Our Animals, Ourselves

During the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony, Joaquin Phoenix made an unusual speech as he accepted the Oscar for Best Actor. Dressed in the requisite tuxedo, he expressed gratitude and praised the competition before launching into a monologue that broke the internet. For his allotted three minutes, Phoenix held forth about the world’s problems. Environmentalism, anti-racism, indigenous rights, gender equality, queer liberation, and animal rights are not isolated campaigns, Phoenix insisted, but varying aspects of a common movement. Each is part of the “fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, or one species has the right to dominate, control, use, and exploit another with impunity.”

Social justice was having a moment in Hollywood, and the line above elicited cheers from an audience eager to signal their enlightenment. The rest of the address, however, was not greeted as warmly — particularly when Phoenix spelled out precisely the sort of interconnections he had in mind. “We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources,” Phoenix said in his halting, earnest style. His next statement was the one to put the room on edge: “We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and when she gives birth we steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakable. And then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.” Phoenix’s incrimination of beloved breakfast foods was met with bemused silence. The media, however, could not contain itself. “Joaquin Phoenix’s Heart Is in the Right Place, but That Speech Was Unhinged,” read a Vice headline. Vox called it a “sprawling sociopolitical epic.” USA Today declared his remarks “emotional, empowering, and batty.”

Indeed, if there is one thing that unites people across the political spectrum, it is a distaste for “batty” animal rights activists and vegans. At a 2019 press conference Republican Representative Rob Bishop of Utah denounced the Green New Deal while taking a theatrical bite of a cheeseburger: “If this goes through, this will be outlawed. I could no longer eat this type of thing.” In response, GND supporters tripped over themselves to insist that was not the case, affirming red meat’s sacrosanct status. 

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