Man vs. Nature
I’m not much of an animal rights guy, but I caught a bit of a rodeo competition on TV at the gym today and was reminded how awful I think they are. It’s not just the fact that rodeos are a senseless exploitation of animals, but the more I think about it the more the whole thing strikes me a bizarre and primal bit of brutality that really has no place in modern society. Yes, I suppose some would say that it’s a celebration of the old west or other nostalgic claptrap, but the whole premise is just backwards and primitive. Honestly, how else can you describe a contest in which a person jumps onto the back of an angry animal to see how long they can stay on? That’s some real cave-man shit.
Unlike it’s even less-civilized cousin (not that it’s anything to brag about), the bull fight, rodeos take a curious zoomed-in view at the conflict between men and animals. The bull is led into a pen where it gets pissed off, a person jumps on its back, the gate is opened, the animal bucks around until the person falls off, and then the animal is re-captured for the whole stupid cycle to repeat itself. But the competition itself is only concerned with the time between when the gate opens and the man hits the ground, which almost gives the illusion that this captive animal is in some topsy-turvy way the victor. Nevermind the fact that every aspect of this contest was a foregone conclusion.
Looking at the bigger picture, the rodeo is an obvious metaphor for the struggle between man and nature since it’s pretty much a spectator version of the taming of wild animals, but what’s the point of such a show in 2006? When human beings have domesticated or captured pretty much every species we’ve been able to find, it’s probably time to admit to ourselves that we’ve won the whole “man vs. nature” thing (at least on this scale). When we’ve raped and pillaged the planet though hunting and fishing, habitat destruction, pollution, global warming, domestication, and extinction, taking a victory lap through the food chain by using the lives of animals like some sort of sport is pretty shallow and empty.
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Yeah, but when we ‘tamed’ them the first time, they didn’t have a leather strap cinched around their balls. I don’t see a bunch of big-belt-buckled rednecks spelling ‘metaphor,’ let alone recognizing one. It’s all just stupid and inhumane.
Comment by FreedomByChoice — October 30, 2006 @ 6:37 am
In some ways, I think rodeo has stayed closer to its roots than other athletic competition. For example, we still have the javelin toss in track & field, but nobody uses a spear on the battlefield anymore. But the activities in rodeo competition, like riding an unbroken horse or roping a runaway calf, are still performed by real ranchers today.
It’s true that when you take these ranching activities to the fairgrounds, you’ve abstracted them considerably. But the competitors are still showing off a real world skill, even if in a bizarrely exaggerated and artificial environment.
The PRCA talks a pretty good game when it comes to animal welfare, but I doubt there’s any common ground between them and PETA. To the Pro Rodeo officials, the animals are being respected as competitive partners to the cowboy, and have to be kept healthy and happy in order to perform well. (It is worth noting that half of the scoring is the cowboy’s performance, and half is the animal’s.) But to someone interested in the inherent dignity of animals, the very act of rodeo competition is exploitative, no matter how much attention is paid to their health.
Comment by Cris — October 30, 2006 @ 10:34 am
No matter what the activity, we always make it into a competition, pick winners and give prizes. From cattle-wrangling to copy-writing to beating people up to just driving a car, somebody will always set up a guild or an academy or a sanctioning body and claim to be selecting “the best” at whatever. You’ve named two of the stinkiest examples, but overall these games couldn’t be less relevant or of less use to anybody.
Comment by Larry Jones — October 30, 2006 @ 3:10 pm
Rodeos would be just fine if not for the hillbilly jackasses and shameless/prideful torture of defenseless creatures.
Comment by Cakesniffer — October 30, 2006 @ 3:32 pm