet Earth is world without borders, where human -invented categories, racism, sexism, and speciesism, are nonexistent. In the vast reaches of outer space these categories have no meaning. Every living being on this Earth is simply, an ‘Earthling’. The viewer is treated to the sights and sounds of representative species of animals acting freely and joyously, suggestive of what Paradise may have been like and could be again.

All too soon the visual narrative takes on a darker tone as the camera reveals some of the manifold ways in which humans use and abuse their fellow Earthlings.

When the principle of respect is violated we use the terms ‘racism’, ‘sexism’ and ‘speciesism’ to denote that ‘someone’ at the power end of a relationship violates the right of ‘someone’ (who lacks sufficient power to resist) to morally respectful treatment. Whatever term is used depends on whose interests are being ignored or passed over in favour of the interests of the more powerful.

Most people, in the’ developed’ world at least, are familiar with the terms, ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’. The term ‘Speciesism’ is not so well recognised or understood. It is a concept coined less than forty years ago by Richard Ryder to describe a relationship or attitude signifying human domination over nonhuman animals.

This is the point made by Isaac Bashevis Singer in the following passage taken from his best-selling novel, A Love Story, also featured in Earthlings.

“As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought. In their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right”.

What Bashevis Singer shows is that humans cannot reduce animals to the status of objects without themselves suffering deep psychic and emotional wounds. Jim Mason develops this insight in his book, Unnatural Order, exploring the theme of human self-hatred, projected outward on to animals, becoming self-perpetuating and crippling to all life on earth.

SPAIN: CRUELTY AS PUBLIC SPECTACLE

The scene shifts to that of a terrified bull, with blazing torches attached to his horns, being pursued and tormented by a mob of young men. Each one is an eager participant in a cruel blood sport that is a revolting expression of sadism and ‘misothery’* in its purest form. The bull’s suffering may continue for hours until the mob tires and ends it by stabbing him to death.

The bullfight is another traditional form of animal abuse still practiced in Spain. Promoted as a long held and culturally important tradition it is coming under increasing fire from animal rights advocates. Far from being the expression of a ritual struggle between man and beast, Earthlings exposes it as a fraud in which the animal emerges from days spent in total darkness into a noisy arena. He meets his human opponent in an already exhausted and debilitated state, confused and frightened, his eyes coated with petroleum jelly.

Modern Spaniards show little interest in the bullring and its despicable spectacle of animal abuse. Profit to be gained from tourists is the major determinant of its survival. Much work remains to be done to educate foreign visitors to Spain about the true nature of this so-called traditional form of entertainment.

JAPAN’S ANNUAL DOLPHIN AND WHALE SLAUGHTER

Like Spain, the Japanese Government defies progressive world opinion by engaging in this annual orgy of bloodletting and murder. It is almost unbearable to witness butchered, still living dolphins, writhing in their death agonies on a Japanese wharf, in full view of passing schoolchildren, apparently a commonplace sight if their lack of response is typical.

It is easy for those of us in the West to feel superior, to criticize and condemn countries like Spain and Japan, where such open and blatant abuse of animals occurs.

Scenes of Australian cattle and sheep slaughtered in Egyptian and Middle Eastern abattoirs are screened periodically on Australian TV. These are countries with little or no history of animal welfare legislation. It remains to be seen if public opposition in Australia can be sustained with sufficient force and duration to persuade the Australian Government to end this very profitable trade in live animals.

UNITED STATES: A BEACON OF HOPE AND LIBERTY FOR ANIMALS?

The United States is the most technologically advanced; the most powerful and wealthy nation in the history of the world, yet its animal welfare standards are equally appalling. Insensitivity to nature is the basic problem, made worse by the behemoths of modern agribusinesses that control every stage in the production of animal-based commodities without reference to the fact these derive from sentient beings.

The section on animal slaughter shifts back and forth between shots of neat, cellophane wrapped sliced meat, displayed on supermarket shelves, to the shocking reality of the interminable agony endured by the animals during successive stages of their journey from the farm to the slaughterhouse. Death does not take them quietly. Crammed into transports in extremes of heat and cold, often suffocating, sometimes giving birth, many trampled underfoot, others dying of panic induced stress, they arrive at the slaughterhouse terrified and disoriented.

Inside the slaughterhouse the animals become victims to the speed-up of the line. There are close-ups of the futile struggle mounted by terrified sheep in the knocking boxes, while workers use the electric prod unmercifully on cattle to keep them moving. Animal welfare laws, ineffective as they often are, are routinely ignored. More often than not an animal remains conscious throughout the whole revolting process of stunning and bleeding, before being hoisted on to the line to be dismembered while still alive.

SHECHITA: RITUAL ANIMAL SLAUGHTER

Given the horrors enacted at mainstream slaughterhouses, it might seem churlish to criticize Jewish and Muslim slaughter practices, were it not for the claims made on their behalf. The footage of a slaughterhouse employing the Jewish Shechita method is one of the most chilling sections in the entire film, prompting my unreformed son to promise he would ‘have to give up meat’.

Hebrew Scripture specifically permits slaughtering animals for meat with the words “Every moving thing that lives shall be as food for you”. (Genesis 9:3) Ritual slaughter became the prescribed method in order to minimize the pain endured by the animal. As adapted to the requirements of what is stated to be the largest kosher slaughterhouse in the US, the reality is somewhat different.

A hidden camera records every stage. The animal enters the restraining drum. Immediately a lever is shot so that the drum rapidly rotates to a point where the animal is on its back, its upturned head protruding from end of the drum. A swift slash of the knife, and the animal’s throat is cut. If the carotid arteries are severed, consciousness is supposed to cease in about 6 seconds. In this case it does not.

Shechita forbids the mutilation of an animal. Nonetheless, the slaughter man thrusts his hand inside the gash and tears out the animal’s trachea and breathing tube, part of which he throws into the garbage can. The animal, obviously conscious, is returned to an upright position and jolted up and down several times, causing the blood to issue forth in spurts. Still conscious, he is thrust from the equipment to land heavily on the concrete floor, continuing to vocalize his distress as he writhes in agony in a pool of his own blood. He is then hoisted by one leg to the line to proceed to the first stage of his bodily dismemberment.

FACTORY FARMING OF PIGS AND CHICKENS

Most Westerners, while acknowledging that cruelty is embedded in our history, prefer to think that modern welfare legislation provides sufficient protection for animals. But cruelty remains cruelty even when hidden from view. Most animal production facilities are sited in places well hidden from the public gaze. Only rarely do the public obtain a glimpse of what happens to animals ‘down on the farm’.

Beginning in the early post war years of the 1940s technology was developed which made it possible for animals to reared in close confinement systems. Antibiotics, and other pharmaceutical and chemical products were essential to this process. As a result, small family farms became uneconomic, to be replaced by the forerunners of today’s agribusinesses.

These giant corporations now control what will be produced and when, and under what conditions, and how the massive surpluses will be marketed. As a result, rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other degenerative diseases have skyrocketed, especially among poorly educated, low-income groups, the most vulnerable members of society.

Modern industrial, or factory farming is characterized by its complete lack of regard for the bodily and psychological integrity of the individual animal. Every aspect of the animal’s life is brought under human manipulation. Earthlings presents a visual demonstration of some of the indignities factory farmed animals endure. Castration, spaying, ear clipping, amputation of the tail, each procedure carried out on a fully conscious animal, singly or combination.

A chicken or turkey’s brief life span passes unnoticed in a shed crammed with thousands of its kind. Each individual represents a unit of production, its fertility stimulated and controlled by a variety of painful and invasive forms of artificial insemination. Bred for rapid weight gain, deprived of exercise, chickens and turkeys suffer painful fractures at every stage of their brief life cycle.

And what do the animals receive in compensation for their suffering? They go to their deaths enduring a variety of torments. In the US alone, nine billion animals and poultry are slaughtered each year, every aspect of life and death having been governed by the imperatives of the system.

Dairy calves are perhaps the most pathetic examples of this abuse of sentient creatures. Removed from their mothers at birth, they are raised in veal crates on an iron deficient diet in order to produce the pale, tender flesh favoured by consumers.

These little babies, for that is what they are, are often so weak they have to be carried to the floor of the slaughterhouse.

Factory farming is an obscenity that must be abolished. It harms everyone concerned. The path of the unskilled worker in factory farming is defined by insecurity and chaos. Many leave the job poor, exhausted and in many cases, seriously injured, brutalized by the system. Often they deal with their feelings of rage and frustration by committing appalling acts of abuse on the animals in their charge. Such acts are of course, prohibited by law but who cares?

Earthlings is far from easy to watch although to some degree the pain is mitigated by the insertion exquisite scenes of animals gamboling in their natural state. It is not too late to save them. Joaquin Phoenix sums it up when he says, "Of all the films I have ever made, this is the one that gets people talking the most. For every person who sees Earthlings, they will tell three." I hope everyone reading this will do just that.

* A term coined by Jim Mason, derived from the Greek “hatred of the Other”.

DVD: available from Animal Liberation Victoria