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Vegan Cinema

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Thinking Veganism in Literature and Culture

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature ((PSAAL))

Abstract

Drawing on the philosopher Simone Weil’s analogy between looking and eating, this essay links modes of cinematic looking with the practice of veganism. In a range of film examples in which looking and eating are thematically and formally intertwined, I illustrate the workings of a vegan cinematic sensibility that “lets be” the objects of sight. Vegan cinema, then, does not pertain to films about or in favour of veganism. Rather, it indicates cinema’s acknowledging of the reality and parity of beings and things, beyond the voracious observer’s devouring gaze. Nonviolent looking, in the realm of art, reflects the practice of veganism in the culinary realm. Both embody an impossible but politically valiant attempt to engage with the world without consuming it.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Charlie Chaplin, Modern Times (USA, United Artists), 1936.

  2. 2.

    Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Mary Warnock (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 593.

  3. 3.

    Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Visual and Other Pleasures, (London, 1989), pp. 14–26.

  4. 4.

    Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho (USA, Paramount), 1960.

  5. 5.

    Psycho makes formal, not psychological, use of voyeurism, as does Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960). In Powell’s film, the cinematic apparatus (in the shape of a blade concealed in the leg of a tripod) becomes the (phallic) instrument of murder. Neither of these films purports to explore the mental depths of their characters. They function as intellectual exercises in cinematic construction, exploring the formal possibilities of their psychologically blunt instruments.

  6. 6.

    Jean Epstein, “On Certain Characteristics of Photogenie,” in French Film Theory and Criticism 1907–1939, vol. 1, ed. Richard Abel, (Princeton, 1988), pp. 314–318, p. 314. On the origins of photogénie, see Film Theory: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, eds. Philip Simpson, Andrew Utterson, and Karen J. Shepherdson (London, 2004), pp. 49–51. The term is closely identified with the writings of Epstein. See in particular Epstein’s La Photogénie de l’impondérable (Paris, 1935).

  7. 7.

    Simone Weil, Waiting for God (1951), trans. Emma Crawfurd, (New York, 2001), p. 105.

  8. 8.

    In Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film (New York, 2011), I explored the correlation of vulnerability, reality, and beauty in Weil’s philosophy, grounded in the statement that “the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is the mark of existence” (Gravity and Grace, p. 108). Here, I return to the same topic by a different route, exploring Weil’s contribution to a realist conception of art.

  9. 9.

    Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr, (London, 2002), p. 149.

  10. 10.

    A selection of activist vegan documentaries includes Vegucated (Marisa Miller Wolfson, 2011), Forks Over Knives (Lee Fulkerson, 2011), and One Angry Vegan (Gil Golan, 2017), among many others. In 2015, the blog Troiscouleurs published a post by Camille Brunel entitled, “Le Cinéma vegan,” which points to a recent shift in the representation of animals, and meat, onscreen. Brunel claims that the more animals there are on the screen, the less meat there is on characters’ plates (“plus il y a de faune à l’écran … moins il y a de viande dans l’assiette des personnages”). As animals cease to be mere symbols for human affairs, they assume the role of an “idea in images” (“une idée en images”), a vegetarianism that purports to be ethical. Vegan cinema replaces food in the belly with the notion of food of the heart (“un ‘cinéma vegan’ qui replace simplement la nourriture en son cœur plus encore qu’en son ventre”), http://www.troiscouleurs.fr/cinema/le-cinema-vegan/, accessed on 22 July 2017.

  11. 11.

    See Tom Tyler’s essay in this collection.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., p. 116.

  13. 13.

    Simone Weil, The Notebooks of Simone Weil, trans. Arthur Wills, (New York, 2004), p. 169.

  14. 14.

    See for example, André Bazin, What is Cinema? vol. 1 & 2, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley, 2005); Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Oxford, 1960).

  15. 15.

    Weil, Gravity and Grace, p. 53.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., p. 53.

  17. 17.

    On the convoluted relationship between real, animated, and composite animals in film see Michael Lawrence, “‘Practically infinite manipulability’: domestic dogs, canine performance and digital cinema,” Screen 56, no.1 Spring (2015): 115–120.

  18. 18.

    Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks (1970), trans. Richard Rees, (Eugene, OR, 2015), p. 90.

  19. 19.

    Witnessing the animal calamity is the subject of Sara Salih’s essay in this volume.

  20. 20.

    Darren Aronofsky uses the biblical story of the flood to explore humanity’s original sin (the eating of the apple, which, in Noah, is significantly pulsating and fleshy). J. M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello is another example of a person isolated and bereft of human connections as a result of witnessing the animal catastrophe. Neither character is particularly likeable or upbeat, which seems to compromise their efficacy as animal advocates. Both Noah and The Lives of Animals (Princeton: 1999) are about the state of being compromised.

  21. 21.

    Simone Weil, Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks [1957], trans. Elizabeth Chase Geissbuhler, (London, 1987), pp. 89–90.

  22. 22.

    Louis Lumière, Le Repas de bébé (France, 1895). This 30 second “actuality” was part of the historic Lumière screening on 28 December 1895 at the Grand Café in Paris, which marked the inauguration of cinema.

  23. 23.

    James Williamson’s 1901 short The Big Swallow reverses this notion in a tale of cinematic revenge: a man, angered by being filmed, approaches the camera, opens his mouth, and swallows the camera and cameraman whole.

  24. 24.

    Dai Vaughan, “Let There be Lumière,” in For Documentary: Twelve Essays, (Berkeley, 1999), pp. 63–67, 64–65 (my emphasis).

  25. 25.

    Ibid., p. 65.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., p. 66.

  27. 27.

    Weil qtd. in Lissa McCullough, The Religious Philosophy of Simone Weil: An Introduction, (London, 2014), p. 135.

  28. 28.

    Ibid., p. 136.

  29. 29.

    See Benjamin Westwood’s essay in this collection, which looks more closely at the idea of the vegan as ascetic, and the notion of absolute refusal/renunciation.

  30. 30.

    See for example, Francine du Plessix Gray, Simone Weil (New York, 2001).

  31. 31.

    Laura Wright, The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror (Athens, 2015), p. 89.

  32. 32.

    Wright, Vegan Studies Project; Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel, The War Against Animals, (Leiden, 2015); Robert McKay’s essay in this collection.

  33. 33.

    In addition to Wright, Wadiwel, and McKay, see Annie Potts and Jovian Parry’s “Vegan Sexuality: Challenging Heteronormative Masculinity through Meat-free Sex,” Feminism & Psychology 20 (2010), pp. 53–72, Sara Salih’s “Vegans on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,” in The Rise of Critical Animal Studies, eds. Nik Taylor and Richard Twine. New York: Routledge, 2014, pp. 52–68; Anat Pick, “Turning to Animals Between Love and Law,” New Formations 76 (2012), pp. 68–85, and Annie Potts, “Vegan,” in Critical Terms in Animals Studies, ed. Lori Gruen (Chicago, forthcoming in 2018).

  34. 34.

    Wadiwel, War Against Animals, p. 277.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., p. 278.

  36. 36.

    For a detailed survey of the uses and abuses of animals in art, see Elliot Sperber, “Art World? More Like SeaWorld: The Use of Live Animals as Objects of Art,” Counterpunch 16 May 2016, http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/16/art-world-more-like-seaworld-the-use-of-live-animals-as-objects-of-art/, accessed on 30 July 2017.

  37. 37.

    Here, I am alluding to the theorization of the visual animal as “absent,” a notion introduced in John Berger’s seminal essay “Why Look at Animals?” and developed by Akira Mizuta Lippit. For a critique of the spectral view of the cinematic animal see Jonathan Burt, “John Berger’s ‘Why Look at Animals?’ A Close Reading,” Worldviews9, no. 2 (2005), pp. 203–218, and Anat Pick, “Why Not Look at Animals?” NECSUS (Spring 2015), http://www.necsus-ejms.org/why-not-look-at-animals/. The cinematic animal is not a spectral loop. Its onscreen power derives from the tension between its status as modern simulacra and the persistence of its physical import.

  38. 38.

    Salih’s essay in this collection movingly recounts some of the difficulties of taking animals seriously in a non-vegan classroom. It is difficult to pinpoint the combination of factors required to overcome resistance to witnessing the catastrophe befalling animals, but such moments do arise. Whether or not they lead to an immediate change in behaviour, something meaningful happens when the conversation shifts beyond “vegan apologetics.” New ways of speaking, seeing, and knowing allow for violence against animals to be perceived as violence.

  39. 39.

    Kelly Reichardt, Wendy and Lucy (USA, Oscilloscope), 2008. The Williams trilogy overlaps with what we might call the Lucy trilogy, from Old Joy (2007) to Wendy and Lucy and Certain Women, in which Lucy is present in the form of dedication alone, a reminder of the relatively short lives of dogs.

  40. 40.

    In Certain Women, for example, shy farmhand Jamie (Lily Gladstone) is romantically snubbed by the lawyer Beth (Kristen Stewart). When Jamie falls asleep at the wheel on the long drive back to her ranch after seeing Beth, we fear an accident. Instead, the car lazily rolls into an empty field where it draws to a halt. Captured in long-shot, the stranded vehicle accentuates the character’s loneliness. Reichardt ends the scene there, and we never see Jamie’s reaction.

  41. 41.

    “Reichardt has described her movie as a post-Katrina story: Although it’s never made obvious, Wendy apparently lost everything except Lucy in some previous catastrophe.” J. Hoberman, “Wendy and Lucy,” The Village Voice, 10 December 2008, https://www.villagevoice.com/2008/12/10/wendy-and-lucy/

  42. 42.

    On the hopelessly knotted ethics of pet food , see Salih’s essay in this collection.

  43. 43.

    Iams was founded in 1946, the period after the Second World War that saw a boom in pet ownership. In 2014, Mars purchased Iams from Procter & Gamble for the sum of $2.9bn (£1.7bn).

  44. 44.

    Sophie Mayer, Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (London, 2015), p. 31.

  45. 45.

    A loose homage to Vittorio de Sica’s neorealist Umberto D. (1952), Wendy and Lucy has been identified with the “neo-neo realist” turn in American cinema. See, for example, A. O. Scott, “Neo-Neo Realism,” New York Times Magazine. 17 March 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/magazine/22neorealism-t.html?pagewanted=all&mcubz=1

  46. 46.

    “Adrift in America: The Films of Kelly Reichardt,” the Museum of the Moving Image, 1–3 April 2011, http://www.movingimage.us/files/calendar/notes/WENDY_AND_LUCY_program_note.doc

  47. 47.

    The list of films in which real animals are harmed or killed is a long one. The function of unsimulated violence is the administering of the shock of authenticity. See for example, the winner of the 1978 Cannes Palme D’Or, Ermanno Olmi’s The Tree of Wooden Clogs, in which the documentary-like realism of peasant life is propped up by the killing of a goose and a long, graphic sequence of the slaughtering of a pig .

  48. 48.

    Simone Weil, Waiting for God, p. 103; my emphasis.

  49. 49.

    Weil, Gravity and Grace, p. 42.

  50. 50.

    Robert McKay, in an email correspondence with the author on 5 September 2015.

  51. 51.

    Steven Spielberg, Jaws (USA, Universal), 1975.

  52. 52.

    Matthew Calarco, “Being Toward Meat: Anthropocentrism, Indistinction, and Veganism,” Dialectical Anthropology 38.4 (2014), pp. 415–429.

  53. 53.

    Val Plumwood, “Being Prey,” in The Ultimate Journey: Inspiring Stories of Living and Dying, eds. James O’Reilly, Sean O’Reilly, and Richard Sterling (San Francisco, 2000), pp. 128–146, pp. 131–132.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., pp. 138–139.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., p. 143.

  56. 56.

    Ibid., p. 145.

  57. 57.

    Werner Herzog, Grizzly Man (USA, Lions Gate), 2005.

  58. 58.

    Gilles, Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).

  59. 59.

    For a detailed reading of the workings of vulnerability in Grizzly Man, see the chapter on Herzog in Creaturely Poetics. On Treadwell’s becoming-animal, see for, example, Dominic Pettman, “Bear Life: Tracing an opening in Grizzly Man,” in Human Error: Species Being and Media Machines, (Minneapolis, 2011), pp. 37–58.

  60. 60.

    Julia Ducournau, Raw (France/Belgium, Wild Bunch), 2017.

  61. 61.

    Raw’s roadside carnage and cannibalism are reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967), the surreally cruel road movie which, alongside cartoonish human violence, features detailed eating scenes and the slaughtering of a real pig and goose . I am grateful to Robert McKay for reminding me of the affinity between these two genre-defying cannibal films.

  62. 62.

    Simone Weil, Waiting for God, p. 76.

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  1. Queen Mary, University of London, London, UK

    Anat Pick

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  1. Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Emelia Quinn

  2. Wadham College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Benjamin Westwood

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Pick, A. (2018). Vegan Cinema. In: Quinn, E., Westwood, B. (eds) Thinking Veganism in Literature and Culture. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73380-7_6

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