Holocaust Didn't Happen ?
One can't really accuse animal rights activists of being logical. They recently had an incredible opportunity to engage the public in an extended discourse, but instead chose to threaten institutions, as if holding their fingers in their ears and yelling "the holocaust doesn't exist," would make it go away.
The venue was an "art" exhibit to be shown on Chestnut Street, where the "artist" video taped loops of animals being killed with a sledgehammer. These were mostly animals that are slaughtered by the thousands on a daily basis for food. An animal rights activist might describe this as mass murder, a holocaust, if you will, and at the extremes, some of them are willing to risk jail for their efforts to put an end to this killing.
More mainstream animal rights activists devote large sums of money to distribute gross pictures of animals being slaughtered. Some of the more obnoxious activists hang out in front of retail stores, where they're unwanted, and harass customers about the retailer's policy towards selling fur items.
But here was a perfect venue, an "art" exhibit *designed* to provoke controversy and dialogue. It would have been ideal for animal rights activists to post themselves outside the exhibit and convince viewers that vegetarianism is the way to go. Who wouldn't consider it, after watching loops of animals being killed with a sledgehammer? It would have been even better if the animals were eviscerated and eaten on film -- people need to see where their food comes from.
But the animal rights activists didn't see it this way. They only saw the horror, and felt they needed to stop it -- even if it was not as disgusting as their own literature, and provided a wonderful venue for reaching a new audience of potential recruits. The animal slaughter continues every day, but people shouldn't be allowed to see it -- unless it's in an animal rights brochure?!
So the show was cancelled. There was no dialogue, other than animal rights activists strangely not wanting people to see that animals get killed, and to realize that's how meat gets on their table. They called it "disgusting," and "not art." Though they may be right on both accounts, to remove it and prevent the dialogue is like removing all references to the holocaust because it was disgusting. Isn't the larger objective to make everyone more aware?
posted by James Lamb @ 8:37 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Good article.
Typical Animal rights reaction. "If we didn't organize or produce it we don't want people to see it"
I call that hypocritical.
The activists opposed the "art" because the "artist" killed animals in order to create it. Murder isn't art.
Notice both I and the commentor put "art" in quotes. The "artist's" "art" is no more art than is the animal rights brochures, and both could serve the same purpose. Heck, the animal rights people could even make a buck off the exhibit, just like they do from their brochures, by soliciting donations outside the gallery. Pictures and writing about the holocaust may not be "art," but can make the artist famous and earn them a living. Should they all be banned? I would bet that every animal killed in the video was later eaten, just like every animal in the animal rights brochure (unless it was daringly rescued?)?
Hang on, was the artist (no quotes) *killing* animals for an art installation? Or did he document, as part of his installation, images of the kinds of killings that go on millions of times a day?
I agree completely with Jim that drawing our attention to these things - which are daily, and commonplace, but yet so well-hidden in an industrial/consumer society - is a healthy thing. We should see this: even more, art can be at its best when it is transgressive.
My understanding is that the artist was killing the animals himself. I didn't see the exhibit, because the activists shut it down before I could make a better informed opinion.
Now, I agree that there's a difference between killing animals just so you can document it and call it art, versus, documenting the killing of animals and putting it in a brochure.
However, my larger sense was the animals were going to be killed and eaten, and the artist said, "let me do it, and let me film it." Does this make the artist worse than the other person who would have killed the animal? Maybe in the sense that he has an urge to kill, however, I don't think that was the motivation nor point.
I think the point is that the animals are getting killed on a regular basis. In our culture, this is hidden away and shrouded in secrecy (tight security), in other cultures, it happens out in the open. In our culture, meat somehow magically appears without any pain and suffering. This is my spin on the dialogue that should occur, the dialogue that was squelched by the animal rights activists.
Whether or not it's "art" is an entirely different question, and one the censors feel we're not entitled to answer for ourselves.
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