Earthlings (n) someone who inhabits the earth;

When I was young, my younger brother often bought pets such as hamsters, chick, and fish. My siblings were interested in the pets, but easily got bored of them. They didn’t care about them at all, and I felt pity for them, since they have no reason to be tortured in my cup. Just for my brother’s momentous desire, they are captivated in a dirty bath, with no provision. I asked my mother to feed them, but she said that it’s merely a tiny animals. Other adults said the same thing and also said I was too young to understand it.

Time flies and now, tiny creatures are faded out of my mind. I became accustomed to people’s common thought; human is superior of all the animals. Just before the end of adolescence, I watch a film named ‘Earthlings’ directed by Shaun Monson, and he just captured my mind; I strongly feel affinity with the idea of this film ‘Earthlings’, which describes animal’s suffering due to human’s desire, by dividing the film into five aspects; pets, food, clothes, entertainment, and scientific research. Animals are in overcrowded environment, slaughtered without pain-killing, and some circus-animals are forced to do difficult tasks just for people’s joy. They lacked minimum care. The most surprising thing is it is all based on facts. In the website of earthlings, it is introduced as a

“Considered the most persuasive documentary ever made, EARTHLINGS is nicknamed “the Vegan maker” for its sensitive footage shot at animal shelters, pet stores, puppy mills, factory farms, slaughterhouses, the leather and fur trades, sporting events, circuses and research labs.”

Granted, it is one of the most persuasive documentary. And to know how it change the daily life of people, we can consider Aristocrat’s modes of persuasion. According to the modes of persuasion, there are three ways of persuasion; ethos, pathos, and logos. The First one is ‘ethos’, in other word, credibility. Next, ‘pathos’ is an appeal to the audience’s emotions. Finally, ‘logos’ represents logical appeal such as describing facts with supporting the author’s claim. Among three of them, I think that Earthlings mostly consists of ‘pathos’, and also based on ‘ethos’. With watching earthlings, people get aversive feelings by cruelties of it. It induces emotional reaction of watchers, so it’s based on ‘pathos’. Also, the producer of this film took a video of how they are suffered to claim his opinion. Again, every scenes reflects reality, so in a way, ‘ethos’ are used.

Earthling is blamed for some opponents that it mostly depends on ‘pathos’. For instance, blah. They argue that it fails to give a both-sided opinion to the watcher, since it only describes human’s violence to animals, rather giving any better alternatives to audiences, for animal’s suffering.

The narrator of Earthlings said, ‘It has been said that if we had to kill our own meat, we would all be vegetarians’. Some of my peers argued about this sentence and said that ‘earthling’ is merely a well-made propaganda. They express somewhat resistance to this.

The other students saw Earthlings and said to me that it shocked them, and ironically, they happily ate meat without hesitating a moment. They said that it is far different problem between those cruelties and eating meat. In contrast, some people boycotted meat product and even claimed to become vegetarians with their video on YouTube. They all saw the same clip, but their response was distinct by each other.

Nevertheless, I think that people like one of my friend misunderstand about the true meaning of this film. The ultimate goal of ‘Earthlings’ is to make people realize one obvious fact; we, humankinds, are not different from animals which we feel superior to.