Film Review: Earthlings-Only when we NEED IT

animal skins can be used
 in making coats

   Foods, cloths, pets, entertainment, and science.....Animals are used in a various ways in order to fulfill human's desire such as curiosity, fashion, or meal. It is quite easy to meet 'animals' in our
daily life. It may be alive, such as pets and zoo animals, or it could be the dead one, just like the pictures in both sides.
However, the thing is that the animal we meet most of the time are nothing more than a product. People often tend to show their interest in animals, but it's irony that they have no attention to the animals that they meet the most. Earthling is the film that might make people think more about the 'animals' around them.



     First of all, the film shows about the pets. How pets live before they are sold and death of homeless pet are shown in this part of the film. As it's shown in the film, homeless pets dies of either hunger, thrown away to the dump truck, gas chambers, or euthanasia. There are groups that finds new home for homeless pets such as Homeless Pets Foundation. However, because number of homeless pets are increasing very fast, death of homeless pets is inevitable as they will either die of hunger or killed by human. I agree with the quote "We need to learn the way to see the eyes of the animals." Kicking pets out seems wrong to me, because pets are live animals that could show their emotions, not a toy.
   

   I was shocked when the film showed about the animals that are used in making cloths. Lots of people won't know how animals die to make a cloth, and I didn't either. Since there is no law that indicates about killing of the animals in fur farm, people working in the farm prefers the costless way to get the skin out of animals. As cost of killing animal gets cheaper, way of killing animals become more cruel. In the Chinese fur farm for example, they take the leather of an animal when it is alive. It is even more shocking that although animals that lost its leather are alive, people throw away the animals without any mercy.


coats can be made without killing the animal

  These days, cloths can be made without using leather of the animals. Cost is the only difference between cloths made of leather and cloths made of artificial materials. Of course, cloths made of animal's fur keeps our body warmer, but is it really necessary? Most people who buys luxurious coat buy not because of its warmth, but to show the others that he or she is rich. Therefore, it seems like killing an animal to make a luxury cloth is meaningless thing to do. Plus, cloth that are made of animal are sold either cheaply or expensively. Regardless of its cost, valuing the cloth made of animals is nothing more than pricing their lives. Once the animals are dead, they cannot revive anymore. Although many new lives are borned,, those new lives are not the same as the dead one. In contrast, money;which is traded with 'life of the animal', have no special meaning like an individual like life. What I want to point out is that by resisting a desire to buy luxurious product, we can save thousands of wild lives.

Eating other creatures is part
of the Law of Jungle

       Food part was a bit disappointing. I agree that some slaughter houses are too cruel when they kill the animals to get the meat. However, it seemed like the film makers exaggerated too much by showing only the extreme case so that they could persuade people. Throughout this part of the film, another problem came into my mind. When I saw how people in slaughter house react and behave on the animals, I was able to realize that they are somewhat different from the normals. They acted and talked very similar to the criminals, as if they were suffering mental illness. In my opinion, they were probably one of the normals before they started working in the slaughter house. It would have been better if the director mentioned how to solve this problem. If we claim that government should increase price of the meat that are made in such a cruel way. Then, companies that produce meat will change their way of slaughtering the animal. Plus, if price of the products are expensive for its cruelty when killing an animal, consumers will probably buy cheaper products, that are killed painlessly. I know that it's not the best solution to the problem. What I wanted to say is that it's tentalizing because director could have gone further more to persuade people better in the food part.


 Overall, the film was quite persuading to me, but with the exception in the food part. Although I saw the film of slaughter house, I only ended up feeling the mercy to the animals. Since eating the other creatures is inevitable as it is part of the Law of Jungle, showing the cruel video of animal dying and saying that we should not eat meat couldn't persuade me very much. However, I agree that excessive amount of meat production should be stopped, because the truth is that tons of meat productions are thrown away when they are not sold on time. It's not about the content, but  film makers should have set an age limitation when watching a film. Below is a review by seven year old kid. He seems too young to watch such a cruel video of animals dying and being killed. It is likely that young kids might get shocked for a while. Regardless of these tentalizing things about the films, the film changed my thoughts about people killing the animals for money. Before I watched the film, my thoughts and opinion about killing animals for human was vague, but after I finished watching the film, my opinion became clear. Human should never kill the animal unless it has something to do with his or her life.