Use of Animals in Media and Entertainment

Use of Animals in Media and Entertainment

Animals are used in various contexts, including, but not limited to, sports and entertainment. For quite some time, captive killer whales (also known as orcas) have been utilized to provide entertainment. The use of killer whales in the sports and entertainment sectors has received inadequate attention, which has contributed to the proliferation of this activity. The findings of my investigation have verified the notion that killer whales are exploited extensively in sports and entertainment.

Keeping in mind that people involved in animal protection want us to be cautious when showing support for using nonhuman animals in entertainment such as video content, rodeos, circuses, zoos, and other forms of entertainment is a valuable tool for questioning the depiction of animals. It is one tool that can be used. Using animals in various states of joy is a typical example of behavior traced back to the hierarchy humans formed when they learned to control other species.

You have already made it apparent that you support the activity being provided when you choose to participate in one that involves animals. When many of us arrange our leisure activities, we don’t intend to intentionally hurt animals. However, even paying for a ticket encourages and supports the provider to keep using animals in the activity without at least improving their living circumstances.

Consider whether there is an animal-friendly option or a similar activity that doesn’t include animals before deciding whether the action you’re looking for is essential.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a universal mark identifying entertainment activities as animal-friendly. We can, however, lessen the detrimental effects of the various activities on animals by being cautious in how we approach them.

This system is the same that leads to the slaughter of a significant number of animals in the name of agriculture, scientific research, and breeding programs. This hierarchy has historically been paired with others used to classify people based on their race, gender, sexuality, disability status, and income. These hierarchies have also functioned in tandem with one another. However, with advances in technology and the performing arts, there are alternatives to roadside zoos, animal parks, petting zoos, and the practice of squeezing multiple herbivores into yet another Christmas display.

What Is Using Animals for Entertainment?

Utilizing animals for sport entails exploiting, torturing, and sometimes even killing them for the delight and enjoyment of bystanders. The animals involved are forced to work as performers and often suffer bodily and mental harm or die while performing. Zoos and aquariums, marine mammal parks, rodeos and bull riding, bullfighting, and the employment of trained animals in circuses, movies, and performances are a few examples of places where humans utilize animals for entertainment.

The History of Animals in Entertainment

Using animals to provide entertainment dates back many thousands of years. Even the earliest civilizations were captivated by the mystery and beauty of exotic creatures. Evidence from archaeological digs dating back to 2,000 B.C. shows that lions were then confined to cages in Macedonia. Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian, and Assyrian kings and Roman and Abbasid lords of Arabia were avid collectors of wild animals throughout their reigns. Animals such as elephants, bears, giraffes, and giant cats were often featured in ancient collections. Historiographers believe that wild animals were tamed and displayed by monarchs as a representation of their authority and riches.

During the nineteenth century, variety shows traveled across Europe and the United States, including performances by horses, dogs, and other domesticated animals. In the latter part of the 19th century, animal performances began to be included in vaudeville, a relatively new style of entertainment in the United States. Short comedic or dramatic performances performed live on stage constitute a vaudeville presentation. They often included jugglers, singers, dancers, magicians, comedians, and animals that could perform tricks or tricks with them. The popularity of Vaudeville continued until approximately 1920, when it was eclipsed by the rise of radio and motion pictures. These new forms of entertainment also incorporated performances performed by animals.

Should animals be used for entertainment? 

If you ask various people whether animals should be employed in zoos, rodeos, circuses, and other types of entertainment, you’ll likely receive diverse replies. The typical response is “no” in the eyes of those speaking out for animal preservation. Readers are urged to make significant changes in how people treat animals in “areas of amusement like circuses, rodeos, and zoos” by philosopher Peter Singer in his seminal work on animal rights, “Animal Liberation.”

What kinds of animals are used in shows, and why?

People will pay money to see exhibitions and activities that include a diverse array of animals. Zoo animals may be practically any kind of animal, although the majority of the time, they are enormous wild creatures. The zebra, elephant, lion, giraffe, and gorilla are just some of the well-known circus animals that can be seen gracing the packaging of animal crackers. Meanwhile, renowned marine animal parks have traditionally promoted themselves using trained dolphins and orcas in their marketing materials.

Bears, dogs, monkeys, chimps, dolphins, a whale, equines, cats, crows, and farmed animals have all been among the animal performers that have worked in the film business. Examples of such species are pandas, hippos, koalas, monkeys, giraffes, big cats, birds, zebras, camels, snakes, and other reptiles and amphibians. Horses and cows are significant objects of amusement during rodeos and bullfighting, respectively.

What is Wrong with Circuses?

The act of forcing elephants to parade in line with one elephant holding the tail of another elephant with its trunk or getting a lion tamer to place his head within the maw of a large cat has traditionally left spectators in a state of astonishment at circuses. However, as Ricard adds, the grace of the elephants’ performances is an illusion made possible by a sharpened iron hook disguised as a wand with flowers. This hook “will immediately come jabbing into the pachyderm’s ear at the least indication of disobedience.”

Ricard says. Former circus trainers like Vladimir Deriabkine have testified that the enjoyment animals offer to audiences in circuses across the globe is the consequence of training procedures based on the harsh and violent treatment of animals. Deriabkine once witnessed a trainer who murdered a bear because the beast would not do a number for him. Animals synonymous with circuses include but are not limited to tigers, bears, lemurs, chimps, horses, and many species of birds, including parrots, doves, peacocks, and cockatoos.

Annually, many exotic creatures are taken from their natural habitats for amusement. The trading in feral animals, which is only conducted for mankind’s amusement, may be the most harmful. Too frequently, a totality of human families are murdered in addition to receiving one child. The abducted people are therefore forced to live a lifestyle of imprisonment, dullness, suffering, and torture (typically reasonably dull).

It is inhumane and degrading to take animals out of their wild populations and make them live as entertainers. Creatures used for enjoyment, either grown in cages or taken from the outdoors, are frequently exposed to tension, solitude, poor treatment, and violent brutality. Whether those are wolf hunting and dancing, capuchins disguised as kids taught to amuse and beg on Jarkata’s crowded roads, or chimps serving alcohol in T.V. ads, animals in the wild compelled to remain as things of public consumption typically suffer solitary and depressing lifestyles.

Bullfighting

In 2002, 5,623 bulls were slaughtered in the 975 blood sports in Spain and France. In other Latin American nations, bullfighting is also practiced. It is a severe form of animal pain and misery caused only for people’s amusement. WSPA is running a global movement opposing bullfighting. Either preceding or during the bullring, the bull experiences excruciating agony and needless suffering. Pica and banderillas, palm harpoons draped with vibrantly colored heavy ribbons, are used in the arena to irritate the bulls in an attempt to provide a more significant “freak show” and to sustain degrees of aggressiveness so that the bullfight may go on longer. Bulls are injured in “training” for the battle.

The harpoons typically remain lodged in the bull’s back, resulting in increased internal bleeding and subsequent injuries. The bullfighter steps into the ring once the bull is injured, blood-stained, and in anguish. This use of a steel dagger well during a kill to pierce the heart is not entirely trustworthy and is not allowed in any slaughterhouse subject to regulation. The felled bull’s spinal cord will then be severed by a helper, the Puntillo, stabbing it with a puntilla, a short, broad blade.

Even though they are protected by metal, the ponies used to marshal and guide the bulls occasionally get wounds or are mangled. The animal’s horns or spine are surgically removed and presented to the bullfighter as a prize. The bull is frequently alive when horns bind it and are hauled outside the arena.

Rodeos and fiestas

Animals participating in fiestas and rodeos are also put to suffering and misery, like being provoked to sustain their “violent” behaviors with humans. This supports the audience’s opinion that beasts like bulls are dangerously hostile and should thus be handled less carefully. This illustrates how creatures struggle so that sick (‘conventional’) amusement may be provided.

Every year, dozens of these horrifying Bloody Festivities are held in towns around Spain (and several other Latin American nations). Most of them target livestock for their prey. The flocks of bulls used for sports are mistreated and slaughtered. Bullfighting includes blood fiestas with livestock.

Hens are the next most utilized animal in bloody festivals and celebrations after bulls. They also employ other creatures, including swine, chickens, chicks, mules, hamsters, foxes, birds, and others.

Racing

Another instance of how people used animals for amusement and enjoyment is racing. Most of the enjoyment comes from betting on the event’s winner.

Behavior that is not typical for the animal analogs of the domesticated species includes racing bulls, camels, dogs, and horses. Steeplechases are a type of harness racing that has a tight connection to the “adrenaline rush” of shooting and, therefore, can entail giant leaps, which can result in accidents, injuries, and even fatalities to horses. The Grand Prix in the U.K. and the ‘Grand Pardubice’ chase in the Czech Union are two infamous instances.

As might be anticipated, given the wealth involved, there are stories of severe instructional methods, including results-based therapies (medicines, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, whips, etc.). Therefore, creatures that don’t work as expected are killed. Some ponies might find lovely homes, but most are just put to death.

Animal representation in the media

Being portrayed in the media is a form of validation, especially in America. Erased by absence. The mainstream media offer a curriculum, a means of learning about ourselves and the world around us, and are social institutions whose impact is seldom matched by family, church, or education. What do we discover? Knowledge about members of other species that comes almost exclusively through television, movies, the internet, or other symbolic methods is likely to be stereotyped, just as it is with individuals we are unlikely to meet or have not yet met in person. Using animals and their pictures in media like advertising, news, film, television, and the internet to convey messages that have both direct and indirect effects on the lives of animals and people is intentional.

It’s critical to consider how actual animals and fictional creatures are depicted in the media. It is important to investigate how representation functions as a dynamic and a weapon of power in order to understand how it legitimizes ideological sifting and the human-nonhuman divide. In addition, portraying animals as just nice or only wicked goes against their genuine nature and puts both them and humans at risk.

Author’s Bio

Zack Lindsey

Before his famous writing career, Zack was a tech-freak and got his relative degree from a renowned university in the USA. Right from childhood, he was interested in opening up toys and replacing their pieces of machinery. Zack received an award for best robot prototype in high school. Later, he merged his tech passion with his writing skills and began writing for different tech blogs. Also, he is a professional swimmer who loves diving into life’s colors.

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