INCENTIVES FOR CRUELTY: ABUSE OF TENNESSEE WALKING HORSES

The horse is tortured by having its  front feet wounded in all sorts of invidiously creative ways to make them so painful that the horse will place its weight on the hindquarters to avoid as much of the pain as possible.

Please go here for an excruciating video and endless details you never wanted to know. 

INCENTIVES FOR CRUELTY: ABUSE OF TENNESSEE WALKING HORSES
Torture seems to be a very American thing. It also seems that it is mostly invisible to us. Here is an example made visible: The Tennessee Walking Horse.


Yesterday we covered the abuse of horses in horse racing; in this post we discuss a recent video released by the Humane Society. The video highlights an instance of a larger issue, which is how arbitrary human tastes can create incentives for cruelty.

The concern revolves around the Tennessee Walking Horse (TWH), a breed developed in the U.S. in the late 1800s and bred to have smooth gaits, including their distinctive “running walk,”  that are unusual in most breeds. Over time, a more exaggerated version became popular among show judges and spectators at TWH shows; called the “big lick,” it requires horses to shift their weight to their back legs and pick their front legs high off the ground. Fans enjoyed the flashy, unusual movements and horses that performed the gait began taking home more prizes. This created a powerful incentive to get horses to exhibit the unnaturally exaggerated gait. 

This is an example of The Inscription of the Body on an animal, the horse.

And the movie BUCK is an undoing of The Inscription of the Body. Or a natural and deliciously sensuous and loving one on another horse. "Your horse is a mirror to your soul. Sometimes you will like what you see and sometimes you won't." - Buck Brannaman

So this is done so riders can experience that oh so cool smooooth gait; The rider gets the beautiful smooooth ride at the expense of the tortured horse.

It is also a Chinese thing. See:

Review: Snow Flower And The Secret Fan;The Inscription of the Body

This one is about the bound feet of little girls in China to make them more desirable. Pre Chairman Mao.

DREAMTIME

Last night I dreamed I was walking with an ex-friend who has horses. We were walking with one of her horses that she was taking to the slaughterhouse. Or rather we were meeting someone who would transport the horse there, while it walked along with us like a pet. It was emaciated, every bone on its body was outlined. 


We met the man who had a station wagon with horses inside. On the passenger side he picked up her horse and put it inside the car, fastening him down on his back with a belt which he buckled. 


I reached in the opening in the back as there was no window. I wanted to pet the horse and say goodbye. The horse put his hoof in my hand. It was frightened and upset, begging me for help. I unbuckled the leather belt, lifted the horse out and set him down to free him. 


My ex-friend said, "Why did you do that? We can't be friends anymore." She turns her back to walk away.


I say, "What does he eat?"


She says, "Grain. I feed him a handful but he doesn't eat."

The End

For Homes for Horses 
Go HERE

Few people have actually 

seen a truly starved horse, 

but once you have, it is a 

memory that will be burned 

into you for as long as you 

live. In its last days, a 

starved horse truly looks like 

skin has been sprayed over 

its skeleton, with well 

defined hip bones, spinal 

processes and ribs just 

underneath the skin. Despite 

so many odds, the will to 

live often keeps the horse 

going far longer than it 

seems possible. We’ve seen 

them eat fence post and rails, trees and dirt, just to stay alive a little longer

Freudian analysis teaches us to look at the day/the time before the dream. A friend had told me that being tied down was not an option. 

We had been discussing the film

Tie Me Up! Tie Me 

Down!

The Dreamtime of the aboriginal tribes in Australia invert the Freudian analysis. The dream dreams a world, a child, an object into existence. 

"Psychoanalysis overturned. Instead of the dream being the fulfillment of desires unsatisfied in real life, real life would be the site where desires born of dreams were fulfilled. Instead of being the dumping ground of the unconscious, dreams would be the matrices of real events - thus becoming like the 'dream' of the Aborigines, for whom a child has to be dreamt before he can be begotten, 'real' paternity being merely the fulfillment of the dream." (Cool Memories IV 105)

Bella dreams her child into existence, does she not? (Breaking Dawn)

Dreamtime

Herzog's film Where the Green Ants Dream follows a group of Aborigines in Australia following the Songlines of the Green Ants. They believe that the world was dreamt into existence. The mountains, the hills, the valleys, Rocks, rivers,and they make pilgrimages to these places dreamt into existence. They know where to go because the Songlines are an orally remembered song map of where these places are. The Whites have built over many of them, or there is a store where they sit in the corner and hum because that's where the Green Ants are. These pilgrimages last months and they walk all the way with their babies and children teaching them the songs and places. The first toys of the babies are leaves, pieces of grass, flowers, and so they learn to love the earth this way.

Songlines

Bruce Chatwin's Songlines is Chatwin's walking tour of Australia. He used to be a very successful antiquities specialist for Sothebys. He began going blind and his doctor advised him to quit and go traveling. As Chatwin walked across the tarmac to his plane, his vision returned. His books are a marvel to read.

Joni MItchell A Post Modern Poet, Singer, Songwriter - Both Sides Now

Joni Mitchell - Both Sides, Now

from the LP "Clouds", 1969

Bows and flows of angel hair

and ice cream castles in the air

and feather canyons everywhere,

I've looked at clouds that way

but now they only block the sun, 

they rain and snow on everyone

so many things I would have done

but clouds got in my way

Reality and illusion: Baudrillard - The Transparency of Evil when all illusion is gone.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now,

from up and down, and still somehow

it's cloud illusions I recall,

I really don't know clouds at all

Illusion again. She is so very much a philosopher. I never knew.

Moons and Junes and ferris wheels, 

the dizzy dancing way you feel

as every fairy tale comes real

I've looked at love that way

but now it's just another show,

you leave 'em laughing when you go

and if you care, don't let them know,

don't give yourself away

The "floating sign" of pretence: dissembling.

I've looked at love from both sides now,

from give and take, and still somehow

it's love's illusions I recall,

I really don't know love at all

What Zizek was saying about fucking in Reading Lacan, Eyes Wide Shut, p. 49-50

Tears and fears and feeling proud

to say "i love you" right out loud,

dreams and schemes and circus crowds,

I've looked at life that way.

But now old friends are acting strange,

they shake their heads, they say I've changed

well, somethings lost but somethings gained

in living every day

I've looked at life from both sides now,

from win and lose, and still somehow

it's life's illusions I recall,

I really don't know life at all.

The loss of illusion. Win and lose in the dialectic. 

Yes, Joni is a post modern poet who is a singer-songwriter.

Roadside Attractions: Project Nim: Intellectual Torture - Terrace Pimped the Chimp

Nim

________________________________________

People know what they do.

They frequently know why they do what they do.

But what they don't know is what they do

does

Michel Foucault

__________________________________________________________________________________

http://www.moxiecinema.com/

From the Academy Award winning team behind Man on Wire comes the story of Nim, a chimpanzee who in the 1970s became the focus of a landmark experiment which aimed to show that an ape could learn to communicate with language if raised and nurtured like a human child. What was learned about his true nature -- and indeed our own -- is comic, revealing and profoundly unsettling. (Roadside Attractions)  

The Young Bob Ingersoll and Nim - the only two in the film who are fully realized human beings - link to NPR article

1974 Lectures - Abnormal  - College de France

These lectures were written to be read to an international audience during 1974. They read as if you are listening to them. Foucault is never an easy read, but the oral lectures are his most accessible works. This is mesmerizing and had the idiot scientists understood his work Nim would never have had to suffer at their hands at the same time these lectures were being given. 

Madness and Civilization - A Genealogy of The Great European Confinement and the First Incarceration of People Considered Abnormal

Foster Mother

Nim with Cat - he loved cats

I am avoiding a psychological interpretation of the people in this film. I can only say they are sub-human specimens of humanity, and stupid in addition, even the supposedly well intentioned ones.

Roger Fouts taught Washoe ASL and then had to fight for her to save her life after science was finished with her.
She had someone who loved her from the beginning who pulled it off. Lucky Washoe, unlucky Nim.

“Project Nim” Reveals a Scientific Scandal

Everything Bolles says is correct. Only all of it is a floating sign that conceals the

DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

Here is Nim in happier times. His foster family was non authoritarian with him but no one signed during his crucial and early years. As if a baby grew up in a home where no one talked.

Here is smug Herbert Terrace driving him in the car. I don't think this was the day he abruptly took him from his family.

Here he is with his first sign language teacher, a grad student assisting Terrace. They were very very close and now you see that he has grown, no longer the age and size of being carried around, bigger than in the car photo.

Now see her with Terrace and Nim. In the film you see how lovely she is, and how close she is with Terrace. Very close. Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart watchers will notice all the nuances.

Then a new sign language teacher comes on the scene. Another young enthusiastic pretty blond one. She and Terrace are very close and she is very close with Nim.

An uncomfortableness arises between the two young women. Terrace gives the new one a title for the project that will look good on her future resume.

2nd teacher I think - lovely eh

His first teacher packs up and leaves abruptly. Nim clutches her. It takes six people to pull him off her as he clings to her. Again Kristen Stewart and Rob Pattinson watchers will see what is really going on here.

Bob Ingersoll Who Stayed to the End with Nim

Sundance Premiere Photos
http://www.zimbio.com/pictures/TZkMphyDmRr/Project+Nim+Premiere+2011+Sundance+Film+Festival/YUGo95nMEnQ/Bob+Ingersol

You have a chimp growing up, moving into puberty, probably smelling sex on the people around him, people who have not neutered him but do not intend to breed him, and then who wonder why he bites his caretakers, until he so viciously bites the 2nd teacher in the face that the project is discontinued and Nim is sent to a medical facility, locked in a cage, where they do HIV, Hepatitis, etc research. A few caretakers learn some signing there. And then years of abuse follow after a happy childhood.   Basic principles of psychology and learning are ignored or not even known. Only Bob Ingersoll is aware while he plays with Nim.


This film is an indictment of highly educated human beings who cannot seem to connect the simplest dots in this puzzle of Nim nor go to anyone who knows for advice.  Terrace got to live in a beautiful estate with extensive grounds, donated for the project, with two adoring young very pretty grad assistants. 
The Dirty Little Secret

Student fucker: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

When he first arrived in New York, Nim was put into the custody of Stephanie LaFarge, a hippie mom who was a former Terrace student (and lover). She breast-fed the chimp, which was accepted as a “brother” by LaFarge’s seven children. She and the people who subsequently cared for Nim were not well trained in ASL, and they didn’t use it exclusively.

my bold.

Well, fuck me crooked, looks like he fucked them all. I must be psychic.