I can certainly understand your feelings--and share them to a degree (though being a human rights activist, I'd have to pass on the sledge hammer). In the film's defense, however, I will say that your reaction is basically the reaction the movie's producers were striving for. They wanted us to be sickened by the abuse, while at the same time they were hoping to make us feel pity for these individuals trapped in their pursuit of something that no longer existed. And keep in mind that the characters came over, more or less, to your way of thinking at the end, helped along by Monroe's characters' ability to see it for what it was.
Thus, I think the film is a net positive for animal rights ideas. It is unfortunate that the horses had to suffer to make the point, but it was a temporary trauma--one that we can hope left no permanent scars. Was that temporary suffering justified in the context of making the case against this kind of cruelty, and pursuing the art of film? For me, I believe it was, but I can understand how you would come to a different conclusion. Certainly if the horses had actually been killed or crippled in the film's production, I might have a different view . . . but they apparently were not.
Now, if one were to compare this with a film that abused children to make the point that abuse was wrong, I would have a very different view. Thus, I admit to prejudice in favor of children over animals--but this is one prejudice I feel no need to apologize for.
And I certainly agree with you regarding your comment: "humanity is just so full of anger and hatred that they can't leave anything alone." Very true. I don't believe we are born with that hatred, but that it is foist upon us in childhood by adults who unconsciously pass on the same destructive methods of childrearing that they learned from their parents, and their grandparents before. Hitting, shaming, and humiliating a child are tactics that result in the child's repressing his/her understandable resentment and rage over this mistreatment in order to not drive away the all important parent on which the child depends. But this repression feeds a reservoir of "anger and hatred" which will eventually seek an outlet, an object onto which the person can discharge this pent-up affect. Unfortunately, ones own children become the usual targets, but animals also frequently act as stand-ins for the actual target of the child-turned-adult's anger--the parent. And so it goes, through history. Fortunately, a few nations more progressive than our own, have actually enacted laws to prohibit spankings and other remnants of our barbaric past from being inflicted upon children, while offering counseling to the parents. Not the entire answer to the problem, but it is movement in the right direction.
Cheerio!
Fighting for Truth, Justice, and making it the American way.
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