Earthlings-First Draft

Earthlings

Mr. Garrioch / English Composition

Assignment #2 - Earthlings

111150 Ho InHee

Earlier this year, one of the Korea’s biggest food companies had to suffer the lowering of sales. In one of its products, Korean Food and Drugs Administration detected 140,000germs per gram, surpassing the standard with 14 times. People demanded a refund. The company consequently announced its plan to go off stream and recalled 24,030 boxes of products. And few months later, the company released a new version of product, dramatically depleting germs. Apparently, the company couldn’t break away from low sales.

Dreadful images are to stay longer in one’s memory. Astounding news that a number of germs were found in a largely-consumed chocolate appalled the majority, making people be reluctant to buy the products. Even after this product was renewed, the dreadful image of the chocolate company remained for long. A film Earthlings [2005], directed by Shaun Monson, utilizes this fact well for depicting humanity issues. It uses graphic and impressive pictures to accuse unpleasant truth about humanity.

Earthlings is criticized for this aspect-appealing merely to pathos. Earthlings doesn’t stop in portraying this current state by using footages of animal caging, facilitating, and slaughtering but features Rodeos, zoos, scientific research laboratories. Most of footages the film uses make people disgusted and feel self-abhorrent. Shocked, people may pledge not to consume meats and leather products. Many viewers express their impressions on this film on blogs, websites, and even on YouTube through videos. A predominant number of after-notes indicate persuasion about human evilness and boycotting animal products. But does this persuasion actually remain long? Emotions weaken in intensity with time. A death of family member leaves oneself a deep despair. He or she might not be able to handle emotions well and have many impulse of grieves accordingly. He or she might even gain depression. But this despair doesn’t last life-long. As that person gets on in years, he or she becomes more insensible to the death. One may find a vestige of grief when he or she recalls a death of sister few years ago but doesn’t lose control. Logic, on the other hand, remains longer. Once a person is convinced by logos, unless the logic is proven to be wrong, the person usually sticks to the logic for rest of his or her life. But with only pathos, Earthlings doesn’t so efficiently convey its theme.

   

But Earthlings raises another issue: are humans merciless and selfish only to animals? There is a term called [The Law of the Jungle]. This law supposes that in nature, might makes right. It is the strongest who is to survive. This law, recently, is not only applied to survival but also to benefit.  Speciesism can be seen in such aspect-that humans are making unfair profits over animals which are less strong than humans. But are people only taking advantage over animals? Consider social Darwinism and how Earthling features this philosophy. Butchers cut pigs’ throats, dog catchers beat stray dogs to death, and zookeepers and conveniently domesticate zoo animals. The film doesn’t spend too much time featuring wealthy, prosperous people consuming manufactured goods; in fact, it spends few good seconds showing leather jacket consumers in an instant. The rest of the film displays manufacturers who practice barbaric exploitation for their livelihood. Other people not included in this manufacturing process with big purchasing power consume these goods with little perception. Take Indian cowhide industry for instance. Young boys handle big cows, too big for lanky bodies to hold up. For Indian boys, exploiting cows is the only way to keep themselves off hunger. Cow abuse of these boys is clearly differs from complicating in this abuse by squandering money into buying leather jackets. Leather jacket consumers certainly have thousands of other clothes to wear. It is their choice to buy a leather jacket obtained by indigent Indian boys’ sweat and innocent cows’ blood. However, the film dismisses the question of whether it is the Indian boys’ fault to abuse cows or not. Footage of a new trainer in circus being chastised for not being atrocious enough arises this question once more. For sure, India, which ranks 165 out of 227 countries for GDP per capita, and the new recruit in circus unit are comparatively powerless entities exploited by the powers. Director Shaun Monson, on this wise, disregards [The Law of the Jungle] within human society and focuses exclusively on the destitute poor who have no alternative but to exploit animals for livelihood.

It is hard to deny that Earthlings leaves an intense afterimage. The film may make people feel self-abhorrent and want to be a vegetarian for a while. But Earthlings cannot be free from the blame of obsessively appealing to emotions. With applausable intention, the director solely focuses on arousing people’s emotion with dreadful images. This eventually leads people to have brief contemplation and introspection. But merely arousing emotion is definitely insufficient to move people in a long term. The director ought to use more logic and hard evidence in order to exert deep influence on the majority. Lack of evidence also causes blurring of the main theme. Overabundant use of graphic images raises the question of Darwinism within human community, as shown above. Shaun Monson has to have profound evidence for clear and effective conveyance of Earthling’s theme: stop terrorizing animals.