The Film "Earthlings"

Every week, the university faculty I am enrolled in sends emails about events related to their subject, environmental studies. One was about a screening for a film called "Eartlings" on campus today. I wanted to check it out, but the event time was late, so I decided to watch it on my own.

I was shocked by the movie. I didn't think it would be (warning: these may be spoilers) so bloody and violent. It was almost as shocking as the movies and videos about genocide presented back in high school. Animals being treated like things rather than living beings. Like cutting a rock into two pieces or stepping on well-made jello until it's almost nothing but liquid. It's so... cruel? Inhumane? I'm not sure if I have the right to say that because I live off products that humans take from animals. Throughout the film, I just kept imagining the animals as people. Not furries, but actual people. (No offense to the furries out there.)

I remember I wanted to become a vegetarian in my early teens. Meat just started to taste funny to me (though I believe it had more to do with my mother's cooking and her way of storing meat). I told my parents about wanting to not eat meat and they told me it'll never happen, because they won't let it happen. When I entered university, I tried to eat as little meat as possible. I thought all was going well with the grains and the veggies until I had a blood test and found out that I lost valuable nutrients in my body. My doctor told me to take iron pills and to eat vegetables high in iron and red meat more often. Red meat... from cows. When my parents found out about my eating habits, they just wouldn't stop offering me meat--BBQ meat from Chinese meat eateries like Shark's Fin City at Pacific Mall. My family doesn't eat Halal--they don't think about where our food comes from or how it was treated before getting to the dinner table. I was told "who cares about how your meat was treated. Meat is meat and you need it." No matter how much I try to convince them to think about where their food comes from, in the end, they don't really give a damn as long as it looks good and is affordable. I've pretty much given up convincing them to wonder.

Well, whatever. I'll just have to introduce halal, tofu and asparagus dishes later on as a regular lunch and dinner item. Though asparagus does make urine smell different...