Rewatching 'Earthlings' For the First Time Since Going Vegan

Aug 03, 2020

"Animals run no risk of going to Hell. They are already there."
-Victor Hugo

Origins

It was a cloudy, humid Wednesday, an impending rainstorm sure to come. I had come across something on Facebook that piqued my interest: an animal rights film. Despite the weather, I gathered my things, sat outside, and began to watch. Rain drizzled ever so lightly on and off and on again throughout that 90 minutes, but it didn't deter me; maybe the rain signified the release of something inside me, letting me shed my ignorance to finally understand the truth.

Aside from one particular scene, I could recall nothing from the film itself within weeks of watching it, but five years later, I still remember where I was, how I felt, and the decision I made afterward. There are flashes of imagery I could vaguely remember--something with piglets, chickens, dogs--and there were sounds so distressing that I had to force myself to unmute it and witness the violence. For years, I remained vegan after this disturbing experience, but aside from the unshakable truth that I knew it was wrong to exploit animals, I forgot everything else. I couldn't remember why I didn't eat eggs, but I knew that I shouldn't, though that made my convictions weaker, and I was fearful of being asked questions about what was so bad using animals.

Today, I will be revisiting the film that completely flipped my life upside down to share not only some of the animals' tales, but to explain why it's so important to remember the moments directly before, during, and after going vegan.

The Movie

For those who don't know, Earthlings is a 2005 animal rights documentary directed by Shaun Monson and narrated by Joaquin Phoenix; it is considered one of the most famous and groundbreaking films in the animal rights movement. Many vegans, myself included, cite this movie as the final step that helped them convert.

The film begins with a relation between speciesism and all other forms of discrimination and defines earthling for us: "one who inhabits the earth." We are all beings residing here on this planet together, and to claim that humans have some greater authority over all other earthlings is the most blatant and rampant form of discrimination ever committed by man.

You may think that movies like this would destroy my faith in humanity, in any hope for a future of animal liberation. But it doesn't. Sure, I feel anger for humans, particularly the ones committing violent acts in footage like this; there are even moments where I feel intense hatred for them. However, I also know that most of us are good, kindhearted people that want this kind of abuse to cease. After all, as mentioned at the start of the movie, the three stages of truth are ridicule, violent opposition, and acceptance; we just need to get people through to that last stage.

The Cow

25 minutes in, the scene I couldn't forget. A cow in a Kosher slaughterhouse. Trapped in a metal sphere, flipped upside down, her head locked in place. Her neck slit open. And the blood, spewing over the walls as her entire throat was exposed and then ripped out of her body; so much blood. For weeks, I saw this image whenever I closed my eyes, I thought about it when I was lying in bed at night. It took a long time for me to forget how traumatizing it was to see that. Cows have always been one of my favorite animals, and I wasn't prepared to see something so grotesque.

Generally, I'm not one to shy away from gore. I can enjoy bloody horror movies and can watch surgery videos without getting squeamish. It's not the gore or the realism that disturbs me. It's the very real, intentional violence and malice behind the acts that is most unsettling. When I watch a gory movie, it doesn't bother me because it's not real. And when I watch a vet amputating a cat's leg, I know they're doing that to save the animal. But when it comes to this, behaving so sadistically towards an innocent creature, the intended result is to kill them, not help them, and that's horrifying.

The Birds

Watching this time, I found the Poultry section most difficult to watch. I thought about how exploited these creatures are, how fragile their bodies are, how detested they are, how sensitive they are. I feel most guilty about my discrimination against chickens and turkeys before going vegan because I stopped eating pigs and cows many years before. But I deemed birds less worthy of life than them. And I thought back to that time in my life when I was first confronted with my speciesism and how shocked I was to see farmers beating birds and burning their beaks off. How prideful and ignorant I was to think I was morally superior for not abusing certain animals. I'm glad I finally saw the truth, and I'm a much better person because of it.

Protecting Loved Ones

As I watched, I found myself often looking over to Jolie, napping peacefully on the couch beside me. I rubbed her belly often, scratched her legs and head, more in attempts to comfort myself. Because what I really wanted was to reach into the screen in front of me and snatch those animals out of the hands of their abusers, to make them safe, to protect them. But, of course, I couldn't.

I worried about Jolie hearing the screams of piglets, the howls of elephants, and the blast of gunshots from the film before us; I didn't want her to be fearful of the sounds of suffering. I looked at her innocent face and imagined how painful--beyond painful, there aren't adequate words to describe the torture--it would be to see anything from that film happen to her. To see her strung up, neck sliced open and bleeding out; to see her stabbed by matadors and watch her body stiffen as the killing blow was dealt to her skull; to see her bashed with hooks to perform tricks in front of a screeching crowd. When you imagine these atrocities happening to someone you love, there's no way it can ever seem justified.

Overcoming Trauma

The way I have spoken about this film might make you never want to watch anything like it (not that you should ever want to watch something so disgusting in the first place). And I won't lie: it's a traumatizing experience to see it, particularly for the first time, and the shock never truly goes away. However, in this day and age, when we are so far removed from what happens to animals for our consumption, it is a trauma that we must face if we truly want to prevent it from continuing in the future.

Maybe you think I'm just a masochist, torturing myself with this footage out of a sense of guilt, but I can assure you that's not the case. I much prefer watching videos of rescued turkeys asking humans for hugs at a sanctuary than watching videos of their heads being sawed off. But the fact of the matter is that to not face the truth of what happens to animals is to deny reality. And even for vegans, when you don't occasionally remind yourself of animal abuse, it becomes far easier to accept that wool sweater for Christmas, or eat that cheese danish your coworker brought you, or take your rowdy nieces to the circus when they're in town. It's easier to rationalize that things aren't as bad as you initially thought they were. And that's true...because it's only getting worse.

be conscious, be kind, be vegan