#291 Watch Earthlings
I’ve heard about the movie Earthlings for awhile. No it’s, not a high octane action movie about the people of Earth banding together to fight a seemingly insurmountable advancing horde of alien Hippos. It’s a documentary narrated by Joaquin Phoenix about how we treat animals like shit.
I had also heard it was one of those movies that shows in gory, graphic details all the atrocities humans inflict on animals. I’ve seen some gross clips on the internet of animal torture/abuse and they’ve always been hard for me to watch. Since I was sick, I thought an “easy” scary thing to do would be to watch this movie. I had, after all, watched The Human Centipede 2.
You can watch the entire movie for free online so I settled back with a shot of NyQuil and started to watch. The following is an approximation of my internal monologue during the viewing. The movie was divided into 5 chapters: pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research.
Ok. Nothing bad so far. I can do this.
This is fine- oh shit. Did they just kill that pig?
Still doing fine. Saw a few gross things but I’ll be ok.
Fuck. They’re starting off with pets?
But I would never buy from a puppy mill don’t show me that - DAMNIT!
Ok, made it through that. I’m only mildly weeping.
Oh god. Animals as food. Here we go.
MOTHER OF GOD NO! NO! JUST NO!
So… much… blood…
Is that pig really- HE IS!
JESUS CHRIST.
I’m never eating meat again. Except bacon. And sausage. And steak. But that’s it. Really.
What next? I must have seen the worst. Clothing?
No… don’t show me that. I don’t even wear fur!!!!
They just skinned that animal alive. I quit the human race.
I need a shot of NyQuil to finish this.
Now to entertainment…
Again, I don’t like circuses at all so don’t - NO!
Can’t take much more of this. I feel like I’ve run a marathon.
Animal experiments… for the love of God AHHHHHH!!!
HELL TO THE NO.
And it’s over. I need some serious eye bleach.
So overall, Earthlings was a pretty horrifying experience but it’s probably something that everyone should see. It’s important to know where your food, clothing etc comes from. If you’re fine with the possibility that your food/clothing etc came from a place like the ones in this documentary, then so be it.
Now granted, Earthlings was a bit sensationalistic. There are places out there that are more responsible in the way they handle animals. The problem is that our appetite for animals is too high. We don’t need to eat that much meat. Meat should be an occasional food item. If we reduce our consumption of animal products, then maybe the places that have terrible practices like the ones shown in the movie will die out. Everything is driven by money.
And the final lesson learned is that real life horror is always scarier than The Human Centipede 2. But it’s close.
