Pit Bull
I doubt there are many people who need to be convinced that dog fighting is barbaric, however this film gives a rare glimpse into how people can convince themselves that something so obviously cruel is acceptable.
We see a man from Tucson carefully rearing a Pit Bull puppy, chained next to an infant seat (i.e. he has a family) for it to be built up into a good fighter, a noble warrior. In other words, it is much more complicated than saying that he hates dogs and wants to torture them. He does not perceive his persona to be much different from someone who would have any other member of their family deliberately raised as a fighter. I suspect he fancies himself as a gladiatorial trainer, rather than a someone with a deep inferiority complex. And I would argue that this is exactly how the chain of torture does extend to humans.
The second issue is what is to be done about Pit Bulls. There is a cultural difference between the UK and the US here. In the UK all Pit Bulls were killed (rightly so, in my opinion), and yet in the US it would seem that the public outcry would prevent it. Pit Bulls are often owned by the same types of people that nurse spent Greyhounds, other poor animals, but ones that haven’t been known to eat your children (that’s what eventually provoked their slaughter in the UK). The argument is that even if Pit Bulls have been bred (or nurtured) to be monsters, they had no choice in the matter and therefore we should let the innocent live until found guilty.
The logic of this seems strange. When we raise and breed animals such as dogs, which are carnivores, many more animals will die to feed the dog. We are therefore prioritizing the monster over the cute, whether we like it or not.
50 min 53 sec Nov 16, 2007