I just watched the live-action movie “Peter Rabbit” with my kids. This is the remake of the original Beatrix Potter book. It’s been a long time since I’ve read the book so I can’t say where the two diverge. This article however covers just what I saw in the movie.
In summary, Peter Rabbit leads raids of a garden owned by farmer McGregor, in the English Countryside. For added tension and a backstory, Peter’s parents where killed and eaten by the farmer and so Peter has a grudge and a purpose. Peter and family are cared for by the farmer’s neighbor, a kind of hipster, artist named Bea. One day, Peter leads a raid on the garden and farmer McGregor dies of a heart attack in all the excitement. A quick side observation, the eating montage they use to show what contributed to the heart attack was pretty spot on! At least they blamed the beer and pastries and not steak and eggs. The story then becomes about farmer McGregor’s nephew, an uptight city boy, who inherits the property. The young McGregor and Bea meet, hit it off, Peter gets jealous and hilarity ensues. As most love stories go, there is the falling out and the complex middle and then the happy ending. In the end, everyone is together and the property and garden are shared.
It’s a cute story and I can’t honestly say I disliked the movie but I guess I have a different perspective now. All I could think about is how the original villain in the movie, farmer McGregor, is simply a property owner who’s protecting his garden from the wildlife eating it. A farmer, who’s farming, is the villain for not allowing wildlife to take what they please and for defending what might very well have been his livelihood. Who am I kidding, small gardens are apparently a hobby to be shared, our food comes from large mono-cultures and giant, steam-emitting factories miles away, out of sight. At least the kind, hipster neighbor Bea doesn’t regard farmer McGregor as some kind of monster, she just thinks he’s an old fuddy duddy that hasn’t yet warmed to the “inter-species sharing economy”. I know, I’m overthinking a movie about anthropomorphic rabbits but it implies a message that bothers me. The message bothers me because I am relating it to people’s behavior in the real world, which seems to come from a warped perspective on how humans get their food.
Very recently I’ve seen people refer to a diet as “cruelty-free” and sit on a soap box trumpeting signals of virtuousness. I love the idea of not being cruel to any life form but this idea of cruelty-free seems to imply nothing died for this person’s diet choices. This idea that nothing dies when we eat is completely overlooking where our food comes from, where we’ve come from, how we’ve evolved as a species and what it means to be human. I think this idea of a cruelty-free diet displays an unhealthy shift in perspective that is born in the very recent opulence of the First World, that humans somehow no longer compete with other species for food. It’s as if in the backs of our minds we think human food is magic’d from processing plants or that humans on every continent aren’t still dependent on killing other animals to sustain themselves. Even if you can afford to not eat an actual animal, there is a farmer out there raising the fruit and vegetables that you will eat, that is having to defend it against a great many other species trying to eat it as well. Animals will do as they will do, they eat to survive. If they park their lives near a garden or fields of grain they will not only survive, they will thrive. The farmer will then use the method to defend his crops that results in the least cost in time and resources so that he may spend the majority of his time growing the food, being with his family and well, being a human. It just so happens that the most practical method to defend the food is to kill the animals competing for it. Yes, many living things will die trying to eat some lettuce that’s destined for a super market, some of them will actually be cute too. Fortunately, they will unlikely be walking, talking, jacket-wearing bunnies like Peter’s dad. Perhaps the impact is lost on people because it’s impossible to truly quantify the scale but large numbers of mice, rats, rabbits, deer, birds, insects and other species are killed to preserve plant food that will be sold and eaten by humans. There is no way around this that I can think of. Competing species are purposefully shot, trapped or poisoned. Even if you eat just vegetables, there is absolutely a ripple effect that results in an uncountable number of living creatures losing their habitat, starving or being killed, as a direct consequence of you sustaining your own life. If this is unavoidable, why follow the diet choice in the first place? I realize that some believe there is a human health justification for following a “cruelty-free” diet as well, which I strongly oppose, but that is for another movie review.
Now, I understand part of being human is also bearing the weight of uniquely possessing both compassion and empathy (most of us anyway) which makes us come into conflict with instincts from time to time. Eating should not be one of these conflicts. Every living thing on this planet eats some other species, be it plant or animal. Non-human species don’t constantly attempt to justify their own existence (that I am aware of) and why should we? I do agree that because of our developed mental capacity it would be a reasonable and responsible thing to do to promote ourselves to caretakers of the Earth and to make as little impact as (humanly) possible but going against what is nature to make a wishy-washy attempt to preserve the lives of unthreatened species seems absurd. To me, the cruelty-free label is just some kind of self-defense, a human repackaging of self-loathing into a stroke of one’s own ego. What makes it infinitely worse is that it’s broadcasted to belittle others into following the same path.
Having the combo of compassion and empathy may be uniquely human and it’s clearly a burden to some in this case, so unless you decide you wish to live your life in self-loathing, the only reasonable option is to focus your perspective and live life acknowledging that you are human and something dies to feed you.