> "I'd always heard LE SANG DES BETES referred to as anti-carnivore,
> but I was quite surprised watching it recently (April) to find that
> for me it played as nothing of the sort. Of course a slaughterhouse
> is not a pleasant place to spend time, even virtually, but to me the
> film is much more about acknowledging the death/bloodshed that is
> fundamentally a part of life than condemning it. (i.e. the opening
> narration which sets up the abbatoir's proximity to the peaceful
> streets of Paris.) Franju finds a certain beauty/truth in the
> juxtaposition."
>
> That's your pure vision, but for years the movie was shown by
> vegetarian groups as an arguement for vegetarianism, and that's the
> context in which I first saw in 1968.

I think there have always been people who took this film as a protest
and people who didn't. Ian Cameron wrote in MOVIE that "Franju is one
of the least vegetarian directors one can imagine." Not sure exactly
what he means by that.

> If you sacrifice yourself for art or otherwise undergo extreme pain
> for art (like Chris Burden who had himself shot with a 22. rifle and
> on another occasion had himself crucified to the hood of a Volkswagen)
> that's the choice of the artist for him or herself. Killing an
> unwilling victim is another matter.

And if celluloid in fact contains animal products, then every movie
kills unwilling victims.

> In experiments done by Dr.Stanley Milligrom (of the famous obedience
> to authority experiments)he found that people were more disturbed by
> films of animals being mistreated than of humans being simililarly
> mistreated. There were two reasons according to his findings: 1.
> The animals were innocent of any wrong doing and didn't merit
> mistreatment, whereas the humans probably did something to deserve
> their suffering. 2. The humans were probably not really being
> mistreated whereas the animals were.

I've been doing an informal survey on this subject all my life, and
Milgram came up with the same answers that I always get.... I think #2
is mostly a cover and not a real reason: note, for instance, that no one
thinks that children are actually killed for movies, and yet people have
the same violent reaction to the deaths of on-screen children as to animals.

So, whether #1 is *the* reason or merely *a* reason, it has sobering
implications. "The humans probably did something to merit their
suffering." Of course, you can create identification for a human being
in a fiction, and make the audience sorry to see him or her mistreated.
But children and animals are identification magnets, and the fiction
maker need do no work on their behalf.

Hard for me to avoid the conclusion that we view unknown human beings as
a potential threat, and their deaths as a measure of safety for
ourselves. - Dan