By Adam Rabiner
The intentions of those who made H.O.P.E. What You Eat Matters are pretty clear, if a bit idealistic. They want you, and everyone else on the planet, to stop eating meat. Not just the bloody red steaks mind you, but all meat, including fish and fowl; and also dairy. Humans would take up a plant-based diet, we’d all be healthy vegans, and the planet would be saved from environmental degradation and impending catastrophe. It’s a lofty goal, thus the title, H.O.P.E.
You see this streak of idealism in one scene where men and women of various ages and ethnicities gather on a grass field, hand in hand, as cameras pan their serious but enlightened faces and inspirational music majestically crescendos. It reminds you, intentionally I think, of that popular Coca Cola commercial from 1971, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)." The filmmakers would like to teach the world to eat (properly).
H.O.P.E. uses various points to persuade. Its first argument answers the question “What’s in it for me?” with better health. The case is convincingly made by luminaries such as biologist and nutrition expert T. Colin Campbell and physician Caldwell Esselstyn citing lots of scientific evidence and bolstered by moving case studies of individuals on the verge of early death avoiding surgery and turning their health around after adopting low-fat, whole foods, plant-based diets.
This part of the film was inspiring and optimistic. While not convinced to replace my cheddar with cashew cheese, I could see myself cutting back. The scenes of happy and attractive folk making and eating salads and delicious looking vegetarian meals suggested it might not even be that hard.
However, the tone darkens dramatically when H.O.P.E. pulls out all the stops making the case for saving the earth, and more pitifully, the animals. We often take for granted the harmful effects on our environment of our industrial food system. It can all seem extremely removed and theoretical. Sometimes a simple image can bring it home: a huge swath of burning rainforest, a massive ancient tree being felled by a lone man with a chain-saw.
And things only get worse from there. H.O.P.E. is most honest, and difficult to watch, in the final section about how cruel human beings are to feed animals. Here we are forced to confront the naked truth about how badly we treat cows, pigs, chickens, and other farm creatures. We are like Alex, the “ultraviolent” psychopath in A Clockwork Orange, watching horrible things as aversion therapy. Unlike Alex, we can close our eyes, or turn away. But we shouldn’t.
Even though H.O.P.E. was Obama’s campaign slogan, the film seems particularly in sync with the present zeitgeist. Scenes of calves being separated from their mothers shortly after birth echo current events in federal detention facilities. Yet the strongest parallels for me were of the Holocaust: cows being shocked and prodded onto cattle cars, pigs being gas-stunned into unconsciousness before slaughter, overcrowding and squalor, sickness, squeals and shrieks, tears (animals actually cry), the sheer brutality and inhumanity of it all.
In the United States it is actually illegal to film inside a slaughterhouse so much of the film footage in H.O.P.E. is European. The narrators, former farmers and butchers, reveal their dirty deeds and secrets carried out behind walls. Their depictions are confessionals.
But humans are not inherently vicious to all animals. We love and pamper our pets. We cuddle and nuzzle with our dogs, pet and stroke our cats, sing and talk to our birds. We buy fancy treats and clothes for them, provide them shelter, take Fido on trips with us, and pay their expensive veterinary bills. We are revolted by the idea of eating certain domesticated animals. Clearly there is a double-standard, what is referred to in the film as “carnism,” a kind of racism that views some animals as more equal than other animals.
As we watch H.O.P.E. and how humans have come to commodify animals so that they are nothing more than commercial products, it is impossible to not think about how badly human beings have treated one another throughout history: about how people once justified slavery; about ongoing war and genocide. About the current #MeToo movement - can H.O.P.E. and other films like it be the Harvey Weinstein of the animal rights movement, a linchpin marking a turning point of cultural awareness about the desperate plight of many of our four legged friends?
Beloved primatologist Jane Goodall, bookends H.O.P.E. Opening and closing the film, one clip is repeated, because what she said is important. Staring straight at the camera and directly addressing the audience she tells us, “I think the most important message that I have is to remember that you, I’m speaking to you watching this film. You make a difference. You as an individual make a difference. ...Your life matters. You matter. Use your life wisely.”
The intentions of those who made H.O.P.E. What You Eat Matters are pretty clear, if a bit idealistic. They want you, and everyone else on the planet, to stop eating meat. Not just the bloody red steaks mind you, but all meat, including fish and fowl; and also dairy. Humans would take up a plant-based diet, we’d all be healthy vegans, and the planet would be saved from environmental degradation and impending catastrophe. It’s a lofty goal, thus the title, H.O.P.E.
You see this streak of idealism in one scene where men and women of various ages and ethnicities gather on a grass field, hand in hand, as cameras pan their serious but enlightened faces and inspirational music majestically crescendos. It reminds you, intentionally I think, of that popular Coca Cola commercial from 1971, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing (In Perfect Harmony)." The filmmakers would like to teach the world to eat (properly).
H.O.P.E. uses various points to persuade. Its first argument answers the question “What’s in it for me?” with better health. The case is convincingly made by luminaries such as biologist and nutrition expert T. Colin Campbell and physician Caldwell Esselstyn citing lots of scientific evidence and bolstered by moving case studies of individuals on the verge of early death avoiding surgery and turning their health around after adopting low-fat, whole foods, plant-based diets.
This part of the film was inspiring and optimistic. While not convinced to replace my cheddar with cashew cheese, I could see myself cutting back. The scenes of happy and attractive folk making and eating salads and delicious looking vegetarian meals suggested it might not even be that hard.
However, the tone darkens dramatically when H.O.P.E. pulls out all the stops making the case for saving the earth, and more pitifully, the animals. We often take for granted the harmful effects on our environment of our industrial food system. It can all seem extremely removed and theoretical. Sometimes a simple image can bring it home: a huge swath of burning rainforest, a massive ancient tree being felled by a lone man with a chain-saw.
And things only get worse from there. H.O.P.E. is most honest, and difficult to watch, in the final section about how cruel human beings are to feed animals. Here we are forced to confront the naked truth about how badly we treat cows, pigs, chickens, and other farm creatures. We are like Alex, the “ultraviolent” psychopath in A Clockwork Orange, watching horrible things as aversion therapy. Unlike Alex, we can close our eyes, or turn away. But we shouldn’t.
Even though H.O.P.E. was Obama’s campaign slogan, the film seems particularly in sync with the present zeitgeist. Scenes of calves being separated from their mothers shortly after birth echo current events in federal detention facilities. Yet the strongest parallels for me were of the Holocaust: cows being shocked and prodded onto cattle cars, pigs being gas-stunned into unconsciousness before slaughter, overcrowding and squalor, sickness, squeals and shrieks, tears (animals actually cry), the sheer brutality and inhumanity of it all.
In the United States it is actually illegal to film inside a slaughterhouse so much of the film footage in H.O.P.E. is European. The narrators, former farmers and butchers, reveal their dirty deeds and secrets carried out behind walls. Their depictions are confessionals.
But humans are not inherently vicious to all animals. We love and pamper our pets. We cuddle and nuzzle with our dogs, pet and stroke our cats, sing and talk to our birds. We buy fancy treats and clothes for them, provide them shelter, take Fido on trips with us, and pay their expensive veterinary bills. We are revolted by the idea of eating certain domesticated animals. Clearly there is a double-standard, what is referred to in the film as “carnism,” a kind of racism that views some animals as more equal than other animals.
As we watch H.O.P.E. and how humans have come to commodify animals so that they are nothing more than commercial products, it is impossible to not think about how badly human beings have treated one another throughout history: about how people once justified slavery; about ongoing war and genocide. About the current #MeToo movement - can H.O.P.E. and other films like it be the Harvey Weinstein of the animal rights movement, a linchpin marking a turning point of cultural awareness about the desperate plight of many of our four legged friends?
Beloved primatologist Jane Goodall, bookends H.O.P.E. Opening and closing the film, one clip is repeated, because what she said is important. Staring straight at the camera and directly addressing the audience she tells us, “I think the most important message that I have is to remember that you, I’m speaking to you watching this film. You make a difference. You as an individual make a difference. ...Your life matters. You matter. Use your life wisely.”