Animal Ethics Embodied in Mixed Media

In the spirit of our Animal Agri-business unit, I decided to make a public statement on animal cruelty with paint, paper and colored pencil. My inspiration for this piece was a number of Disney animated films in which cutesy animated animals are depicted as always there to assist princesses in need. A trend I noticed in these films is the tendency of these animals to conduct a miraculous rescue of the helpless female character. I decided to twist that around and have the opposite: a young girl rescuing animals from certain death. I was reminded of Val Plumwood’s writings on dualism and the juxtaposition of not only strong male vs. vulnerable female, but also that of human vs. nature. In my piece I wanted to show humans as the brutes and the animals as the innocents, yet also include the idea of humans as the only beings with the power to fix what they’ve broken.

My artwork shows a Disney-style caricature of a young girl carrying a pig, a sheep, three chickens, a cat and a mouse. It’s a comical image, as the “factory farm” is distorted to an absurdly sinister level and the “farmers” are weilding giant weapons, seemingly on a mission to reclaim their stolen “property” and violently punish the thief. The girl herself is attempting to rescue all these animals alone. This is reflective of the current fight against animal cruelty. When compared to animal agribusiness, the movement is rather like a little girl with a lot of courage on a seemingly futile mission to fix the world. I think that, by raising awareness and providing more information to the public we can gain some ground. There is an element of sadness in the piece in the lower left-hand corner, where a line of cow carcasses can be seen traveling into the factory for processing. At first glance, the girl appears to have rescued as many animals as she can carry, but in the context of the magnitude of the factory itself she has barely made a dent in the problem. The mistreatment of animals is an enormous issue to argue against, especially with 8 billion animals a year being slaughtered for consumption.

The animals themselves, unlike their musical Disney predecessors, appear confused and unable to be of much help to their rescuer. I thought it necessary to emphasize the docility and innocence of the pig, since often pigs are the most mistreated animals on a modern farm. Indeed, Upton Sinclair describes a pig’s life perfectly in “The Jungle” with, “what they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him;”. Peter Singer describes it in greater detail, discussing how factory farming “inflicts suffering on sows who spend most of their lives in crates that are two narrow for them to turn around in;”. I included the cat and the mouse because, as Plumwood says, “beings may be selected for oppression in arbitrary and random ways” (Plumwood 42).  We as a society certainly have “selected” certain beings to be designated inferior. Why do we as a society revere cats and dogs but dismiss pigs, chickens and cows as “food”? In addition, the image of the cat and mouse staring at each other is a nod to Peter Singer’s assertion that “we would not, for example, justify tearing a cat to pieces because we had observed the cat tearing a mouse to pieces.” As humans, represented by the little girl, we have a duty as the most advanced species to exercise the most empathy and moral responsibility. Animals are and have always been the vulnerable ones, and I tried to depict them as such to elicit sympathy from the viewer. The chickens, you may notice, have sawed-off beaks. This is just one of the instances of animals being “mutilated in various ways without pain relief” (Francione 109). The purpose of my piece was to remind viewers of the vulnerability and the innocence of animals, and to remind them of where their food comes from. That is the reason for placing it over the window of a vending machine. Instead of seeing the pristinely packaged food they want to buy, the viewer is confronted with a comical but sinister propaganda piece reminding them of the contents of what they’re eating. Many of the products in the vending machine contain dairy products like cheese and eggs, all of which are linked to animal cruelty. Indeed, anyone who stops at a vending machine is at least peckish, so food will be on their minds as they encounter this image.

I made sure to include a sufficiently cartoony amount of pollution to drive home the point that this kind of agriculture is unsustainable. Giant, oily clouds billow out from the factory, and smoking piles of trash litter the ground. This was my attempt at kairos, implying a threat to the viewer, if they cannot be swayed by pathos or compassion for animals. This piece is 18′ by 24′, took about 7 hours of layering colors and used up two black colored pencils.  It took some nerve to leave it there in the Art Building for an entire day. Amazingly, it wasn’t taken down, though I imagine it hampered people who wanted Doritos.

Vegetarianism and the Masculine Stereotype

The article “Wall Streeter sues employer over vegetarian taunts” explores the social construction that equates meat consumption with masculinity. The story follows an ex-Calyon employee who faced torment and persecution at the hands of his boss due to his vegetarian lifestyle.

Ryan Pacifico is a 28-year-old Long-Islander who worked for three years under boss Robert Catalanello as a junior foreign-exchange trader in Manhattan before being fired on trumped-up charges. According to the article Pacifico was constantly attacked  by his boss with homosexual slurs and unfair critiques of his job performance, all because he declined to partake in the consumption of animals. In the United States the stereotypes surrounding veganism and vegetarianism as they relate to masculinity can be traced back to the biblical verse in Leviticus 6 that states, “the meat so delicately cooked by the priests, with wood and coals in the altar, in clean linen, no woman was permitted to taste, only the males among the children of Aaron” ( Adams 37).  Christianity’s influence on modern thought coupled with the fact that Americans eat twice the amount of meat as the rest of the world, approaching approximately 200 pounds per person per year, reinforces the idea of meat-eating as a necessary masculine venture (Bittman).

Pacifico himself is happily married, yet his boss finds his vegetarianism to not be in keeping with the male gender characteristics. The reductionist techniques utilized by Catalanello to justify his treatment of Pacifico included referring to him as a “vegetarian homo”. Not only does this dualism falsely equate vegetarianism with homosexuality, but the mass terms “vegetarian” and “homo” also neglect to take into account Pacifico’s individuality. By categorizing him in such broad terms, Catalanello was able to view his employee as nothing more than an object. Pacifico’s boss attempted to dehumanize him further by excluding him from consideration when the office went out to a steakhouse. When questioned about this, Catalanello simply said, “Who the f— cares?” Pacifico’s emasculation directly relates to Carol J. Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat, in which she states that “meat-eating societies gain male identification by their choice of food” (Adams 36) and that “men who decide to eschew meat eating are deemed effeminate” (44). Adams cites nutritionist Jean Mayer, whose conviction that “the more men sit at their desks all day, the more they want to be reassured about their maleness in eating those large slabs of bleeding meat which are the last symbol of machismo” (44) can be applied to desk-worker Robert Catalanello’s own biases. By ridiculing his employee, Catalanello is attempting to reassure himself of his power over others as a meat-eating male. However, the idea of the association between meat and masculinity is unfounded because, as Adams says, “men’s protein needs are less than those of pregnant and nursing women”(37). In the United States the average person eats double the amount of recommended protein per day (Bittman). It can therefore be concluded that males’ increased meat consumption is a social construct and not biologically driven.

Pacifico’s vegetarianism was not the sole driving force behind his boss’ perceived hatred of him. In addition to being taunted for not eating meat, Pacifico was ridiculed for wearing tight shorts. When the abuse culminated in his being fired from Calyon, Pacifico sued the company with nine pages of discrimination complaints.

In this instance the choice to abstain from eating animals was absurdly linked to emasculinity of the subject. We are all vulnerable to bias in favor of our own lifestyle choices, but most are able to recognize that a person’s identity is not defined by a single, all-encompassing title. Instead of seeing Ryan Pacifico as a “vegetarian homo”, Robert Catalanello could have looked past their lifestyle differences and seen him as a co-worker and an equal.

Photo url: http://www.easyvegan.info/2009/07/09/sexy-meat-no-2-flirty-fish-and-beefy-chicken/

Adams, Carol J. The Sexual Politics of Meat: a Feminist-vegetarian Critical Theory. New York: Continuum, 1990. Print.

Bittman, Mark. “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler.” Nytimes.com. 27 Jan. 2008. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/weekinreview/27bittman.html&gt;.

Modern Thought: Analyzing ‘Avatar’

Avatar and the Organic Worldview

James Cameron’s Avatar is a commentary on the human condition and an attempt to challenge the master narrative that underlies much of the world today. The master narrative is currently that of mankind’s dominion over all other life forms and the exploitation of the earth’s resources for human benefit.  A prominent theme in Avatar is the glorification of the organic worldview, which is the tendency of a more primitive society to ascribe to the earth motherly characteristics, viewing it as a “beneficent, receptive, nurturing female.” (Merchant 42) In the case of Avatar, the organic worldview manifests itself as a deity called Eywa, who is to the Na’vi what Mother Nature is to humanity. The paradigm of the Na’vi is great reverence for the earth, as evidenced by their devastation at the destruction of the Tree of Voices. The funeral scene, wherein the Na’vi bury one of their recently deceased, reveals to the viewer their belief in life as a borrowed thing. This is consistent with the organic worldview, as, like a mother figure, Eywa births and nourishes all life forms with her energy.

The film challenges anthropocentric thinking by portraying many of the human characters as unlikeable and opportunistic. One of the central antagonists in Avatar is Parker Selfridge, the corporate administrator of the company that is attempting to conduct mining on the moon Pandora. Parker is staunchly adherent to the mechanistic worldview. Instead of seeing nature as a living, breathing entity, he sees rocks and trees as resources, not individual things. His entire rationale for being on Pandora is the acquisition of resources without regard for the sanctity of the forest, which the Na’vi value for all its complexity. At one point in the film, Parker angrily declares that he can “see a lot of trees, they can move,” in reference to the Na’vi’s unwillingness to leave their home.  Parker doesn’t see a tree as distinct from others of its kind, and the Na’vi’s worldview is “incompatible with the new ideals” he holds. (Merchant 45) When Grace challenges his atomism with a plea that the soil is a network of interconnected energy, he scoffs and asks the team what they’ve been smoking. Even Grace’s attempt at a reductionist explanation for the value of the trees will not sway Parker’s resolve to extract the resources. Her conviction that, biologically, the organic worldview held by the Na’vi is more than just superstition is met with hostility from those interested only in profit. Like many followers of the mechanistic worldview during the Enlightenment, Parker sees the world through a fog of utilitarianism. His cold and calculated rationalization of the murder of the Na’vi can be explained by his statement that, “killing the indigenous looks bad, but there’s one thing shareholders hate more than bad press- and that’s a bad quarterly statement.” This consequentialism neglects to take into account the feelings of the Na’vi, whose individuality the humans don’t acknowledge. Empathy with the natives of Pandora would be inconvenient, as the measures taken by the humans later in the film turn out to be ethically questionable. The humans in Avatar use dualism and racial slurs to lessen the plight of the Na’vi and to withhold from them the application of the narrative self. Parker himself calls them “blue monkeys” and states, “we try to give them medicine and education. Roads! But no — they like mud.” This dualism implies that their reverence for Eywa and their disinterest in human materialism equates them with savages.

In many ways Avatar is an attempt to unify the organic and mechanistic worldviews. By exploring the idea of the organic as “a network” through which information can be uploaded and downloaded, the mechanization of nature only reinforces its godlike complexity.

Feminism Misrepresented

One of the main queries people have about feminism today is where it all went wrong. My answer: It didn’t, and the movement has held up surprisingly well after being subjected to a 200-year smear campaign.

Photo: http://femlegaltheory.blogspot.com/

The first wave of the feminist movement gained momentum in the late nineteenth century with the goal of granting women the right to vote. The beginning of Women’s suffrage also saw the beginnings of the Antifeminist movement, which focused on feminism as the scapegoat for a number of social issues including, but not limited to: divorce rates, crime and homosexuality.  

Antifeminism has flourished in the Internet Age, as sites like jesus-is-savior.com and ladiesagainstfeminism.com attempt to redefine feminism as a coordinated attempt by women to undermine the family unit and defy their Biblical designations.

The attack on feminism employs the most extreme form of dualism, second only to the abortion debate.  Today we are unable to regard feminism without wondering whether it’s simply an outlet for the hatred of men.

Ladiesagainstfeminism.com states that they are antifeminist because they, “love femininity and are delighted to share the beauties of the womanly virtues with women all over the world.” This dualism implies that feminism is not only about male oppression, but about the rejection of the feminine. How has a political movement aimed at promoting equality become so misrepresented?

The article “Feminism is Evil! on jesus-is-savior.com attempts to equate feminism with heathenism by claiming that “it is IMPOSSIBLE for a wife to obey God if she doesn’t obey her husband, because God commands every wife to obey her husband.” This statement presents the subjectivity of women to men as the natural hierarchy. The same article then goes on to say that, “This is not to say that women are inferior to men, they certainly are not. Jesus said that His Father was “greater” than He (John 14:28); yet this did NOT make Jesus inferior in any way.”

A quote by Marilyn Frye as cited in Val Plumwood’s Feminism and the Mastery of Nature:

“For efficient subordination, what’s wanted is that the structure not only not appear to be a cultural artifact kept in place by human decision or custom, but that it appear natural, that it appear to be a quite direct consequence of the facts about the beast which are beyond the scope of human manipulation or revision.” (41)

Jesus-is-savior.com turns to that which is “beyond the scope of human manipulation or revision” in an attempt to justify (or avoid justifying) its outdated opinions.

http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Feminism/feminism_is_evil.htm (some offensive imagery)