Entertainment For Lively Minds
Big Mouth...
Posted by Kit Hogue on 3 September 2010 - 11:06pm.
Here we go again...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/03/morrissey-china-subspecies-r...
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So in Mozza's world
humans being maltreated is fine but not those bunny rabbits, i'm going to speak up about that. Got another tour\album to promote has he?
Bit of a straw man there surely?
When has Morrissey ever said humans being maltreated is fine? Regarding his comment, he may have chosen his words poorly but he has every right to express his views on something he is passionate about and I bet most sane people would agree with him.
Also bear in mind that Tim Jonze is probably out for his blood after the NME furore.
Excuse me?
Morrisey's view is that Chinese people are a subspecies. You think most sane people would agree with that? Are you kidding?
I have nothing against the man's position on animal cruelty, it's laudable, but on race his sweeping generalisations seem somewhat out of date.
No,
i meant that most people would agree with his view that the Chinese treat animals horrifically.
Excuse me too,
but I believe that's not an entirely accurate accusation you're levelling there.
The quote I read was something like, "they treat animals so badly, you're tempted to think of them as a subspecies".
Which is another way of saying that their attitude towards non-human animals is so wretchedly mean it makes them seem very different from us.
Any street market in China is guaranteed to give you the willies. Personally I find the ones in France bad enough, but then I'm just a wuss.
It's all just spin to make you read the paper.
non-human animals
arrggh so its true, the Day Of Crab People is upon us!
Moz is such a delicate chap i'd bet its years since he walked round Camden market let alone a Chinese street one
"Any street market in China is guaranteed to give you the willies" - so does any meat pie bought in a pub.
*coat, door etc*
Thanks..
..for the clarifications folks.
I do have a little problem with this overarching view that Chinese people treat animals badly. I've lived in China for almost seven years and I just don't see it that way.
OK, Beijing Zoo is hardly a barrel of laughs (unless you're a Panda) but Chinese people are loving pet owners, just like you. Everyone I know has a dog or a cat (or both) or turtles, rabbits, hamsters, finches, fish and sundry other fauna.
Scratch the surface and there's an animal loving nation at home, if perhaps in a slightly different way from you at the dinner table. I had donkey burgers for tea on Friday - does this make me someone who enjoys animal cruelty? No, no more than someone who went to Burger King or KFC.
In using the words "you're tempted to think of them as a subspecies" Morrissey made a stupid sweeping generalisation: oh, *them* over there, they're *all* like that.
People of Chinese ethnicity have a good right to be mighty hacked off.
I'm heartened to hear your impressions
of the families you've seen. Given the appalling things one can easily find on the web with a little light surfing (as mentioned elsewhere here), do you think your experience is broadly representative, or is it fundamentally urban, and not a reflection of the harsher realities of the vast majority of what is after all a huge place? I'm thinking 'bears' and 'bile' for example.
And who'd be
a circus animal in China?
Read this and Mozza's crackpot point of view suddenly starts to make a lot more sense.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/glance/7942854/chinese-circus-cruelty-reveale...
You might find this link and story interesting
http://www.danwei.org/media_and_advertising/animal_cruelty_in_the_mainla...
The reaction of ordinary Chinese people to a particularly abhorent case of animal cruelty leads me to think that Morrissey was unusually ill-informed in tarring the entire Chinese race with the same badger-baiting brush.
Please note the reason for comments being closed on the blog post.
Anecdotal?
Indeed China is a big place and full of lots and lots of people, many of whom live in poverty.
I've commented on my personal experience and I am widely travelled in the urban East and South. I live in what is, by local standards, a middle class community in West Beijing (Xizhimen) and I have two vets within walking distance of my apartment. I'm not exactly living in some protected enclave or posh district like Chaoyang or Dongzhimen.
That's not to say that I have not witnessed any animal cruelty. I rescued my cat (see pic posted way way below), he'd been abandoned in the lift in my block (I named him Otis). I suppose that's a relatively humane place to abandon a kitten if you're the sort of irresponsible fool that does that kind of thing.
There is "empiric evidence" (i.e. Googled FWIW) to suggest that my own exprience is not wide of reality, nor my views naive:
http://www.marketresearchworld.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/26/dog-meat-china
I am certain that there are people in China who treat animals in the most cruel and horrific of ways, yet I am equally certain that Chinese society as a whole is not complicit in this.
I'm pretty sure that a quick Google or Bing could find me some animal cruelty in Western Europe or North America - perhaps not as sensationalist as cats for supper.
In rural China, priorities might be somewhat different - but note that this poor fella appears to own two dogs:
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20100607_1.htm
Speaking personally
I think I'd choose the lightly bruised feelings of a nation over the terrible suffering of god knows how many animals condemned to a living hell in the name of primitive medicine or entertainment.
Mozza's choice of words could have been more tactful perhaps, but anything that draws attention to (for example) the many Chinese bears made to live their lives in agony and abject terror as the bile is extracted from their gallbladder daily via a metal tube permanently fixed to their bodies can only be a positive thing in the long term?
As the Americans would say, compared to a few rash words from a fading pop star (probably) unknown in China, it's a no-brainer.
Please see the link from Danwei posted above.
In criticising Morrissey I am calling out a racist comment. That is a no brainer. I make no apology for it.
The view that Chinese people per se are cruel to animals is plain wrong. The issue does not mitigate the slur.
What's important is not how Morrissey's statement is viewed in China, it is how people in the West form a view, or reinforce an unjust view, based upon his ill-informed words.
If you want to stamp out animal cruelty in China, starting from a mindset where *all* Chinese people are kitten-crushing, bear-torturing monsters is just not that clever.
Can you tell me definitively
whether the extraction of bile from caged bears is illegal in China?
I am genuinely interested to know; it seems to me that any society which does not regard this practice as fundamentally abhorrent must have some explaining to do.
Some societies would regard the farming of cows for meat
to be fundamentally abhorrent.
There's probably a society out there that regards intensive farming of chickens for cheap meat as fundamentally abhorrent.
Koreans regard the farming of dogs for meat as acceptable - most Westerners regard that with different opinions to our farming of cattle, sheep, chickens etc for the same purpose.
I'm not altogether sure there's clear blue water between these examples and farming bears for bile. I suspect all cultures mistreat animals in some ways that are perhaps unique to them and upsetting to other cultures.
Hmmmm.
The point I'm trying to suggest is that it's entirely possible to abhor the attitudes, practices and concomitant legalities of a society, and to express this fact without being racist.
I chose to highlight the example of collecting bile from bears as it seems to me to have a lot of clear water between itself and anything remotely justifiable, anywhere in the world, in 2010.
but isn't it just another way that animals are mistreated?
The definition of 'mistreatment' differs from culture to culture. Some Chinese think that extracting bile from bears is acceptable; some Europeans think that torturing bulls in public is acceptable; some people think that cramming animals into teeny cages is acceptable.
I'd argue that there's merely a cultural difference as to what counts as 'mistreatment' and what's acceptable and, whilst we could argue about which abuse is worse than the others, none of them justify describing a specific race/nation as a 'sub-species' of the human race more than another.
In a parallel world, a Chinese pop star could be so easily describing Westerners as a sub-species because they allow bullfighting or permit battery chicken farming.
No.
Sorry, but no. There are some things so self-evidently wrong that I cannot have anything but contempt for those who continue to allow them to happen. That includes bull-fighting and battery hen farming. I don't care if the culprits are Chinese, Spanish or Martian, I think they are just wrong.
It's no good to call in the 'cultural differences' card; someone else could call that in to justify slavery or the ill-treatment of women. Oh, they have. There you are then. 'Cultural differences' is a cop-out.
Morrissey is a bit of a dick, and I don't care that much for his music. He's made some stupid remarks in the past and made little or no attempt to justify them intellectually. On this occasion, I have to say I find myself sympathising with the general drift of his remark. Even if it was a dumb throwaway phrase, and not very well expressed.
But that's exactly my point...
They're all as bad as each other - Chinese, Spanish and Martians - they ALL mistreat animals in different (and, to themselves, perfectly justifiable ways). The way animals are treated by the human race all over the world is abominable.
Equally, I'm sure there are people in China, Spain and on Mars who deplore the particular form of animal abuse in which their particular race specialises.
It was, therefore, racist of Stephen Patrick to single out the entire Chinese race, even if he were doing it to make a wider point.
(Personally, I think the guy is (and always has been) a childish attention seeker who makes his controversial comments purely for the publicity it brings him but that's not important right now)
It's symptomatic of this splendid blog
that we can violently agree to the fact that it's homo sapiens who are the cause of all the misery in this world, and they are all beneath contempt. Oh bugger, that's us too. Damn.
Yeah, it's a bugger innit?
I self-justify it by saying that the lion doesn't worry about the welfare of the gazelle he's just about to chase down and savage, and we're at the top of our food chain but I realise that's, at best, a tenuous justification for years of animal abuse.
I have a few chickens, goats and sheep - more as 'pets' than as viable farm animals - but when the time comes for them to go off to market (or the pot) I tell myself (and the kids) that at least our particular animals had a nice, happy and stress-free existence - until the point when they were killed for us to eat.
I realise there are some serious philosophical and moral discrepancies in all this but then I eat a fresh pork chop. Mmmmmm... pork chops... (drool)
Empathy
I too empathise with Morrissey's views on animal cruelty. It's that 'subspecies' comment I have an issue with. As I have stated repeatedly, I don't think that demonising a nation will help fix any animal welfare problems.
There is an Animal Protection Law in draft in China. It might get passed in October during the annual CPC plenary session (fifth of the seventeenth central committee if you're interested in these things).
Some cynical commentators believe that the general public's strong reaction to the "Hangzhou Kitten Crusher" incident was a catalyst (forgive the unintended pun) in the CPC proposing the draft statute: clearly this would be popular legislation.
Killing Pandas is already a capital offence. Saying "it was dead when I found it and I was hungry" has not proven to be a successful defence.
In some countries the overwhelming majority of the populace have absolutely no say whatsoever as to what is and isn't passed into law.
Perhaps that's not the best measure of moral goodness to use in this circumstance.
But hey - what would I know?
"it was dead when I found it and I was hungry"
You have reminded me of an astounding documentary I saw a year or two back about an odd bloke who picks up (scrapes off?) road kill and cooks it for supper. I think I'll have an omelette this evening.
Its icky
but why would a tube into the gall bladder cause a bear constant agony and/or abject terror?
At first glance it would seem to be in the same ballpark as shunts, colostomies and catheters - all things that, while by no means desirable, humans by and large get on with, without either constant agony or abject terror.
I'm not saying it's a good thing, however there's little to be gained by over-emoting.
Do
some research before trolling, please.
I'm prescribed...
...Ursodeoxycholic Acid on the NHS as treatment for Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis.
There was a time when this would have been extracted from bears in the manner described above. The contemporary version of the drug is a synthetic product, which is why it costs so much and why some health authorities in the UK are reluctant to prescribe it. There is no need to insert anything into our ursine cousins.
Maybe in China it's cheaper to harvest bear bile in the traditional manner, than it is to produce the pharmaceutical equivalent. Possibly there are cultural factors in play where the real thing is regarded as more efficacious than something cooked up in a lab. While I don't condone the practice, which is unnecessary for the reasons I have outlined above, I fail to see how branding a nation of over a billion people as a sub-species does much to change attitudes or constructive spark debate.
Incidentally there is nothing primitive about this medicine. It helps to keep me on my feet and will probably extend my lifespan by several years. I've read the results in peer-reviewed studies and I've seen it in my own blood work. The souped-up version of the drug which should be available in 5-8 years from now will, if human testing yields positive results, offer real hope for the next generation of sufferers. To reach this point a large number of mice and rats will have suffered unpleasant and premature ends in Western laboratories, as is generally the case with any drug treatment that is cleared for use on humans. I am okay with that.
UDCA from non ursine sources is available
in China.
However, in China, the use of UDCA extracted from bears is insisted upon by some 'Chinese Medicine' experts, presumably in the same way that other priest classes insist upon things being done 'the traditional way'.
There is no scientific reason for this to be the case, it's for reasons of simple human ignorance that these views are still given any credence.
"Given the appalling things one can easily find on the web
with a little light surfing", I dread to think what anyone says about the pastimes and proclivities of the population of the UK.
Any journo
alive would seize of a quote such as that and use it as their headline. Moz is a gift for this sort of stuff and it now happens every time he breaks cover to promote this or that.
Has Tim Jonze moved jobs?
Last I heard he was running Guardian website's music, in which capacity he's unlikely to have had any involvement in a story for the Guardian Weekend magazine.
I'm disappointed, if not altogether surprised, by the support being shown Morrissey here. Seems to me a lyricist of his stature should be able to find the right words without dipping into the far-right sickbag. If he's not man enough to apologise I don't envy his lawyer's job next time he takes offence at people questioning his politics.
Let's not forget...
...the way the Chinese treat their Dogfacedboys is little short of a disgrace, as well ;-)
Oh we get mistreated
all over the world - life ain't pretty
That's nothing...
Go to google.co.uk, type in the words "chinese people" and see what comes up on auto-complete.
As you can imagine, this has been quite widely shared on the Chinese Internet.
Would that be
the same Chinese internet that only allows the Chinese people to view the stuff deemed "suitable"?
Can we..
..start another thread to discuss censorship in China? Don't worry, I won't be fighting the sino-corner there. No panda-hugging apologist me.
The point I was light-heartedly trying to make is that "chinese people eat babies" and "chinese people eating babies" seem to be awfully popular search keywords on google.co.uk.
Why is that?
Well, as people are looking for information on cannibalism, only one thing can be driving their thirst for knowledge: Ignorance.
Which brings us back to Morrissey.
I much prefer the picture used
alongside the Simon Armitage interview.
Although surely stapling cats to your head is cruel too?
I haven't made this up: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/sep/03/morrissey-simon-armitage-int...
Well...
Peeling the skin off a live dog is nowhere near as bad as making a slightly pithy comment about the country where such things take place.
What, all of them?
Eh? Every Chinese person does that, do they? Your pithy is my sweeping racist generalisation.
Of course not
His comment was indeed an off-hand generalisation but it was prompted by genuine anger about some of the things that go on in China.
Jumping on his remark and dismissing the wider issues surrounding it may give you that easy glow of liberal self-satisfaction but does nothing to make the world a better place.
Why
would anyone skin live dogs? Wouldn't it make the whole process easier if they were dead?
I've no idea whether this is an invention by the animal rights or not. However I do know that they routinely tell lies about the use of animals in medical research - hence the string of ASA judgements against them.
Well....
You could find actual footage of it with a couple of clicks of your mouse. It ain't hard to find. You'll need a strong stomach.
Stop me if you think you've heard this one before
The problem with racist remarks about the Chinese is you make one then half an hour later you feel like another one
Bet Mary Bale
and Bosnian teenagers are off his Christmas Card list.Funnily enough the perpetrators of these heinous acts don't seem to be remotely Chinese.
.
.
Morrissey's next single revealed
Sorry i'll stop now (cos i can't find a clip of Father Ted's "The Chinese - a great bunch of fellas" speech)
Hmm....
I don't recall anyone being outraged about America Is Not The World, which featured the lines 'America your head's too big / America your belly is too big.'
Perhaps Mozza
should have attacked China, and not the Chinese people?
Avoiding words like 'subspecies'...
...last fashionable in 1930s Germany, would be a bonus too.
I can only agree.
I posted on this earlier, only to find I'd been beaten to it.
I have always admired Morrissey, both solo and as a Smith, but this kind of thing makes my heart sink.
Holy over-reaction batman!
Let's have some perspective. Morrissey clearly thinks that those who would be cruel to animals are somehow lesser human beings. Animal cruelty is fairly widespread and unrestricted in China. Morrissey chose to raise these issues, but did so in a bit of a clumsy manner.
Now Hitler, on the other hand...
erm...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Eh?
Surely it was steve_yates who invoked Godwin's Law? Hence my appeal for some perspective.
it was
and my bad for replying to the wrong post.
Sorry Sam.
Calm down
No one's comparing Morrissey to Hitler. But his use of a word distinct, if not exclusive, to the far-right vernacular is a good deal worse than just 'clumsy'.
It is clumsy
It doesn't even make sense. A sub-species of what?
Presumably
of the human race. What else do you think he meant?
It was a poor show all around
In the interview itself, absolutely nothing is revealed and Armitage and Mozz battle to see who can be most self satisfied and self absorbed. Apparently, on a very close reading, Armitage discloses that he is in The Scaremongers.
And all for the reissue of a couple of solo albums.
I imagine this is the kind of infuriating nonsense that haters of the Guardian point to when attacking it.
Akshully
This is the sort of 'infuriating nonsense' that readers of the Guardian point to when complaining about standards slipping.
Sounds like he
had his world view shaped by watching too many Fu Manchu films as a child in the black and white never ending drizzle shops closed eternal Sunday world in which he seemed to live.
He also appears to be under the delusion that so many frontmen of beat combos appear to suffer. That is, *they* think *we* actually care what they think (a term used loosely)
I know what you mean Sheev
...Mozza is in a weird position... not for the first time, I'll hazard... in that he *knows* that a certain number of people are hanging on his every word. In his mind, it's a given... the faithful are out there, ready to lap it all up.
I was amongst them. The number is dwindling.
Or maybe
he doesn;t give a shit?
And, and, and
I think it is a terrible read, but the assertion that Morrissey's solo work marks him out as the pre-eminent singer songwriter of his generation has me laughing out loud over the coffee this morning.
Mmmm fair do's Paddy. Fair do's.
I'm not getting at you...
Who *is* the pre-eminent songwriter of his generation?
Just asking. Not being an arse.
(Well I probably am... but I come in peace...)
Paddy McAloon, maybe? Mike Scott? Prince?
God... there's a real heap of competition, when you think about it...
Doesn't one
usually have to write songs to be condidered a singer-songwriter?
There's certainly an argument for him to be one of the best lyricists of his generation....
Not just lyrics.
He came up with all the vocal melodies too. Does that not count?
Oh
go on then....
Well, I think that he is definitely one of them
But Armitage's assertion that his solo work is evidence of it is a tad rich.
On a Morrissey best of, how many solo tracks are going to be bracketed in the 'pre-eminent songwriter of his generation' bracket in the same way as Smiths songs.
I'd take Weller in Britain, and his solo work has many more great songs than Mozza's.
Weller?
Where's the down arrow FFS?
a cat on the dinner table in China today
No, he's asleep. He was a bit tired because I'm training him to smoke the Marlboros.
What's that cat been smoking?
Holy Crap
Don't let Fraser see this; he'll have the kebab skewers out faster than you can say' "Here, kitty kitty, nice kitty....".
Bear-bile and goat-defenestrationary practices notwithstanding
This silly, surly, churlish, breathtakingly self-important little man* used the platform provided by the long-settled sediment of his celebrity to write off a specific 1.3 billion of his fellow humans as a "subspecies".
I see only two conclusions that we can draw. That word was either so horrendously ill-chosen (cultural practices are not genetically pre-determined, for starters) that he and we would do well to reconsider his status as a deft Smith of words, or, if the word was in fact carefully chosen, it suggests that Mr Morrissey's world view is about as palatable as that of Messrs Griffin and Brons.**
[* Did I mention that I'm not a fan?]
[** Allegedly, etc.]
I misread that as...
"Mr Morrissey's world view is about as palatable as that of Messrs Griffin and Bono"
Is it possible to dismiss
such barbaric cruelty to animals with a blithe "notwithstanding" though?
It's real and it's widespread in China.
Why didn't the interviewer ask him
some questions about music and the songs he's been involved in? I would have enjoyed reading that much more than stuff about cats or how they had their photos taken.
Nice day out for Simon Armitage.
I don't care for 'famous fan' interviews.
China - Do we know?
China - have you been? No, nor have I. However I do know that famine and pestilance has been quite commen over the centurys. If you have been faced with that then I think your view of any animal would be quite different to ours. Any animal would be for the eating, its a resource. You and I would be the same.
Conflicts - the Japanese war started in 1931 in China, thats 14 years of unbelievable cruelty and mass murder. The Japanese have yet to face up to this with any form of recognisable reparation.
I just write this to in an attempt to get a feel of the harshness of life experienced in China and this obviously connects to treatment of other living things. It doesn't excuse but it could form some explanation.
Moz is a good lad isn't he? He took off to Planet Crackpot several years ago and won't be returning.
Although...
Moz wasn't attacking China for eating animals, but for torturing them.