Earthlings

Earthling, one of the most powerful documentaries, shed light on the truth, that each and every day we are all guilty of murdering fellow earthlings, animals."We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals... We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far beneath ourselves. And therein we err, we greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man.”(P.276)



When I was watching Earthlings what always made me turn away was the amount of blood that was poured or spewed out of each animal. The images that were burned into my eyes were of the cows, chickens, pigs, and even dolphins, each of whom were hacked into and had their throats slashed while fully conscious. Seeing their bodies mutilated and convulsing on the floor, left to bleed out, was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen. This movie was scarier and gorier than any horror movie I’ve ever seen. What’s most upsetting about this documentary is the truth it sheds on what we all ignore and pretend doesn’t exists, a genocide of animals.



In the dictionary you’ll find the definition of “Genocide: The deliberate destruction of an entire race or nation. The Holocaust conducted by the Nazis in Germany and the Rwandan genocide are examples of attempts at genocide.” This doesn’t mention animals, which isn’t surprising, considering that “slaughterhouses are not made with glass walls.”(P.276) There’s a reason why this issue isn’t always in the news, because like during the Holocaust some people were either in denial about the entire situation, believing that it never even happened. Other Germans who did not participate, but also did nothing to stop it, just remained oblivious to it. If were widen the definition of genocide: to the deliberate destructions of race, sex, ethnicity, religion, and species, then there would be much more controversy. The majority of the population would then be guilty of the mass murders of billions of different species.

After watching Earthlings, I felt sick. I walked to my next class and all I could see was the faces of the tortured animals. Later when I told my friend what I had seen she was immediately grossed out at the images I described. She told me she was definitely not going to see that movie, but I told her that’s exactly what the slaughterhouses and other animal abusers are counting on, that you and the mass population will continue to live your life and remain unaware to this murdering. Just because you didn’t see the holocaust take place doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, the same is true of the deaths of animals. We may not be the ones taking their lives, but the majority of us are not doing anything to stop it.
“If we had to kill our own meat we would all become vegetarians.”(P.277) I know that this is true of me. There’s no way I could ever take the life of a fellow earthling.