In Cow, a farm is a prison and death is the only escape for Andrea Arnold’s bovine protagonist
The Fish Tank director’s first documentary chronicles the subjugation and exploitation of a dairy cow
Film Reviews Andrea Arnold
The shot only lasts 61 seconds, but it may forever alter your perspective on the sad, arduous life and premature, violent death of a farm animal. It comes early in Cow, Andrea Arnold’s unsparing experiential documentary about a dairy cow named Luma living on a farm in the south of England. Moments after farmers have separated Luma from yet another of her newborn calves, she looks straight into camera and plaintively moos five times over the course of one minute. Refusing to cut away, forcing us to look Luma directly in the eye and hear her cries, Arnold gives us ample time to consider what emotions the cow is trying to express. Even the most skeptical among us would have to agree that Luma is expressing an anguish that is felt no less deeply than our own.
Such is the power of Arnold’s first documentary, one in which her directorial hand is felt so lightly that our relationship to Luma becomes almost personal. There is no narration or dialogue, save for mooing cows and the occasional overheard utterance of a farmhand. There is no real plot, just Luma birthing, eating, and giving milk in a nonstop cycle until her brutal end. There is no score, only a handful of popular songs overheard in the cow shed. This addition by subtraction results in one of the most immersive animal documentaries you’ll ever see. Its observational shooting style is simple yet rich in quotidian detail. Its storytelling is morally neutral, yet charged with moments that obligate the viewer to question our treatment of farm animals.
A documentary about a dairy cow may seem far removed from Arnold’s narrative films, like Fish Tank and American Honey. But all three movies spotlight females struggling to escape either social, economic, or personal confinement; her Oscar-winning short film Wasp featured a mother of four practically defined by her sexuality. Luma, in a different and crueler way, is also defined and given worth by her sexuality. Her primary purpose is to crank out calves, a crime against the female body aided and abetted by doctors who inject her with drugs to “get her cycling again” and insert an arm, elbow deep, into her vaginal canal to “check if it’s clean or not.”
At one point, a bull is brought in to impregnate Luma, the bovine pair oblivious to their role in her continuing exploitation. In the only flagrant instance of directorial fiddling, Arnold sets the scene to the groovy beat of Kali Uchis’ “Tyrant” and the cheekiest fireworks display this side of Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief. Luma’s fertility is critical because as long as she’s pregnant she can perform her other primary duty: giving milk. For this, she and dozens of other cows are repeatedly hooked up to an enormous circular milking machine around which the cows stand frozen, slaves to an industrial system that will literally and figuratively suck them dry.
Polish cinematographer Magda Kowalczyk shoots at cow’s eye level, taking a hands-off approach to Luma’s comings and goings, save for the rare moment when the annoyed bovine scores a direct hit at the camera. The visuals are accompanied by sounds that reinforce the indignity of her captivity. Whether it’s the sizzle of the cauterizing tool used to dehorn calves, the medieval clank of the mechanism that keeps Luma immobile while her hoofs are scraped, or the gates and chains that reinforce her confinement, Luma’s world is filled with sounds that are far removed from nature.
When Luma is finally gifted a lengthy field trip to a green pasture, the effect is liberating. It’s also where Arnold best indulges her noted visual style, a combination of social realism and lyrical poetry. Luma looks positively giddy as she runs across the field and munches on long blades of grass. At night, she gazes at the stars and blissfully rests her heavy head on the ground. Even if one believes Arnold is anthropomorphizing Luma’s suffering to an unrealistic, activist’s extreme, Luma herself rejects that argument by walking towards the shed and refusing to go back in.
And why should she return to her prison, considering what awaits? Arnold wisely refuses to press the point that Luma’s life is one of complete subjugation to human needs. It’s there for us to see, no commentary required. Once the cow has passed her prime, the farmers (who are depicted as professionals, not cruel captors) have one final chore. By the end, Luma looks spent: Her knees are weak, the wrinkles on her neck cut deeper, and she can barely stand on the uneven wooden planks of the milking machine. Editors Nicolas Chaudeurge, Rebecca Lloyd, and Jacob Secher Schulsinger, whose tempo emphasizes the monotony of Luma’s blinkered existence, maintains the matter of fact pacing right through to a denouement that is both tragically preordained and shockingly blasé.
Cow comes on the heels (or hooves) of Viktor Kossakovsky’s Gunda, a black and white documentary about the life of a pig and her piglets. While both films attempt to convey the daily grind of a farm animal, Gunda is warmer, prettier, and more meditative. Cow is slathered in mud, milk, and amniotic fluid. It’s a harsher version of the same reality that nevertheless avoids being didactic or evoking shame in the viewer. Still, it’s hard to stay impartial when multiple hungry bovines chow down in their pen except Luma, who stares into the middle distance and not eating. Given how deeply embedded we are in Luma’s experience, it’s natural to try to divine her thoughts. Ultimately though, Cow is less interested in what Luma thinks than it is interested in what we think about Luma.
120 Comments
Wow, this sounds absolutely miserable, and I say that as a lifelong vegetarian who has stubbornly refused to give up dairy…
I have that conflict too. Can’t give up the yogurt.
Yogurt is ymurder
Yeah, it’s funny how things that highlight your guilt are not enjoyable. It’s why the GOP is opposed to CRT, they don’t want to be reminded.Maybe you should go eat a fat fucking block of cheese and listen to the last 30 seconds of Meat is Murder.
Second Cow?This sounds absolutely brutal. Like Lars von Trier brutal.
Cows are machines for turning grass into food.
Sure, but mostly cows are machines for making more cows. As are we for making more humans. As are von Neumann machines for making grey goo that will eventually consume all the matter in the solar system, with their descendants doomed to hungrily orbit the center of the galaxy for eons.
That’s as meaningful as saying humans are machines for releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
Your mom is a machine for turning my jizz into a drink.
That’s a very easy take to have, considering machines are not capable of suffering in agony. At least not yet, I’m sure as soon as humankind finds a way to make them suffer, they will. And then the majority of people will turn a blind eye to it.
Keizer writes of seeing a cow moo for a minute: “Even the most skeptical among us would have to agree that Luma is expressing an anguish that is felt no less deeply than our own.”Bullshit. When human mothers are separated from their children, their reaction is not to whine five times in a minute, then go back to life. So no, I don’t “have to agree” that Luma is expressing an anguish akin to our own because a film shows her mooing. Nor do I have to agree that she experiences “a crime against the female body,” or that a bull and cow fucking are participating “in her continuing exploitation.”
I’m kind of amazed that the review is such an animal-rights screed. I’ve seen a lot of weird takes on the A.V. Club over the years but this is one of the weirdest.
Being in favor of animal rights is a “weird take”? Accurately reporting what happens in the movie is a “screed”?Are you the guy that voices those BEEF IT’S WHAT’S FOR DINNER commercials?
Gee, god forbid they actually honestly discuss the horrors these animals endure.
Well, I do come to the A.V. Club for honest discussions of the horrors of *checks notes* factory farming.
Also “If a cow got the chance he’d eat you and everyone you care about “
I don’t know, I was pretty mooved by it. I won’t be cowed by your bullshit.
You sound biased. Do you have a steak in the movie’s success?
It’s more fodder for the suburbanite vegans who have never actually seen a cow before. They’ll be more convinced of their righteousness than ever, nobody else will be convinced, the world turns, life goes on etc.
Pretty much this. It’s a bunch of soft, coddled white guys living meaningless existences on some dull street on the fringe of some city who need something to get some sort identity to feel victimised through and veganism’s the only thing they qualify for.
Wow, a lot of seriously idiotic Fox News takes on here today. Did Tucker Carlson link to this post or something?
You seem very defensive. Almost like you have a guilty conscience.
Ah yes, people disagree with my dumb opinion so I must be right! The fanatic’s manifesto.
You’re always right when no one’s on your side.
I’ve seen actual cows and they are basically like giant dogs. Pretty expressive human bonds.
The cowis suffering. I’m sorry that affects you and causes you to lash out, but farming is largely pain and suffering and a very early death for animals.
People who eat meat should take time to consider the morality of what they’re doing. But the effort here to try to analogize a cow’s treatment to a treatment of humans is not convincing in the slightest — if a cow is sexually exploited by being mounted by a bull without first meeting human standards for consent, then every animal that has ever had sex has similarly been exploited. And Keizer doesn’t seem able to distinguish between aspects of a cow’s treatment that harm it and those associated with its care, expressing horror at the fact that a cow is immobile when its hoofs are scraped (an act that eliminates discomfort and reduces the potential for injury). Also, opponents of these practices need to have answers for what they’d prefer instead. If you’re horrified by use of a cow for meat and milk, OK, but widespread adoption of those beliefs would basically mean that cows, like Luna in this film, would not be born. Humans are not going to raise millions of cows for the purpose of having them wander fields. They also need to stop glamorizing nature. If you think “farming is largely pain and suffering and a very early death for animals,” you should consider what happens to animals in the wild.
It’s OK for cows not to be born. They don’t have to exist in such unnaturally large numbers. They are only born now to suffer, so that’s not really an argument in defence of factory farming. And it’s funny you mention wild animals. The majority of land mammals on this planet are in farming systems. Only about 1-2% are wild. In the wild, they might get preyed upon but it’s a small amount of suffering after a life lived free and as they naturally would. Farming is a painful death after a life of suffering.As for the sexual exploitation aspect, this is obviously only 1 strand in the documentary, but she is obviously making comparisons to humans so we can better understand what is happening. Wild animals are still free to choose their mates.
Do you have a source for your claim that 98% of land animals on the planet are in farming systems? Because that just seems impossible — mice and ants are land animals, for example.You seem to keep glamorizing life in the wild. A “life lived free” in the animal world is a life where a predator might kill you at any moment, where dying in infancy is extremely common, where a failure to find food can lead to death at basically any time, and where any serious injury you suffer is likely to mean a slow, painful death from exposure, starvation, or disease. If you want to say wild animals are better off than animals on a farm, so ahead, but make that argument with a realistic assessment of what life in the wild means. And no, many animals in the wild don’t “choose their mates.” I doubt the lioness who sees her prior sexual partner driven off by a stronger male, who kills her kids, and is then forcibly mounted feels exactly liberated.I don’t think vegetarianism is a crazy thing to believe, but it’s striking to me how the people constantly asserting that meat eaters don’t think about where their food comes from don’t seem to have any idea about the animal world.
I can’t find the 2% figure I was quoted so here’s a link to one that says 4% by biomass. Still a shocking figure. https://ourworldindata.org/mammals.Why are you so keen to advocate farming over nature though? What’s the angle? Freedom means freedom. Animals are sentient beings and if life means being prey or hunter at least they’re not in cages, unable to use their environment as they naturally would. There are farming systems that are better though, I don’t deny that. But the majority of animals are in hellish systems that don’t give them any amount of freedom.The lioness example you use: again it all happens in a system where they display their natural behaviours. Not all female animals get to choose their mates after courting, many do, but that’s a million miles away from being locked in a dark shed for life or a cage and treated like a non-sentient object. That’s the point.
What does “freedom means freedom” mean? Do you even know, or did it just sound good in your head?
In this instance it means that there is little to no freedom in farming systems. If you have a problem with a few words, maybe you’re beginning to realise that animals farming is a disaster for the planet.
So your argument is that because wild cows have tough lives it’s fine to torture and murder them in captivity? Are you always this stupid?
Hmm… the original post says “the majority of land mammals,” not “the majority of animals.” Rather a large difference, there. See for instance a 2018 report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “Biomass Distribution on Earth.” (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1711842115 ). Under “The Impact of Humanity on the Biosphere,” the authors report thatToday, the biomass of humans (≈0.06 Gt C)and the biomass of livestock (≈0.1 Gt C, dominated by cattle and pigs) far surpass that of wild mammals, which has a mass of ≈0.007 Gt C.Diverging from mammals, (but noting the orders of magnitude biomass difference), they go on to write that
This is also true for wild and domesticated birds, for which the biomass of domesticated poultry (≈0.005 Gt C, dominated by chickens) is about threefold higher than that of wild birds (≈0.002 Gt C). In fact, humans and livestock outweigh all vertebrates combined, with the exception of fish. As for cattle, depending on who you ask (these sorts of numbers tend
toward substantial uncertainties), the world probably passed 1 gigacow
(headcount, not biomass) in the mid 1970s, though I’ve seen some reports that put this in the early
1960s. https://beef2live.com/story-world-cattle-inventory-1960-2014-130-111523https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-many-cows-are-there-in-the-world.html
You can’t rationalize an irrational situation, and being “pro- animal torture and murder” is definitely an irrational stance. You’re basically trying to convince a MAGA brah that racism is bad—it’s central to their being.When meat eaters die they go to a special hell where they live out the existence of every animal they ever ate. Have fun with that, fucking evil ass fuckers.
It’s OK for cows not to be born. They don’t have to exist in such unnaturally large numbers. They are only born now to sufferThat’s the sort of reasoning that spawned numerous religious groups over history that dedicated themselves to not reproducing because you can make the same argument for humans. Escape the wheel of suffering and the like.
Wild animals are still free to choose their mates.Not really. A lot of male animals basically have to restrain their struggling mates. And many animal penises are barbed which can’t be that pleasant for the recipients.
I have no idea what farmed cows have to do with religious groups, don’t see the connection. There are lots of cows because they are bred in large numbers by farmers. They are not naturally this abundant.
The argument is “being born only to suffer” can and has been applied to humanity.
All the more reason to have empathy for dumb animals who are experiencing the same. Lets value all life.
You dont think theyd be better off not being born?
You haven’t even seen the movie, fuck nut, how would you know if it’s convincing or not?There’s nothing I love more than a defensive meat eater trying to explain away the cruelty in meat farming by referencing other hypothetical horrors the cow might suffer if meat farming didn’t exist. “Ahh, shit, if these children weren’t being sexually molested and were forced to fend for themselves they’d be dead in days! Lucky for them the molester at least feeds them!”
Yeah, which is the point of the move. Meat farming is a sadistic business and if more people were intimately acquainted with what goes on there they would choose to avoid eating murdered animal carcasses.Do you also eat dead roaches? Why not?
Animals that wouldn’t exist except for farming.
Animals that exist in unnatural numbers because of farming and whose grazing land pushes out and leads to the extinction of other animals. These animals don’t need to exist in such large numbers, that’s not an argument in support of farming.
Oh, I’m all for reducing meat, especially beef, production for environmental reasons.
I just have no patience with the ‘poor wittle cows’ people or those who apparently think if we didn’t farm cattle they’d be happily playing in the grass somewhere.
Look, unless you’re from Wisconsin, I don’t think your one or two relationships with cows qualify you as some kind of expert. Just because one broke your heart once does not mean that all cows are uncaring, emotionless creatures.
How do you think immigrant parents felt when their kids were taken away and put in cages?
Absolutely devastated. Now tell me what that has to do with this?
If you’re equating children with cows, there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with you.
Wow, awfully strong reaction there, bub, it would almost seem as if you’re extremely defensive about something. I wonder what that is?
It’s self-congratulatory schlock for the idealistic narcissists who can afford almond milk passing judgement on the poor families who can’t.
Umm have you actually checked the price of almond milk lately? It’s reasonably priced.
It reminds me of March of the Penguins. You have all these images of penguins heroically huddling together on an ice cap, and that wonderful Morgan Freeman narration telling us that these penguins mate for life and sacrifice for their children, and how that must mean that they can feel love, just like us. And it sounds very reasonable. And then there’s the scene where a predatory bird flies down to eat one of the baby penguins, and while it does so the other penguins do nothing. They just let it happen and go on about their day. So…maybe not exactly the same?
You are telling yourself falsehoods to get you through the day. I believe deepdown you know this. I encourage you to accept this and change to a plantbased diet and lifestyle. When you do, it will feel like a weight has been lifted from you and you will never consider going back to animal based foods.
I don’t get the horror that a cow’s life might be “far removed from nature.” It depends on this idea that nature is idyllic. Sounds for a cow that are not removed from nature would include the sound of a wolf eating you while you’re still alive, or the howling wind causing you to freeze to death.
So because cows might face other terrors in a natural world you’re cool with torturing and murdering them?“Hey, if these children had to fend for themselves in the wild they’d be dead in days, so I don’t have any problem with a school shooter taking them out now.”
Seriously. You’d think these people had never seen a nature documentary.
What a fucking mess of an argument this is. Watching boomers cry about having to think about where their obesity is coming from is just awe inspiring.
I swear a wrote a comment a year or so ago that was essentially the existential reality of cows. I’m gonna get me a residual check off this shit, watch me!
They’re finding mass graves in Ukraine. I don’t have room to spare to give a fuck about a cow.
So why are you reading the article and writing comments, if you have so much important emoting to do about Ukraine?
Thought it might be a sequel to Pig.
it can be two things my friend. maybe not for you, but most of us- clearly not all- can demonstrate and show compassion for both humans AND animals.
Wow, you sound like a serious dirtbag. You vote Trump, yeah? Fuck you and your shit mom.
2nd dumbest form of take here today. lmao
That’s a really sad fact about yourself you just shared.
The review does this a disservice, if you ask me. It makes it sound like a total PETA-esque screed, but it’s not really soppy or sentimental about things. It’s just going “this is what happens with the average dairy cow, you can decide for yourself if you’re OK with it.”
I dunno, your takeaway is exactly the impression I got from the review, not any kind of PETA screed. Maybe I’m not reaching for bias confirmation or I’m just too tired to be outraged, no idea.
I appreciate the line early on that: Its observational shooting style is simple yet rich in quotidian detail. Its storytelling is morally neutral, yet charged with moments that obligate the viewer to question our treatment of farm animals.It sounds like an engaging film, and a mature artistic approach from the director, cinematographer, et.al.
The review, however takes the opposite tone, littered with purple prose that reaches for the most intense adjective over and over again:“expressing an anguish,” “in a different and crueler way,” “ an enormous circular milking machine around which the cows stand frozen, slaves to an industrial system that will literally and figuratively suck them dry,” “ the medieval clank,” “she gazes at the stars and blissfully rests,” Personally, my takeaway is like yours, I just think the reviewer missed their mark and was inadvertently carried away trying to express an emotional impact. But it does make one question whether the purported neutrality is there or if that too is just a cliché way of framing the review.
The review itself definitely wanders into “yikes” territory, as you say.
In fact the review says that about a half dozen times. People should really look up the definition of the word “screed,” you’re the third fucking idiot to use it wrong in this comment section.
Guess what? None of these cows would exist in the wild. You understand that the concept of a ‘cow’ as we understand it has no wild counterpart. We still have water buffalo and other bovines but the wild ‘cow’ as we understand it is extinct because quite frankly, cows are dumb. Like, shamefully dumb. We bred them to be walking sides of beef, to produce milk, and do nothing else. By all accounts, their lives are basically content within the framework of their exceedingly dull brains.Overlaying a feminist ideals onto a barnyard animal in an industrial setting is insulting to women and cows. Adding a a level of anthropomorphism that isn’t there isn’t anything special. It’s a fallacy.We can make factory farming better, we don’t need to emotionally invest in a cow to do so. People are dying and if you care more about animals than humans, I would prefer we never interact.
I would prefer it if we could produce meat synthetically and not butcher animals with the physical capacity to feel pain. The environmental impact of animal husbandry is pretty significant too, I believe. And that’s bad. That said, if humans disappeared cows would be just as fucked as they are now, if not more so. The lucky survivors might evolve into a smarter, more adaptable form, or maybe not. Not saying that excuses our clearly cruel and inhumane industrial meat complex or whatever, but nature is pretty effing cruel. Should we treat animals “humanely” or do they not deserve that treatment? I don’t think anyone beyond truly dogmatic vegan types would argue that killing and eating an animal is wrong in and of itself—humans are not exempt from the food chain. But I can see where the industrial-level raising and slaughter of these animals might raise some ethical questions.
Yeah, the reaction of “oh yeah, well there’d be LESS COWS” is a weird one, considering that hey, maybe we could deal with a lot less cows, considering the environmental impact of clearing rainforest for grazing land, and the burp gas of cows being a pretty significant contributor to CO2 emissions.I agree about synthetic meat. There is supposedly lab-grown meat, but I’m not sure where the development is at. I hear good things then bad things, but obviously the meat industry is pretty set on emphasizing the downsides.
Honestly, your strawman doesn’t interest me to engage.Hope you find peace with yourself, I’m not here to play your devil’s advocate in your strawman fantasy.
You’ve got some worthless animals to torture and kill, right? No harm there!
Okay, I wasn’t really arguing with you, but by all means keep saying “strawman.”
Not understanding what your own argument is is a weird way to bow out. Cool.
I wasn’t even making an argument. I said it would be good not to slaughter certain animals (an opinion) and that husbandry appears to have a profound environmental impact (which I’ve read, but don’t really know much about). If that’s an argument, by all means refute it. I admit to ignorance on the subject. Then I asked if we should treat animals by human standards, essentially, and said that the slaughtering of animals raises ethical questions—I didn’t even come down on a side.If you disagree with my opinions or don’t like my questions, say so. I don’t mind that. But why attack me like that?
😑
You think it’s an extreme position to suggest that killing an animal is wrong? Then why do psychiatric evaluations of children focus on whether they have killed or hurt an animal in their lives? Because it’s SO wrong to kill an animal, when a child does it it’s usually an indication they have mental issues.Also, fuck off, you’re a hateful shitbag.
“People are dying and if you care more about animals than humans, I would prefer we never interact.”Depends on the people. I’ll take a million cows over the angry jerks arguing every tiny detail of this review, for example.
True, I mean, I guess I like cows more than fascists….but that’s not really fair.
Bogira says cows don’t have consciousness or emotions and can be tortured and slaughtered without a second thought, film at 11.
“We can make factory farming better, we don’t need to emotionally invest in a cow to do so” dude that’s one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read on here. OF COURSE we have to emotionally invest in the treatment of the animals to make farming “better” for the animals.
more concerned for the milkmaid than for the cow. No easy out on the question of farming livestock, meat protein offers a competitive population across various measures, so that disarmament is likely to occur with a complex shift of many interrelated parts. I buy animal-NGO approved when I do.
Lol I love it when reviews like this hit a nerve with people. Keep it up, Mark. You’re speaking truth to power and the reckoning we’re going to eventually have with the dairy and meat industries is gonna be painful as hell. And for the super-geniuses pointing out “But they’d die in nature regardless,” that has to be one of the most idiotic things I’ve read on this fucking site and I read almost every Barsanti article. Be better.
Counterpoint: a chocolate milkshake and a burger.
Counterpoint counterpoint; the climate crisis and ecological collapse are fuelled, in part, by the meat and dairy industry.
You can get both without any dairy products in them and they’re still delicious now. With the added benefit of not chaining a living creature to a milking contraption for the entirety of their life.
Counter to your point, you can get that shit cruelty-free and it’s even fucking better. https://amysdrivethru.com/menu/rohnert-park
There is some feeling that the commentariat on avclub is kind of better or kind of more centrist or kind of have more common sense than the rest, when its mostly very conservative liberal almost boomer ideology north american people who feel extremely attacked and threatened when talking about the source of their food. It feels to me like an extension of any subreddit. Having said that, not sure if I want to watch this. Comes too close to the pain porn that was (is) so common in gay movies or movies about racial injustice. Or, as other comment said, Lars Von Trier tragedies.
mostly very conservative liberal almost boomer ideology north american peopleI know you’re vegan, but what the fuck is this word salad? Is this what your discourse is reduced to when you’ve lived off naught but a steady diet of tofu tendies and tiktok?
What the fuck is a tofu tendie? Jesus christ pro-meat people are insufferably full of shit.
mostly very conservative liberal almost boomer ideology north american peopleWesterners who read that as word salad have never allowed themselves to have a serious thought about their place in the world. It means someone who hates taxes and loves police (very conservative), demands their vote be counted (a small-L liberal ideal), believes ‘cishet+white makes right’ (boomer), Westerner whose wealth is protected by the world’s most insanely expensive military (north american, which somehow became shorthand for U.S. and Canada without Mexico).
“There is some feeling that the commentariat on avclub is kind of better”i mean, maybe five years ago, but modern av club is just a cesspool of angry dumb guys
And they all showed up for this article, by the looks of it.
Any internet post that mentions vegetarianism, veganism or animal rights is an instant magnet for guilt-ridden meat eaters who feel compelled to insist they’re JUST FINE with eating animal carcasses. BUT BACON TASTES GOOD, DERP DERP!You doth protest far too much, idiots. You wear your guilt on your sleeve like the MAGA nation trying to suppress CRT. It’s your fucking problem that you further injustice, not the people who recognize the injustice.
So they’re centrist liberal conservatives?
Who is the “power” here, when you say “speaking truth to power?” Mark’s writing on an entertainment site for the general public.
I eat meat, the review didnt bother me.
All creatures die, regardless, including us. We still have some vehement opinions about our circumstances in the meanwhile.
Everybody knows it’s wrong to hurt animals. The torrents of bullshit otherwise normal people spew out to try to justify it, just because it tastes good, is horrific to me. Their minds are twisted by having consumed flesh. It’s literally ghoulish behavior. Everybody knows it’s wrong to hurt animals
A fine sentiment, but repeating it doesn’t make it true. A shockingly large percentage of humanity doesn’t even get core concepts like “It’s wrong to hurt people,” or even “It’s wrong to hurt children.” At best, maybe you’d get a plurality of people to admit that “it’s wrong to hurt animals unnecessarily.” But what “unnecessarily” means in that sentence is the rub.I’m glad this movie exists. People should know where their food comes from, and the real cost of it. But I’m under no illusions that people knowing the cost will actually change their behavior. People weren’t vegans as a rule before slaughterhouses and refrigeration separated us from the reality of where our meals come from.
An alternate shot of the film’s star:
Absolutely terrifying and depressing to read the comments here and see so little compassion for farmed animals. This documentary doesn’t even feature an animal living on a particularly bad farm, yet its life is still characterized by suffering. You may care more about people in Ukraine dying or about your tasty burger and shake, but compassion is a great quality and it should be extended to all living things or we can’t grow up as a society.
The AV Club has ceased to be a destination worth visiting, a point proven well by the mouth-breathing sadists posting in the comments here. We’re at sub-USA Today levels of reductive internet commentary, just a shade off the pure lunacy of Fox News.I curse everyone here posting in favor animal torture and murder with a wart on their face, and on the faces of their family members. I CURSE THEE
I’m not sure you’re seeing a lack of compassion. I think you’re seeing a response to a review that used really overblown language.For what it’s worth, the movie seems to make viewers more mindful about the animals we rely on for food, and the ways the life of those animals might be cruel. As I noted above, that’s a good thing for meat eaters to consider. But if you’re going to, for example, call the device used to restrain a cow while people care for its hoofs, “medieval,” then you don’t have a lot of credibility to distinguish between actual cruel practices and nonsense.
Or maybe you’re dismissing the very valid arguments based on the language used.
The commenters here are getting dumber and meaner everyday. The articles suck but the commenters used to be insightful and funny. Now it’s like AVC and the commenters are on a race to the bottom.
and we consume the byproducts of a farmed animal. Mostly toast w/ condiments for breakfast, although when I am moving for work I’ll eat eggs, and find myself agreeing that a healthy chicken lays tastier, brighter hued, nutrition-rich eggs.
Night of the cow! Night of the cooow!
Saw this at the IDFA in Amsterdam last year. It’s pretty affecting (especially if you’re already vegetarian).
So last year we got Pig, and now we’re getting Cow.
I assume Chicken will be released sometime in 2023?
I’m betting on Apple. I picked one last year and I’m still languishing from the murderous guilt.
I have to wonder what Keizer’s colleagues at The Takeout think of this. It reads like an essay by a 10th grade vegan, and I’m pretty sure this documentary was lampooned by Family Guy twenty years before it was made. We all know dairy cattle are mistreated, but we’ve turned a bizarre corner if this is now a gendered issue. Anthropomorphism is the blindspot in the animal rights toolkit, but I got news for you: cows don’t live in a world of consent forms and foreplay. For this to even be considered a documentary it would delve into the complex issues in the farming industry, but neither Arnold nor Keizer are willing to do that. It’s easier to rely on imagery and a strategically curated soundtrack when condescending to the poor saps who can’t afford to switch to almond milk. I grew up on a dairy farm in the 1980s and early ‘90s, and back then there wasn’t one factory farm in the entire county. Since then, every family farm has been taxed into oblivion and sold off to the multi-national conglomerates responsible for this sort of abuse. The few local farms in the region are boutique farms owned by big city transplants. The people who patronize those places rarely know exactly how much goes into actual, voluminous farming. Because they can afford to get their blueberries from Gurt and Birdie’s Catskills Roadside Farm Stand, they assume everyone can. But bad news, Gurt and Birdie don’t have the land to supply stock to a single IGA.“Why doesn’t everyone just buy organic milk? It’s only $7.99 a gallon.” People like this are delusional. What they always forget or choose to ignore is that most people in rural or impoverished urban areas don’t shop at Walmart because they’re unethical, they shop there because they can’t afford the alternatives. I wonder if Arnold and Keizer and their soft-minded readers would welcome the inflation that would come with actually supporting small scale farming for the entire marketplace.
worst comment section i’ve seen in some time. need to scorch earth this website.
Whatever. Death is the only escape for any and all of us.
Why is everyone so angry? Jack, why are you so angry?
Wow I cried watching the trailer…still gonna go and get a McDouble. But still sad.