On Empathy, Images and Activism
How cool is that?
It got me thinking . . .
When I watched Earthlings I said to myself: Who the heck is going to watch this film through? It’s devastatingly disturbing! It was around that time that I came down against graphic, grisly images in the service of animals. It was a personal preference, yes, but I also wondered how effective such images were in changing people’s hearts, minds and behavior.
Since that time, I’ve become more aware of the influence of emotions in decision making. Factor in the above video (and I’ve ordered the book), and I might be altering my position on grisly images. After four years of blogging, I’ve reached the core mystery for me: What makes people change their behavior, particularly when their minds are already on board with a certain message? And if we don’t know the answer to that, perhaps refusing to use a potentially useful tool does not due justice to the cause. There very well might be a level of exposure to gore–a kind of plateau–where it ceases to continue to be effective. If there is such a thing I’d like to know about it and how it was established.
This reminds me of what was unfortunately called “The Hamburger Movie” in high school. This was the film presented during Driver’s Education that showed horrifying footage from automobile accidents, including those that involved drivers under the influence of alcohol. The point was to shock us into paying attention and not engaging in risky behavior. The visuals accompanying the stories and the lessons made for a powerful message for young people whose brains weren’t yet fully capable of understanding consequences and making appropriate decisions. I don’t recall one fatal or even near-fatal automobile accident at that time in my town. Though I suppose I cannot imply causation, I also cannot say the film didn’t play a part in the absence of serious accidents.
If you think about film as a medium (visual, emotional, action, conflict out in the world) and you think about animal rights, meaning the desire for animals to have the right to their own lives, animal rights doesn’t easily lend itself to film. But when you think about animal welfare, now that’s a topic that’s tailor made for film. You could make a film about animal welfare without any talking whatsoever; you don’t even need a story. But it would be far more difficult to make a film about animal rights. Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home is an (/the only?) animal rights film and what makes it work are the stories of how the people changed as a result of their growing discomfort with what they did for a living or what they saw happening around them. And in order to show–not just tell–those stories, images of what was happening around them were necessary. There are some disturbing images, but they are appropriate and necessary to the story. They are largely what provide the opportunity for complete “buy-in” by the audience. But there’s balance there; you don’t feel assaulted at the end of the film.
When it comes to a quick illustration of a topic (not a feature-length film), animal welfare wins hands down. Other than imagery that makes a comparison to slavery, I can’t think of anything that, in a couple of seconds, presents an animal rights message. Animal rights is at a disadvantage because it’s not about treatment.
Finally, we don’t know how frequently people who view graphic images about animal treatment then go on to go vegan. And we don’t know that presenting images of treatment prevents anyone from progressing to animal rights. What we do know is that we should try to offer as many points of entry into the conversation about justice for sentient nonhumans as possible until we have evidence that some tactic or another doesn’t get people thinking and evolving.
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Thanks to Animal Person reader Porphyry for directing me to the RSA Animate series.
Stephanie Ernst
Marji
Kelly G.
Deb
Mary Martin
i became vegetarian after watching “food inc” (which is a disney film compared to “earthlings”) and eventually vegan after watching a bonus feature on colleen patrick goudreau’s cooking dvd. so the disturbing images that i exposed myself to definitely made enough of an impact on me to change my lifestyle. i couldn’t even get through the trailer of “earthlings.” i’ve always known i wanted to go vegetarian, and even wanted to scare myself into it. before i did, i wrote myself a note that i carried in my purse that read “want to stop eating meat? watch ‘earthlings.’” i find all this fascinating now.
i’ve always wanted to watch “peaceable kingdom.” thanks for the link.
~wendy
http://conradvisionquest.wordpress.com/
Come to think of it, even the RSA film itself was an attempt to reach all kinds of people coming from all sorts of places. It had a mix of the reassuring voice of an authority figure who was credible to older generations and cleverly drawn fast-paced visuals that appealed to the younger crowd; a mix of B&W and color; a mix of gave local examples (northern vs southern Italy) and and a generalized look at people the world over. Each of us is bound to fit into the spectrum of past/present/future orientations somewhere or other!
Personally, I cannot watch any gore, much less read about it. After getting an early dose of violence-toward-animals from some PETA films, I can no longer let the horrors into my thinking and feelings, because it’s too hard to erase the mental images. When I’m emotionally overwrought, I’m unable to hear the little voice within that directs me to make rational, intelligent, wise decisions and that helps me see and respond to others’ needs with fear-calming love. I don’t mean that it’s right for me to be oblivious of day-to-day events on the world stage, just that I need to take care not to be sucked into watching the bad actors and believing that this is their true, set-in-cement nature (it isn’t!).
I like your short and sweet definition of AR: the right of animals to their own lives. I also think the rights of human Americans enshrined in our Declaration of Independence ought to be legally guaranteed to every animal: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Haven’t seen PK: The Journey Home yet, but looking forward to the DVD!
I watched the first 20 minutes of Earthlings then stopped. I’ve seen so many gorey videos, films, & pictures in my 20 years as a veg*n that I choose now not to expose myself to those images.
But… when I was 16, I had ordered a few videos from PeTA to do a school project on animal testing. I was horrified by what I saw, so I ordered more: factory farming, pet trade, abuse, etc.. Every once in a while now I will watch a quick video someone posts, but usually I choose not to. I’m already vegan, all it does is upset me.
Wow, your blogs are the best reading of my whole day. Thank you! I really appreciate your focus on evidence here. We need more folks to sign on to test our strategies.
I forced myself to watch Earthlings. I felt that it’s my privilege to turn away from those images.
Mary,
This is such a great post and fits in well with your recent ones at Animal Person about what you’ve learned from four years of blogging.
I think what might be a partial answer is to think back…tracing ones steps so to speak, and really notice what it was that changed in you that made you go vegan.
For me it was just reading something about moral philosophy that triggered the idea for me to go veg. However, it was graphic photos of slaughterhouses and animal’s being killed in the pages of Animals Voice magazine that kicked me into the brutality and reality of animal use and veganism as my response. I have not looked back since.
I would bet we all have similar stories of how we went vegan. Indeed, everyone has their own journey and reasons for the transformation yet I think retracing… what it was ‘exactly’ that moved you…will help find the answer to what will move others as well.
Amazing video!
Very thought provoking post! I’ve often wondered what inspires people to make huge changes in their lives, and I’ve often discussed the drawbacks to the gory clips of animal use and abuse in that they might make people think stricter rules about treatment might be the answer.
But I can never discount the power behind those gory clips because it is one of them that made me and my husband go from bacon inhaling omnivores to vegans in 10 minutes. Meet your Meat did the trick. It put imagery in my head that I have never been able to forget and it made us both die hard vegans from that instant.
But for me it was never about treatment. I jumped straight to the point of ALL killing being wrong, no matter how ‘kindly’ it was done. That one video had driven home the point that these animals had LIVES that they were being denied. The brutality was horrifying and heart breaking, obviously, but wrapped up in that was the clear message that taking anyone’s life needlessly was wrong. Hopefully it sends that message to a lot of people.
Hi Mary,
Wonderful video and post! I’m not sure what to think about using graphic imagery to get others to go vegan. It worked for me. I went straight to veganism in a matter of 2 minutes after seeing the horrendous footage in a DVD that came with a book I bought called, The RAVE (its an acronym) Diet. The friend who recommended the book to me, and watched the same DVD, is not vegan or vegetarian and always tells me how much she LOVES milk, and could never live without it. I always wonder how the hell she can continue on after seeing those images?!
I was lucky enough to find the Vegan Freak Podcast days after I became vegan, which helped to shape my understanding of animal rights vs animal welfare. I’m sure it is also common for new vegans or vegan sympathizers to get on the “welfare bus”. I look forward to seeing Peaceable Kingdom. Thank you so much for your wonderful blog.
Thank you SO VERY MUCH for posting this video. It gave me all the hope in the world!
You might be interested in a discussion on this very topic going on in the Vegan Freaks Forums:
http://veganfreaks.net/forum/showthread.php?t=31156
I’ve also written a blog post discussing Earthlings:
http://chimeraschimeras.blogspot.com/2010/04/earthlings-not-as-egalitarian-as-youd.html
I don’t think graphic torture videos can be effective in changing skeptics. The only people I’ve seen them have an effect on are already sensitive towards animals and willing to do something for them, and even then it’s rarely straightforward veganism because of the focus on treatment. Emotions can play an important role in converting people but they need to give positive reinforcement along with the negative reinforcement to, as you said, balance it and not turn people off, and have to be used alongside logic to silence the skeptics.
Oh, and I wanted to add that much as I was interested in the video, its continual usage of the male pronoun, using the word ‘man’ to refer to the whole human race and using only men in the illustrations really turned me off. We’ve already got enough male being the default in our androcentric culture without progressive movements adopting it as well.
FYI: Check out Ginny Messina’s “Empathy, Intelligence and the Vegetarian Brain” at http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-5670-Vegan-Examiner~y2010m6d1-Empathy-intelligence-and-the-vegetarian-brain
Someone I know told me he watched “Earthlings” and, as a result, no longer eats mammals. I’m trying to understand, why only mammals!?! Erik Marcus says, with good reason, that if you’re going to give up eating only one kind of animal, not eating poultry will mean the greatest reduction in cruelty (in terms of the number of individual lives and, I believe, the grossest cruelty overall). Peoples’ reactions when their habits are challenged never fail to surprise me.
I don’t see Earthlings as an animal welfare movie at all. It is all about not using/abusing other species for any reason.
Ten billion animals are slaughtered each year for human consumption in the U.S. alone. I don’t know the numbers we kill in laboratories, or for fur, or in the exotic pet trade, etc…
All of this is neatly kept from the public eye. “Out of sight, out of mind”. Lets work together to keep this information (with powerful images) out in the light where everyone can see it.
Please don’t turn away. What good is a silent and invisible vegan?
Chimera,
I just don’t hear where Rifkin ever says “man” in reference to humankind. He describes both a monkey and a scientist as “he” in an anecdotal story. He refers to a generic child as recognizing “himself” in a mirror, but only once, and reverts to gender-neutral descriptions. In another experiment anecdote he mentions “a man,” dropping clothing in front of children and refers to “him” as a “he.” He is gender specific when discussing the mitochondrial Adam and Eve and mentions the DNA of “ladies” who didn’t make it, and he does call the Apollo astronauts “our boys.” Those are fairly specific use of gender in context.
Otherwise, Rifkin is remarkably gender-neutral throughout his entire fifty-minute speech. He refers to humans, human beings, human race, our species, other creatures, fellow creatures, others, people, they, their, we, and one.
When he talks about babies, children, and animals he doesn’t use “he” or “she,” “his” or “her” or even “it” or “its.” He is even consistent to call early humans “forager/hunters” as opposed to the inveterate “hunter/gathers” that puts the emphasis on the male associated importance of hunting (or the even more dubious “cavemen.”) As far as my ears can tell Rifkin never says “man” or even “mankind” when referring to all humanity.
You may be taking issue with the illustrator, who drew male characters, but they are cartoons, the very term implies gross simplification and exaggerated stereotyping. The animator probably didn’t receive much, if any, direction from Rifkin since the RSA sponsored the animation and he’s done others films for other speakers.
Please give a listen to the full audio without the animation; the androcentric accusation you made against Rifkin just isn’t there.
Thanks for posting the video Mary, I’m glad you found it worthwhile to post about.
To those that appreciated the ideas in the ten-minute video, the full, unedited fifty-minute unanimated speech can be found here.
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2010/the-empathic-civilisation
I highly recommend giving the full talk an active listen. It goes into better detail on Rifkin’s solutions to climate change and how it relates to our development as an empathic, global species. You might want to grab the audio and throw it on your mp3 player if you don’t want to sit watching at your computer. It’s just a speech; there are no multimedia images anyway.
I wasn’t enthusiastic about how the initial blog discussion of the video was framed, but I passed it towards Mary because I was genuinely curious of her reaction, she was the first person I thought of after I watched it. I was hoping to get more feedback on the core content not just focus on the delivery. Perhaps she is being prudent by holding final analysis until after she reads the book.
As for content delivery, it is a fair venue to think about, since transmission of ideas, and receptivity of ideas, does have a lot to do with empathy.
The animation is captivating or course, but even Jeremy Rifkin’s full lecture delivers a very hopeful message without the visual tool. I’ve been consuming other RSA lectures on issues of climate change and peak oil and let me tell you, they are very, very grim. We’re doomed. We need to change. We can’t possibly change even if we wanted to, but most of us don’t want to. One guest speaker even commented on the constant un-motivating bad news by saying that Martin Luther King Jr. did not inspire people by saying, “I have an nightmare.”
Rifkin starts off with the doom and gloom but quickly shifts gears and spends much of the time building up his vision of change and making it feel so very close to within our grasp. We can have it. It’s almost inevitable. It’s innate in us even. We just have to want it.
As for shocking images and how it relates to empathy and action, Jeremy Rikin said:
“We have the technology that allows us to extend the central nervous system and to think viscerally as a family, not just intellectually. When that earthquake hit Haiti, and then Chile, but especially Haiti. Within an hour the Twitters came out and within two hours some cell phone videos: YouTube. And within three hours the entire human race was in an empathic embrace coming to the aid of Haiti.”
The problem is still how to get people to necessarily care about grisly animal footage in a way that we would like them to? People may not care, they may deflect the scenes with excuses “those are the worst examples, not the norm,” or go down the path of conditional treatment.
Also, there is a certain percent of the population, that’s larger than we suspect, where horrific images will reinforce their entrenched perspective. Chaos in Haiti? “Well, what else would you expect from those people?” Gruesome slaughter videos? “There’s a reason we are at the top of the food chain.”
A large part of what makes meat eating attractive is the violence, and oppression, it’s a big reason why it’s so entwined with strength and masculinity, and a person doesn’t have to be male to think so. I don’t entirely agree with the premise that meat eating and using animals is “hidden” to society at large. On a base level the dominion, wastefulness, and bloodshed is the whole point.
There are other campaigns that use gruesome images. The anti-smoking ads with depictions of all sorts of negative health outcomes associated with the activity. There are anti-soda ads in New York that show clumps of fat plopping into a cup to associate it with obesity. I wonder how effective these messages are or if there is even a way to objectively evaluate their impact. Also, besides these types of campaigns being related to health they come off not so much as honest and informative but as scaremongering and nannying,
Regarding Earthlings, I read Chimera blog post regarding the welfare language in Earthlings, and I have to agree , it’s not a clear non-use message. (I’m not a member of VeganFreak forum so I can’t read or comment on that material.)
I’ve always thought that there certainly is a time and a place for graphic images to arouse social change. Just don’t ask me what the appropriate time and place is, and please don’t ask me to be the one to show those images. Graphic imagery is risky for a lot of reasons, especially if context isn’t established and people just aren’t ready to be receptive.
I’d like to think that ideas and speeches like Rifkin’s would be motivating enough. I found his the content of his lecture, and his tone, very inspiring (the animation is cool too), but I’m probably receptive to those sorts of ideas in the first place. I don’t really have a gauge on how a typical person, or a person on an opposite spectrum than myself would react. I do know that Rifkin does tend to be dismissed as somewhat of as unscientific, polemical crackpot with his “bizarre” concepts of empathy and environmentalism.
Ginny Messina’s article and the research it alluded to was more in the direction where I hoped the discussion would go (though I see how it relates to media like Earthlings). The neurological findings are important and open up many questions. The large question is what makes some of us seemingly more emphatic than others, in a way that is imperative and becomes behavior? Basic inquiry: do empathic people become vegan, or does internalization of veganism make people more empathic? Probably both, no reason it’s an either/or situation. But can this empathy be cultivated and increased? Is there a way to tap it? Do shocking images help? Seems like Rifkin thinks we’re on the right path through our networked technology, but is there a way to push it along a bit more quickly?
Porphyry,
On carefully scrutinising the video again, I see your point. Yes, I think the problem is with the illustrations and not the narrator. But I didn’t accuse Rifkin specially, my problem was with the video itself. It’s funny how much images affect our understanding; the illustrations all use men and at one point use the word ‘man’ to refer to humans and that was what registered with my brain. Excusing Rifkin, I still wouldn’t excuse the people responsible for the video who could have made it gender-inclusive but didn’t.
There are two differences between anti-smoking ads and nonhuman torture videos:
Firstly, torture videos are all scenes of particular tortures; places exist where, in the eye of the average viewer, the situation is not so bad. In smoking, the health effects are universal and whether your case is worse than others depends entirely upon factors that are beyond your control.
Secondly, in the eye of the average viewer, the suffering in the particular torture method can be reduced, it can be made ‘humane’, while there is no fixed method to reduce the ill effects of smoking except quitting smoking forever.
It was the initial sight of a pig in a cage that changed me “instantly” from uninformed “vegetarian” to animal rights activist. In that moment I grasped completely an unfairness I had been blinded to. I think that most vegans begin their journey with a video or with photos of victims… There is something about visually seeing with one’s own eyes that allows the reality of it all to come to light.
I do think the internet and computers have created “glass walls” and social awareness towards All who are exploited. This is cause to hope for an empathetic civilization… Even if the masses go towards it kicking and screaming. Clockwork Orange anyone? :/
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