Newsflash: "A man who sold pit bull fight videos to investigators is the first person to be tried under a 1999 federal animal cruelty statute." -- Pittsburgh (AP), Jan. 12, 2005

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As a whole, American society takes a mixed view toward animal cruelty. We generally don't like to see it, not for entertainment's sake or even for the preservation of landscape or agriculture, unless we're involved in those businesses (and then, it's not for the sake of pleasure, unless shooting or trapping to kill is -- and for some, let's admit, it is).

But, by and large, we either reluctantly or blithely accept it in at least three contexts: 1) Getting a good steak or drumstick on the plate. I don't hold myself above this hypocrisy: I'm an enthusiastic carnivore. While I wish my meat came my way with less cruelty in the process, I am not ignorant enough to believe I've done much if anything to ensure it. 2) The performance of medical research on our human behalf, given a qualified attempt to reduce suffering (or what we would hope or assume is such an attempt). 3) We are less informed about its use in consumer products testing, although for the more gently inclined, it too has become an issue, usually on the level of buying the lipstick marked "not tested on animals" over the one that isn't. I once wrote a letter to my Senator asking him to look into banning Detroit auto manufacturers from crash testing cars with live, unanesthetized pigs inside rather than sensor-rigged dummies. It was, at the time, a common practice.

Thus, I would not say that Americans condone animal cruelty, as some PETA activists and other extremists are likely to argue. It's become fashionable to reject the wearing of fur, or too much fur. It's de rigeur to claim vegetarianism on more than health grounds. It's easy to raise an outcry over the thinning of crows in New York State, or wherever, or the movement of a hawk's nest in the City, and so on. We have tender, bleeding hearts for the fishy, feathered, furry set, Americans. But, in certain contexts, we tolerate their abuse -- as long as we don't have to see it or think about it too much.

And yet, until 1999, representations of animal cruelty were legal (at the Federal level) when snuff films remained underground and subject to prosecution. I'm no fan of Clinton, but until he signed the bill into law, the paradox existed of animal cruelty's illegality in act but legality of display in fact. Now, such materials are outlawed unless they can be proven to have "no serious educational, historical or scientific value."

Although under the "new" federal law representations of actual animal cruelty must be legally coded as educational / historical / scientific" for distribution, we still get broadcasts of animal cruelty for pleasure. I was myself surprised to see the Chicken Fight Burger King campaign, which began in roughly October 2004. Although the company described the chickens as "wrestlers," viewers cannot help but see the poulescent combat as an updated, comedic form of cock fighting. The music and other stylistic features of the campaign further introduced elements of Latin culture, suggesting the appeal to a hip young audience of Latinos and other American demographics who find that culture the cutting edge of cool -- a recent trend in popular media, as the children's show Mucha Lucha illustrates.

Most Americans would likely find references to dog fighting unacceptable. It's banned in all 50 states. Bear baiting, and other acts of overt animal cruelty for entertainment are likewise widely considered publicly distasteful. Why did Burger King endorse, and their advertising company design, a campaign that was a throwback to a cultural practice that is both abhorrent to many present-day American and associated with a certain lower-order of Latin culture with which many Latino Americans would be loathe to identify?

The almighty dollar is, of course, the answer. Burger King has introduced a celebrity voting campaign concurrently, hoping to increase the interest of a young demographic to their chain (with the likes of such stars as P. Diddy and Snoop Dog as pitchpersons; see BK CMO's statement here). The Chicken Fight ads, we might argue, appealed not only to a young demographic, but also to a specifically male youth target. It seems that we will use anything to sell to our youth these days -- regardless of what it may be communicating about our basic care for the welfare of those who cannot defend themselves and otherwise have no voice.

True, humans wrestle, and box, and ultimate fight for sport: the physical testing of themselves, and entertaiment and material enrichment of others. But, they've chosen to do it. They live through it. They're repaired well and adequately compensated -- by their own estimation at least. Or, they've accepted the risks as reasonable. In the case of dog or cock or bull fighting, human beings are exploiting a natural territorial or mating aggression of an animal whose aggression has been encouraged, and sometimes enhanced (as with steel rooster spurs). It's the equivalent, sans the humanity, of slave masters setting slaves to fight for their amusement. The only concern for the slaves' welfare being, historically, their continued preservation as good fighting property and breeding stock. Not to mention that taking pleasure in a spectacle of real, damaging violence -- not the pretend or holds barred stuff we often consume in lieu -- reduces us. It renders us ugly and primitive, or, perhaps more accurately, it appeals to those dimensions of us that already are. For shame, then, that we have not earned a higher degree of civilization when we impose such terms on "lower" animals, even if we have -- I hope we have -- learned not to do this to men.

Of course, we tolerate fictional representations of animal cruelty all the time. So to get up in arms about this one might seem to overstate the case. But, it is one thing to show a man in a movie defending himself from a grizzly bear attack and another to take pleasure in the idea of animals ripping one another up for sport. Let's just say it doesn't give me a taste for chicken -- in fact, it takes away my appetite.