I
still remember the red shouting of 2002. It was quite interesting for me that
world can watch the soccer games held in Korea though the countries are far
from here. 10years later, 2012, People can communicate through ‘facebook’ and
several types of smartphones. Those things actually give us many conveniences
but also some inconveniences. They have improved democracy all around the world
but also exploited workers all around the world in many different ways.
Following paragraphs will help you to understand the contents in this
paragraph.
26th
October 2011, there was the election to fill vacancy the major of Seoul. Around
that times, radio podcast program called ‘I’m funny trick[나는 꼼수다]’ exposed expensive plastic surgery of the candidate government
party who call herself a mother of Seoul. Moreover, member of Ggomsu imitated
two candidates on the other side of government to help citizens to choose one.
As a result of that podcast, opposition side candidate won the election after
10 years absence. In addition, there was a ‘twitter’ that spread citizens’ idea
effectively with function ‘following’ and ‘retweet’. These kinds of Social
Network Services (called SNS) worked on the Greek, Egypt and even Wall Street. People
had demonstrated on the street through the social network services so that
removed dictator or threatened capitalists in New York.
However,
some sociologists say that improvement of network services can exploit workers.
Being able of long distance communications help workers get work though the
time is after work time or Sunday. Higher offices can give workers work anytime
they need. As a result, workers cannot get enough rest during weekend. But,
there is no serious consideration about wages working time listed on the Labor
Standard Law or infringing worker’s private life. Considering many workers
admire leaving office and weekend for their sweet rest, out-office working such
as e-mailing is too cruel.
There
are other problems about SNS. When companies hire new workers, some of them
check applicants’ twitter or facebook to inspect their ideas and attitude of
life, politics. In this unstable economic situation, taking a job is more and
more important, and therefore, applicants and workers should manage their SNS
according to boss’s idea. For instance, recently, some workers made one twitter
address called ‘Bamboo Woods’ to share their everyday life however company
president found the existence of that address, and began to censer that.
Considering twitter and facebook can be alive because of free expression of
idea, censorship killed the function of SNS and restrained the outlet of
workers’ stress made in everyday office life.
21C
is the century of technology. As we know every technology has two faces like
Janus. Modern technology, represented as social networking services, may
improve our democracy through free expression of our ideas, on the other hand,
may exploit worker no matter office and house, and boss’s censorship is work
cruel for them. Therefore, what we need is participating to improve democracy
more and respect workers’ leisure time and facebook status.
Movie
‘Earthling’ shows us how cruel we are when we treat the other earthlings;
things that inhabits on the earth. Making the film, director uses 5 ways to
abuse animals, pet, food, clothe, entertaining, and science (as experiment) and
makes us be sorry for treating animals (earthlings). Director explained us
three types of ‘-ism’ about discrimination, racism, sexism, and specism. Some
races accept racism and ignore the rights of the other races for their profits.
And one gender accepts sexism and ignores the rights of the other gender for
their profits. Similarly, some species accept ‘specism’ and ignore the rights
of the other gender for their profits. Among these three types of ‘-ism’, there
are not big difference in terms of cruelness, discrimination and inhumane
attitude. In this review, readers can focus on the background of this video,
that is, what made people so cruel.
At first,
these earthlings are used to be clothes or leathers. Basically, it doesn’t
matter that people wear animal fur. What the matter is in the way treating the India
cows. Slaughtering cows in the many cities in India is strictly banned by law, people
carry the cows to the places where slaughtering is allowed. Problems happen
while cows are carried. Considering most of cows are first with truck
and its sound, this experience will be scaring for them. The rougher people
treat them, the more scaring experience will be. Without any food or water
while they are carried, they definitely would fall in pain. As a result, about
half of cows are killed when they arrive at the slaughterhouse. This video is
enough to persuade people to rethink about their clothes made of fur. On the
other hand, this video may make people abhor the human nature because of
cruelness.
Someone may
wonder “why they should be so cruel?” Then here is an answer. Readers may
remember ‘foot and mouth disease’ that hit Korea last year. Here’s a link shows
how people treated pigs influenced by the disease.
(Subtitles of this video will be posted on
my blog).
As film maker of
this video (treating foot-and-mouth disease) says, we treat these animals
because of ‘economic value’. In this point, readers can get the clue to
understand the cruelness in the movie Earthling. In terms of ‘economic value’,
readers can remind another abuse in our society based on not only in specism
but also in racism and sexism. For readers’ understanding, here’s a link of interesting
article from ‘In These Times’.
Movie ‘Earthling’
mainly shows us the result of ‘specism’, however it is impossible to separate three
types of ‘-ism’, racism, sexism and specism in terms of Capitalism. About 300
years ago in America, North and South fought for the black slaves. South
struggled for maintaining slaves so that capitalist can exploit them. Nowadays,
many advertisements appear sexy girls to attract consumers so that companies
may get more profits. Similarly, many clothe companies and stock farmers treat
animals harshly so that they can reduce productive cost. Like this, in front of
the capital, people can be cruel though they were NOT that cruel before.
We can
find that in part 2, food. In part 2, narrator says “There’s no anodyne or
anesthetic during castration, and it is conducted for making good marbling or
soft fleshiness.” Readers can find other specism in that sentence. Remind that
castration of sexual-criminal had been controversial issue for several days. For
instance, after one member of government party insisted that we should make the
law that allows physical castration, some civic groups acted against his idea.
On the contrast, people castrate little pigs without any sense of guilty, but
they are full of expectation of making money.
Part 5, about
earthling and science, reminded me one video showed Sunday morning when I came
here for KMLA entrance interview. It treated some drugs safe for animals, but
not for people. The Thalidomide Tragedy was highly highlighted in this video.
For readers who don’t know this tragedy, here’s the link.
It’s
quite sad story, isn’t it? In fact, as narrator says in the movie, there’s no
conviction that doctors can adopt the results from animal experiments to
people. Since the basic presupposition, result from animal can be adopted is
wrong, many drugs have made troubles so far, and will continue to make
problems. While on the other, some scientists, including Charles Robert Darwin
who claimed the theory of evolution, insisted animal experiment is necessary in
terms of expansion of human knowledge. Moreover, some of them thought like rats,
good at spreading, should be used for experiments. However, fact is that all of
them including rats, Pavlov’s dog, and Schrodinger’s cat are all earthling.
As Darwin explained to justify animal experiment, they can feel the pain or
loneliness.
In the beginning of this movie,
there are words that Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote on his novel “All men
are like Nazis when they face animals.” Sadly, his sentence is still true in
many different aspects. And I wrote about term ‘specism’ related with racism
and sexism to help you think background of those cruel things. And lastly, with
tragedy, I wrote about animal experiment. Overall, this is not interesting
movie and essay. But what we should remind is 3 stage of truth. The last stage
is ACCEPTANCE.