Behaving As If The God In All Life Mattered

I try to avoid posting animal rights rantings. It's not because I want to ignore or downplay my own animal activist leanings, it's simply because the term "animal rights activist" is a loaded one. Our culture seems to view animal rights activists as PETA-worshiping, red-paint-throwing, angry social misfits. I don't think any of those adjectives can rightfully describe me. I'll fight for the animals in my own way, and it won't be by picketing the local KFC in a chicken suit, or by screaming violent (though witty) epithets at old blueblood broads who wear fur.

Several years ago, MacHaelle Small Wright wrote a wonderfully-titled book called "Behaving As If The God In All Life Mattered". The book is part autobiography and part intricate examination of the cooperative relationship between man and nature. Sound like a hippie-dippy, touchy-feely treatise on New Age concepts? Well, it's not. In fact, the book is smartly and sensitively written, and much of the ideas it explores border on quantum physics.

Ruminating on the title alone is a valuable lesson. How can each of us, in our own way, behave as if the God in all life was equal and worthy? What can we do to honor the divine spirit of commonality and communion we share with nature? How can we better recognize and respect the unspoken interplay of support and assistance provided us by the animal (and plant) kingdom?

Every day, I try to behave as if the God in all life matters, and when I see that others are not behaving the same way, I grow very, very upset. I am a work in progress; my sensitivity levels, especially when it comes to the treatment of animals, is extraordinarily high.

Now, anyone who knows me, or even anyone who might read this blog from time to time, understands that I love movies. To me, there is nothing that compares to experiencing a great filmed work of art. For decades now, we've grown accustomed to the United States Humane Society's slogan popping up at the end of nearly every movie out there: "No animals were harmed during the making of this motion picture." And it's true. The USHS meticulously monitors all animals involved in the production of a movie. There are on-set specialists from the USHS who follow every step an animal takes and records painstaking notes down to the finest detail. These specialists even have a power that usurps that of the director: they can yell "CUT!" at any moment during shooting if they suspect an animal being filmed is in some sort of danger. It's a noble, compassionate job.

Yet knowing, and greatly admiring, this, I find even feigned violence to animals on film to be tremendously disturbing. I know that realistically (and legally) no animals are ever put in danger in a motion picture, but images of animal violence are nonetheless upsetting for me to watch. It's interesting to note that I can watch people get their brains blown out left and right on a movie screen (though I don't relish that kind of violence either), but the second an animal is the subject of such violence, I sorta freak out.

I almost walked out of "Cold Mountain" when I saw it in the theater. There seemed to be such gratuitous and senseless animal slaughter in that movie. I'm still haunted by "Cold Mountain"'s crazy-ass old lady and the baby goat she ruthlessly, frighteningly, butchers in her lap. The other night, I nearly stopped watching "No Country For Old Men" for its scenes of animal cruelty. Even the brilliant "Brokeback Mountain" had entirely too much animal violence for my taste. With the exception of "Brokeback", the only thing I remember about these movies is how heartlessly they portrayed our animal friends, no matter how staged or how many "No animals were harmed during the making of this motion picture" blurbs. It's the violence, real or artificial, that stays with me.

But at the same time, I can rightfully be called a hypocrite. For all my animal-lovin', vegantastic ways, I knowingly walked into Lars Von Trier's film "Manderlay" with the knowledge that a donkey had been slaughtered for a particular scene. And not in Movie Magic Land, but in real life. "Manderlay" was filmed in Sweden, and Swedish film law allows for the butchering of animals for the sake of a movie...as long as there is a veterinarian on-set to euthanize the animal immediately afterward. Actor John C. Reilly walked off the set of "Manderlay" due to the donkey issue and was replaced. It was a powerful, brave, compassionate move on Reilly's part, and I salute him for it.

So why, then, did I put down my hard-earned money to see "Manderlay"? Well, I am a Lars Von Trier junkie, and I've fallen in love with every one of his movies. Even "Manderlay" (the donkey scene, incidentally, ended up on the cutting room floor in light of the controversy surrounding it, as LVT didn't want the issue to take away from the film's central story). To be honest, it troubles me to a distressing degree that I may have indirectly supported the slaughter of an innocent animal for the sake of entertainment. I don't think this is what MacHaelle Small Wright had in mind when she explored the partnership between people and animals. I'm not perfect. As I said earlier, I'm a work in progress.

I will say, though, in my own defense -- as well as Von Trier's -- that the donkey killed in "Manderlay" was an elderly one that had already been slated for slaughter. I take a small bit of solace in the fact that the animal might have met a more "humane" end by euthanasia, as opposed to buzz-saw. But this is a fact, not an excuse, and it doesn't make it right. Alice Walker once said that animals exist for their own reasons. In other words, that donkey was not put on earth to entertain me.

It's also interesting to wonder if "Manderlay"'s script had called for, say, a dog to be killed instead of a donkey, would I have still seen the movie? If so, would I have still loved it? Is the life of a dog, or a cat, or a hamster somehow more precious than the life of a donkey, or cow, or pig?

I don't have the answers, and the few I can come up with are complicated and fraught with contradiction. But I do know one thing. Before I sat down and watched "Manderlay", I said a little thank-you to that donkey: a brief moment of silence for a voiceless creature that had to die for the sake of art. His sacrifice was not in vain.