earthlings

Our lives are hugely dependent on animal species. Throughout the history of a mankind, it is evident that human were actively interacting with animal species. In prehistoric days, people foraged foods and hunted for meat. They drew animal paintings on the wall and sometimes worshipped some valiant animals. Human developed agriculture and used animal’s bones for tools and their strength for labor. In modern days, people start their day with a pork-fulled breakfast and ends by cleansing their face with cow gelatin filled facial cream. Thus, there’s no such thing a as a vegan because in any products people use, there’s still traces of animals. Human constantly interact with animal species and it may be fairly said that our species have developed by using (exploiting) other earthlings. Nowadays, this ‘usage’ on animal has progressed so violent and cruel that exploitation on animal emerged as a new social issue. The film “Earthlings” is the representative one that pinches on the immoral exploitation on animals and people’s ignorance of the truth. The director Shaun Monson critics human under five themes.

Shaun Monson

What is the truth? On the five themes, Shaun Monson illustrates about pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and science. The truth is that human shouldn’t have any guilt using animals as pets, food, clothing, entertainment and science. Well, using animals for entertainment is actually immoral. However, ‘using’ animals for human survival shouldn’t be blamed. It’s not the human’s first time killing animals for retaining their live. For history and with the presence of mankind, killing animals for survival continued and will continue. The only thing that should be blamed is how we treat animals. As shown in the film, people try to gain as much profit over limited amount of animals. Majority of the companies which use animals as commercial reason do not treat their animals as a living organism. The workers throw, hurt these animals without satisfying any minimum desires for survival. The animals are regarded as part of machine, that people try to use as efficient as they can. These vice companies are not only limited to food industries, but enlarged into cosmetic, cloth, furniture, even digital device companies. The bigger problem lies on the consumers. Most of the consumers know these facts. It is a lie that they didn’t know because there are so many videos, books, commercial about animal rights and many of the vice companies’ brutality is already revealed. However, they tend to search for the most economical choice and usually this concludes with choosing the company which exploited on animal. The fact that companies regard animals as their resource and consumer’s ignorance on the brutality should be the target of the film, not the five themes. All five themes concentrates on the cruelty of the process making a product, not on the themes.

The film ends with a sentence “make the connection”. The director shows that animals also have emotion and they have their way of comprehending the world. He redundantly cites that animals feel pain and every animal dies in pain, human do not have right to exploit on them only by our superiority. And most of the film is filled with some secretly shooted image of slaughterhouse or hunting scenes. However, director’s attention was ceased only to the violence and cruelty of killing animals for human use. If the only aim of the film was informing people with the violence of animal using industry, the director sure gained his goal. But, the film didn’t give any clue to the fundamental question. Mankind is highly dependent on animals and it is inevitable living without killing any animals. Then, how should people deal with this issue(excluding the entertainment theme)? Would larger cages and fulfilling the animal’s minimum desire make the animals less stressful and happy? Would killing the animals politely and less violent a better treatment? Would stopping scientific research on animals be the best alternative for all these problems? Is hunting of tigers on rabbits natural and hunting of a human on rabbit immoral and should be punished? Personally, the most urgent thing is change of mankind’s arrogance over other earthlings. Mistreating other species is originated from the cognition that human rules the earth and are top of the whole ecosystem. People learn that humans dominated the top of earth ecosystem and are the most powerful creatures inside the earth. This is a great error because all these information are defined and made up by human. It isn’t revealed that other species agree to this information. Thus, human should not take an arrogant act by this misbelief and dominate other species.

To conclude, the film was very violent. It showed the truth within producing animal product and how the processes are brutal. The film sure did quite well on frightening my meals and making reluctant to eat meat. However, the issue that should be criticized is not the human’s act on eating and clothing by the animals. The thing that be blamed is the arrogance that mankind can control over animal species. It is the mistreating that should be blamed. Overall, the film made lots of thinking on solution of the animal-exploiting issue. If the problem is inevitable, what is the best alternative?