Panel Discussion

In three very different takes on the same essential idea of animal rights and their relations to humans, Professor Bump, Professor Styles and Dr. Darwin (I could never seem to catch his name, therefore I will refer to him for now as Dr. Darwin) each presented a unique dissection (no pun intended) into allusionary books. Dr. Darwin delved into the idea that “Human expression is rooted in animal behavior”. This idea was furthered by the theory that just as animals pursue their prey and stay alive based on their advantageous survival genes just as humans may attack certain prey in order to keep themselves alive and pass down their genes. Animals are to humans, just as humans are to animals. Dr. Darwin promoted the idea that human actions initially derived from those of the animal-which brings up the question: is eating meat a form of cannibalism?

   A panel discussion with Professor Bump as a speaker would never be complete without documentation and discussion of the Alice books and their relation to animal cruelty. Bump emphasized that “there is no differentiation between human and animal slaves”.

Alice is used in these novels as a murderer, even of innocent babies in the case of the pigeon eggs. She threatens and implements specieistic qualities throughout the novel, yet many of these animal cruelty plots were dismissed when it came to the newest Alice movie. The white queen of Alice and Wonderland is the seemingly better half of the queen sisters (white and red queens). While the red queen portrays the quality of flat out animal cruelty, the white queen “tales of vow to never harm any living thing”. Although the white queen makes this proclamation very well known, she is still willing to allow Alice to harm a living thing, the Jabberwocky. The white queen actually tells Alice to kill the Jabberwocky justifying this act because she herself is not harming anything, but instead it is Alice, who has never taken this vow, who will instill harm. If this is the mindset of a pro-animal rights character, what does this insinuate about vegetarianism? If we are not the person doing the killing of the cow, are we allowed to eat a steak? Yes, we may take a vow never to hurt any living thing, but what about another person doing the hurting, and us merely benefitting, just as the white queen would benefit from Alice killing the Jabberwocky? Does this cross the line, or is it justifiable just as the killing of the Jabberwocky is justified by the white queen?

   The final speaker, Anne Styles, particularly sparked my interest in her discussion and comparison of Dracula to vivisection scientist, David Ferrier. David Frierrer was a scientist who did experiments correlating certain activities to different regions of the brain. He used dogs and monkeys as his subjects and his findings were historic and proved to exponentially further human medicine and save many lives. The 1876 Antivivisection Act restricted many doctors and scientists from performing vivisection experiments, requiring a specific permit to perform these experiments. These liscenses were very restrictive and did not allow vivisection to be done merely for the purpose of teaching or for the subjects to be monkeys or dogs. In the case of Ferrier, monkey and dog subjects was justified as reasonable only because it saved so many lives. This begs the objection; where is this line drawn and how many human lives is enough to sacrifice the lives of innocent animals?

There were three criteria to which stipulated Styles’ comparison of Dracula and Ferrier. They both electrically stimulated brains of living things, they both hypnotize their subjects and they both sacrifice these victims. Dracula was an “amalgath of neurologists who dissect living animals”.   The “electrical stimulation” that Dracula used was not with electricity as used by Ferrier, but rather telepathically, which in those days was thought to involve the emission of electric waves interacting from brain to brain.

   Authors often use characters in books to exemplify hot topics of utmost importance here in the real world. The three speakers of the panel did an outstanding job in connecting the parallels of fiction and nonfiction versus reality and bringing to front the ideas of animal cruelty and equality.

http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=961

http://www.draculas.info/gallery/picture_of_bram_stokers_dracula_1902_doubleday-89/