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Thursday, September 22, 2011

An obvious conclusion ignored...

In the well done movie Contagion , currently playing in theaters, we are given a look at a potentially deadly problem. The ending presents an obvious conclusion and solution. This conclusion and solution is apparently eluding reviewers and probably most audience members too.

It is serendipitous that I attended this movie right after the previous post. Once again in a movie we are presented with violence toward animals that is ignored and invisibled but in this movie we are given the clear and compelling information that killing and then handling the corpses of the murdered animals is inviting diseases to jump from the victims to the murderers. The whole movie is about the devastation waiting to happen when a viral organism present in another species mutates and begins making the rounds in the human species.

The movie clearly and openly shows this fact yet not a single review that I have read of the movie including ones in The New Yorker,  The New York Times, The Boston Globe or by multiple reviewers referenced at RottenTomatoes.com points out the obvious and that is converting to an ethical vegan lifestyle would preclude many if not almost all of such disease transmission.

It is estimated that around 60% of all human infectious diseases and around 75% of all emerging infectious diseases originate in other animals and then are passed directly to humans or mutate and acquire the ability to infect humans. For instance AIDS is believed to have originated in chimpanzees.

Want to reduce or eliminate disease transmission between species...leave the animals alone to live their lives...quit imprisoning them, quit killing them, quit cutting them up and eating them.

Live as an ethical vegan, a compellingly obvious conclusion once you see this movie but apparently nothing is too obvious for culturally induced blindness to make invisible and....based on my sampling of the movie reviews so far...not one sees the obvious.

Go see the movie, it is fairly well done even if mildly shallow and 1950ish feeling, and see if you are able to spot the obvious.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You got it!

Thanks for the comments on my blog too. I just taught Columbus this week to my American Lit students. Do you know what he brought to the New World on his second voyage? Cattle. Big Ag. And the parallel exploitation and destruction of everyone on this side of the world.

CQ said...

veganelder: Bea reminded me to head to your blogs and catch up on the latest. I'm glad I just finished reading still another review of "Contagion" that left out mention of the animals, except for this not-funny comment: (This is yet another movie, by the way, following on the heels of "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," to feature monkeys as laboratory fodder. Chimpanzees should consider organizing a protest.)

You'll find the review here: http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2011/0909/Contagion-movie-review

As of now, if anyone reads the comments beneath the review, they'll find one referring them, with a link, to veganelder's blog.

As for your previous post on the movie The Pledge, which you saw through totally new eyes this time 'round, I would've had the exact same response: noticing for the first time what I had not KNOWN enough to notice when it debuted in 2001.

Re your last bunny post: The mighty Quinn is mighty cute!

Wish there were a way to give you my email and have your new posts arrive in my inbox, as I'm an ignoramus when it comes to RSS. Oh, well, I have Bea to remind me to hop over to V.E.'s blog and take a peek.

D.E.M.: Columbus and cattle. That figures. Sigh.

Harry said...

Hi VE

Yes, the absolute insanity of it all and the total disregard for the root cause of the problem. As you well know the interspecies spread of diseases includes more than just viruses as vectors. Superbugs in ICU - multi-drug resistant bacteria - have become frighteningly common yet it's not unheard of for the massive and powerful livestock industry to get access to new, 'more powerful' antibiotics for widespread prophylactic use (think feed additive) before human medicine gets them. And we wonder why their effectiveness in humans is not as expected. Talk about going about things the wrong way ... One harm after another.

veganelder said...

Thank you for commenting DEM. Ah Columbus...there's a piece of shit masquerading as a being worthy of having existed. A self-serving avaricious asshole who murdered and enslaved native folks and actually has a holiday named after him. I'm not surprised he also participated in the kidnapping and enslavement of cows. This fellow is a poster boy for a multitude of the wrongs associated with being a human animal.

Visiting your blog is a sustaining ritual of mine, no thanks necessary, I receive much more from reading it than you can imagine.

Let me know what you think of the movie.

veganelder said...

Thank you CQ for commenting also thanks for linking the blog entry to the review.

It is peculiar to revisit various things with a different perspective...shocking at times.

In the end, I suspect it is appropriate that the task of protesting falls to us humans...we're the ones causing all the grief.

veganelder said...

Thank you Harry for commenting. The movie was fairly surfacey in that it didn't explore any corollaries it was just sort of:wow...lots of people got sick and died.

I'm aware of the grotesque usage of antibiotics and hormones and who in hell knows what else these shits are using on the 'harmed' animals...all in the pursuit of a buck.

If karma does some karmaing then some superbug will rip through the human population at some point and at the expense of lots of pain, turmoil and suffering maybe disrupt this destucto machine we call "civilization".

Bea Elliott said...

Hi veganelder - Contagion is in my Netflix cue. To be watched while dining on the best veggie pizza to be had. Ah, the poetry of looking at mayhem due to eating animals while ravenously satisfying my appetite on alternatives... It's a thing of beauty I tell you. ;)

But unfortunately my husband often reminds me not to be so smug - Because these zootonic diseases aren't restricted to just meat-eaters... Too bad - Seems that's where justice should lie.

Anyway, it figures the harmers and ranchers would have their take on the film and briefly it's that it confirms their confining systems. All the more reason for "security" in locking their "inventory" in warehouses.
http://www.cattlenetwork.com/bovine-vet/industry-news/Modern-production-can-help-prevent-Contagion-130077568.html

Their rational is despicable!

Oh... And the latest recall of tainted turkey-meat? The USDA just confirmed it was the deadly anti-biotic resistant variety of salmonella. It is, to name another great flick: A Perfect Storm.

veganelder said...

Thanks for commenting Bea. Your spouse is right on, the diseases make no distinctions once the jump to human animals is made.

Yep, the typical response is going to be more of the same and more of it...it is a rare moment when human animals actually think...mostly they keep on doing what they are doing and try to justify it. When the "producers" voice any rationale except money they are lying.