Earthlings Ver.2

Earthlings: Sure, what a SUCCESSFUL film!

         Earthlings is a 2005 documentary about the cruelty of humanity’s use of animals as pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and subjects for scientific research. The film aims to conjure up misanthropy in its viewers, and it does so successfully towards most of the innocuous viewers. The film embarks ambitiously with Schopenhauer’s three stages of truth, and ends with petty emotional appeal devoid of reason and supportive evidence. Simply put, Earthlings is closer to a vegan promotion video in disguise than an actual documentary film. This is due to the fact the message the film tries to deliver cannot be delivered in a "documentary" film.

           Perhaps the most serious error the film commits is its overdependence on pathos. With a touch of hyperbole, it can be said the film uses only the pathos as its mode of persuasion. Pathos, a technique in communication which appeals to emotions of the audience, is an effective way of expressing the director’s intentions. However, in a documentary film whose obligation is to enrich its audience with objective knowledge to enable them to give their opinion about the issue, pathos should be avoided. The film has a very simple structure – in fact, it does not comprise logical steps – of showing disgusting scenes of cruelty done to the animals, one after the other. The director Monson throws around some little numbers to formulate a correlation between the graphic scenes of the film and the injustice. But the reaction of the audience viewing the film is  not due to the statistics, but due to the graphical scenes. In a sense, the film seems to appeal to the authority – ethos – by inserting footages of slaughter in a slaughterhouse and the scene of elephant taming in a circus tent. However, the director explicitly adapts only the most aversive scenes of the situation to slander the system altogether as sets of inhumane methods done to animals. Needless to say, there exists no logical structure in the film more than juxtaposing of five parts, where each of the parts is another juxtaposition of visual violence.

           Another flaw in the film is its superficiality. The film comprises five parts of humanity’s injustice done to the “animal friends,” namely “Pets, Food, Clothing, Entertainment, and Research.” With sufficient amount of investigation, each one of the five parts can be made into different documentaries in depth. For instance, systemization of food production bears much more serious issues than the apparent process of killing the animals, which may distraught the audience. Inferior conditions of animals in slaughterhouse and deadly disease, such as influenza, as ramification of such conditions are heavy topics that must appear as a relevant issue. Additionally, as the film advocates nature, humans, and animals are all Earthlings, the film ought to cover the harmful consequences of poor systemization towards the environment and the fellow human beings. But instead, the director Monson chose to forcefully fit in all five parts into a less-than-two-hours less-than-a-mockumentary film. As a result, only the graphic violence is left in the audience after the film, and it has a provisional effect of turning some of the audience into a vegan. However, it is only provisional as the new vegans would have no idea what they are advocating, which was not presented in the film.

           Lastly, the film does not fully understand the subject of its content. In other words, director does not know what he is talking about. I, as an audience myself, could not give a direct refutation towards error of the film, although it was clear the falsely misanthropic documentary was far from being objective. The last part about the animal research, however, explicitly revealed the ignorance of the film and reduced its integrity and validity as a documentary film. The film argues that the results of the animal research cannot be applied to humans whatsoever, a complete fallacy which demeans most of the experimental researchers. For instance, http://www.mofed.org/Animal_Research.htm describes how animal research was successful in eradicating various deadly diseases that were otherwise untreatable. This lack of professional knowledge can be deemed as a reflection how this film would be effective only towards the audience equally ignorant as the director. 

              Apart from the fact that it is a documentary film and the responsibilities it bears as one, Earthlings is a very well-made film. It does a succinct yet very powerful job in advocating its argument. However, the very argument it tries to convey is not rational. The main aspect Earthlings tries to criticize in modern day animal treatments is not treatments themselves but the systemization of the process.  However, living in a tightly organized society, such systemization is inevitable to ensure a stable survival of the mankind. In this sense, it is reasonable to oppose the mindless tortures of animals for the sake of entertainments. Nevertheless, the crippled aspects of the documentary that is against the essential interests of the mankind break the film as a whole. Hence, while Earthlings is a very successful film indeed, it is a poor documentary and it does not assume its burdens as one. 

Oh, and where's the part about nature?