{"id":93133,"date":"2019-09-19T14:42:10","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T21:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=93133"},"modified":"2019-09-19T14:42:10","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T21:42:10","slug":"carnage-a-glimpse-into-a-vegan-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/09\/19\/carnage-a-glimpse-into-a-vegan-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Carnage: A glimpse into a vegan future"},"content":{"rendered":"

veganaustralia.org.au<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.veganaustralia.org.au\/carnage<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carnage – the world’s first vegan comedy movie.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Carnage: Swallowing the Past” is\nan inspiring and uplifting film which allows us to imagine a future vegan\nworld, where humans no longer use animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.\nThe film is definitely a comedy, with a wry and understated sense of humour,\nbut it has a very powerful message. While some of us may think that the world\nwill never change, this film gives us a feel-good (and playful) picture of what\nit might look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Set 50 years in the future, Carnage shows an\nidyllic world where the idea of eating flesh and bodily secretions of animals\nhas become unimaginable. Young people are in touch with their feelings of unity\nwith each other and with other animals. “For these youngsters, the idea\nthat human beings like them were once complicit in a bloodbath of unnecessary\nsuffering is too absurd to imagine.” As one young person says tearfully\n“Why would anyone eat a baby? Just a little baby. A little baby lamb”.\nThis theme, why people ate animals, is a thread explored throughout the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this future world, older people, those who\nused to eat animals, now suffer remorse and guilt. “There remain painful\nmemories of a time before empathy, before we realised we had to stop eating\neach other.” It has become taboo to even talk about this shameful\nanimal-eating past. People have repressed these feelings for decades and\n“a whole generation is being suffocated by shame.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the characters in the film, a\npsychotherapist, has written a “taboo-busting and deeply personal\nbook”, The Guilt Of Eating Your Brother, which suggests that former\nmeat-eaters are psychologically under threat. The therapist helps these people\nby encouraging them to express their feelings of guilt and make apologies to\nthe animals. This lifts the shame they feel. “We couldn’t have known we\nwere active participants in the slave trade, because the language of the time\nsuggested we were just eating our dinner.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film is a “documentary” made in\n2067, looking back at the history of veganism from 1944 to the\n“present”. It also serves as a lesson to younger generations about\nthe brutality of the past and a reminder not to repeat it. Regarding the\nanimal-eating past: “history has been replaced with silence”. As one\ncharacter says, “If you try to explain the dairy industry to young people\ntoday, they’d be traumatised.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of the film is an examination of why\npeople believed it was OK to eat animals. It covers similar ground to Melanie\nJoy’s concept of “carnism”, the invisible belief system that\nconditions people to eat certain animals. For example, the film looks at how\nfast food advertising made it acceptable for children to enjoy watching a film\nlike “Babe” and then celebrate afterwards with a “Happy\nMeal”. And how television cooking shows helped normalise meat eating.\n“Nobody is to blame. We were all victims. Our parents just did to us what\ntheir parents had done to them.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the film concentrates on the ethics of\neating animals, it also looks at other issues, such as swine flu and mad cow\ndisease, the link between meat eating and cancer, heart disease, diabetes and\nobesity, the environmental impact of animal agriculture, such as species\nextinction, climate change and flooding, the rights of women and the English class\nsystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A high point of the film’s narrative is when\nthe government passed the 2035 Bill of Animal Rights. This “criminalised\nthe enslavement, breeding and killing of all animals as well as the\nmanipulation or consumption of anything coming out of one.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future presented in the film is an\nidyllic one, where people are peaceful and happy and “where violence has\nbeen defeated with compassion, depression cured with intimacy”. The\nimplication is that ending meat production and consumption has improved people’s\nmental and physical health and made the world a more peaceful place. While\nidealistic, this view echoes that of Will Tuttle in The World Peace Diet. In\nthis book he looks at how historically violence towards non-human animals has\nbeen normalised and how people fail to make the connection between the flesh on\ntheir plate and the animal from whose body it was taken. This undermines their\ncapacity for compassion and teaches them that it is OK to oppress the voiceless\nand weak to fulfil their desires. This can transfer into other areas of human\nlife and can kindle historical atrocities such as human slavery, conflicts and\nwar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film is valuable because it gives us a\nvision of a vegan world. Vegan advocacy has come a long way in the last few\nyears. Until recently, vegans were limited to trying to persuade others to\nbecome vegan. We are now working towards changing institutions and laws to pave\nthe way to a vegan world. Carnage is one more step on this road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s finish with\nsome memorable quotes (some humorous) from the film:<\/p>\n\n\n\n