Taking pleasure in cruelty
The following is an excerpt from an editorial this week in the Guardian of London:
The death of so handsome a creature as Cecil the lion has rightly ignited global outrage. But why do we seem to care so much more about how an animal dies than how it lives?
What’s most troubling about this case is the pleasure of the hunt. Although we mostly kill animals for food, humans are among the very few animals that kill for pure sport and the sheer pleasure of killing. It’s odd that foxes and cats — so often the objects of animal lovers’ special care — share this trait with us. Hunting connects some people to an atavistic and otherwise incommunicable instinct that can, they say, lead to some visceral sense of oneness with the natural world.
For others, such as Walter the dentist, or even Hemingway’s Francis Macomber, hunting large animals suggests something considerably more sinister. For one has to ask what sort of personal inadequacies someone is making up for if they have to travel the world to find a thrill in taking life. The fact that Palmer’s weapon of choice was some high-tech crossbow seems to amplify the creepy, primal connection that he sought with the suffering of his prey.
No doubt the suburban dentist, whose life normally revolved around other people’s molars and gum disease, got to feel a little more fully alive, a little bit more alpha male, in the face of a lion’s stare. Not that Palmer was bravely recreating any sort of parity with the lion, having a professional hunter with a high-powered rifle standing at his side. Moreover, many of these lions have become so used to human beings that they hardly react to their presence.
No, there was nothing brave here. Photographs of a bare-chested Palmer hugging a dead leopard are reminiscent of those famous Vladimir Putin shots — both men crassly trying to telegraph their masculinity. Factory farming may be more cruel to the animals. But it takes no pleasure in its cruelty. And that’s why the condemnation of Palmer is fully justified.