Three folks gored, though none have died. And you know what? I’m rooting for the bulls. Because, at the end of the day, they’re going to be slowly tortured, mutilated and eventually killed.
PETA has done all sorts of loonie things, repeatedly, but in this case they’re spot-on. “Culture” my left nut, this thing should be shut down. I can’t think of one redeming feature of the whole damn thing.
Um … three fewer idiots on the street … temporarily?
No, seriously. I agree. It is testosterone gone amok.
On the other hand, your truly macho dudes do all sorts of retarded shit in an effort to almost kill themselves. Who am I to deny them these pleasures.
It’s the animals that are getting the raw end here. Not that I’m against them being killed specifically, unless they kill them and just throw the carcasses away, which would be stupid.
But torturing them for sport is unnecessary.
Go to Mexico, and watch a bullfight. Great entertainment. Better yet, goto Mexico City, and see a bullfight at the Plaza Mexico.
No, entertainment would be taking the pointy swords away from the matador and watching him get gored, like anyone who deliberately taunts a freaking bull should be.
OK, I’ll bite.
PETA has this one absolutely wrong. Bulls are nasty, aggressive and dangerous animals, Ferdinand the Bull notwithstanding. This is precisely the reason that most dairy farmers rely on artificial insemination. No one to my knowledge has been trampled to death by an enraged and oversexed AI technician. Admittedly the Spanish deliberately breed them for the purpose of a public spectacle. Once you have created on of these monsters the only reasonable thing to do with it is to kill it and turn it into dog food. My view of doing away with bulls is in line with my views of experimental rats (the more rats with cancer the better).
There is a parallel problem and that is the macho fools who run down the streets of this second rate jerk water town pursued by large, angry, horned cattle. This bunch, the runners, is the outfit that is potentially injurious to the gene pool. Maybe running the bulls is the equivalent of snowmobiling on frozen lakes–the mechanism for natural selection. While any right thinking person can think that bull fighting is a really abhorrent sport, no one has to feel too sorry about the overly courageous and slow of foot who get themselves overrun trying to emulate Mr. Hemingway.
It seems to me that the mistreatment of the bulls is just the societal price we pay to get the riff-raft out of the breeding race.
Even with the pointy swords, the matadors get gored every now and again. Don’t forget, the bull has 2 rather pointy things sticking out of its head.
Punoqllads
I disagree with your views.
I have always wanted to see a bullfight, and some day soon I will travel to Mexico to see one. Bullfighting is not a sport, but a ritual. I think it is best understood as a sacrifice in the same way that the symbolic death of Christ is during the Mass. When the dead Christ is eaten by members of the congregation,(communion) it nourishes and sustains them. Similarly the bullfight ritualizes the death of the food source of the society (which sustains it[the society]). I am not equating the two, and cheapening the holiest of Christian symbols. I am saying that there are certain similarities.
A good book on the subject of ritual sacrifice is “The Lost Meaning of Classical Architecture”. The author’s name is George Hersey.
What I do remember from reading the book is that it is essential for the ritual’s internal consistency to view the sacrificial animal as a willing participant. Remember that this is a ritual though. Left to it’s own devices the bull would probably be thinking something like, “I’ll just go over to that side of the pasture right now.” Nevertheless, the society demands food, and the slaughtering of the herd is imperitive. This is how it has always been, and I see the bullfight as a way to enact this imperitive in a way that honors the sacrifice. In it’s origins the bullfight was seen as a way to enable the bull to provide for the society through sacrifice, and do so in a splendid fashion.I feel that this is pretty much what the societies of Plains Indians were doing when they thanked the buffalo (who they killed/ate) for sustaining their tribe (The Buffalo Dance). They were nomadic hunters and not engaged in animal husbandry, but there are parallels.
All living things must eat other living things in order to sustain themselves. This is a fundamental reality of life. To my knowledge all cultures have, as an expression of man’s search for meaning, ritualized this core reality of existence.
The bullfights don’t offend me.
I know that yor principal beef (pun intended) was with the "running of the bulls’, but there is enough there for me to defend bullfighting in general as a response.
Bullfighting is sick. “woowee, how much fun to see an animal slowly tortured to death!”
Fucking barbarians.
Did the run10 years ago and actually liked it. Wasn’t trying to emulate Hemingway, I was just young, dumb and full of cum. Might do it again, then again I do lots of shit that previous posters seem to think qualifies me to be a candidate for a Darwin Award. So be it, I like the adrenaline rush and as long as I put no one else in danger or let down those that might depend on me it’s my god forsaken fucking right, don’t you think?
As re bull fights it’s a fair deal worse than Spavined Gelding portrays. The animals in question are actually not aggressive enough to attack a matador just like that and hence have their balls strapped tight resulting in maddening pain that does indeed make them somewhat ‘grumpy’.
This does not apply to the bulls in ‘The Running of The Bulls’ however. They are responding to the natural instincts that Spavined Gelding describes and need no other coercion than a horde of obviously deranged homo sapiens sapiens (me included) scurrying ahead of them.
Maybe Pamplona is cruel, maybe it isn’t. Back ten years ago I tried asking one of the bovines hell-bent on skewering me what he thought about it, nary an answer did I get. To be honest I felt the conversation was getting somewhat offensive so I whacked him over the head with my rolled up newspaper and used the moment of confusion he thereby obviously experienced to skedaddle off to safer grounds.
You want cruelty? Along the run there are thousands of spectators that gaud the runners on. If you try to evade the run prematurely (before the bulls overtake you) these very fellow humans will push you right back into the run - no way out.
BTW I find it most suitable that Spavined Gelding would take to defending testicular torture of domestic animals, however inadvertently.
Sparc
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Care to provide your definition of the above? Because under mine, Pamplona, is far from being one [“second rate jerk water town”]
In fact, having been there more than once, I daresay it’s a beautiful city.
The residents of these Ontario communities might disagree with you, given that winter roads over frozen lakes are the only roads in:
Windigo Island
Pikangikum
Poplar Hill
North Spirit Lake
Deer Lake
Sandy Lake
Golden Pat Mine
Cat Lake
Round Lake/Weagamow
Keewaywin
Koocheching
Muskrat Dam
Sachigo Lake
Bearskin Lake
Kingfisher Lake
Big Trout Lake
Wapekeka
Wunnumin Lake
Kasabonika
Wawakepewin
Fort Hope
Summer Beaver
Webequie
Lansdowne House
Marten Falls/Ogoki Post
Moose Factory
Fort Albany
Kashechewan
Attawapiskat
Winisk
Peawanuck
Fort Severn
Opalcat nailed it beautifully.
Somehow I think that the bulls can’t really distinguish between being tortured and killed in a spiritual ritual or being tortured and killed in a public entertainment. Either way, they probably aren’t too thrilled about the way they are treated. I’m certainly not proud of the way my species treat them.
Muffin
That is the crux of debate. I favor bullfighting, but others may not, for the reasons you state.
However this,
“But torturing them for sport is unnecessary.”
is simply an incorrect description of the bullfight.
This,
*"Bullfighting is sick. “woowee, how much fun to see an animal slowly tortured to death!”
Fucking barbarians."*
is more of the same. Hyperbolically so.
Since this is the Pit, I expect more of the this sort of reasoning.
Huh?
Are they tortured?
Is it for sport; for the entertainment of the crowd?
Is it necessary?
Let me help – yes, yes, and no. What’s the puzzle?
So you’re into watching living breathing things being mercilessly slaughtered for no good reason other than “ritual”. Hey, what ever floats your boat {cough – Hannibal – cough}.
You can paint little happy faces on it all you like, but it is what it is. Unnecessary torture for sport.
Yeah, yeah, bulls get killed. But every once in a while, one of 'em gets to kill or mail the guy who’s trying to kill them. Seems much more sporting to me than a shotgun shell to the brain on a slaughterhouse killing floor. I’ve been to two bullfights–one in Spain, one in Mexico–and they were both thoroughly interesting. Now I admit that I was cheering for the bulls, just as I applaud when some dumb college kid gets his genes kick out of the pool in Pamplona.
But there is a brutal elegance to the bullfighting spectacle, and there’s something to be said for the testicular fortitude of the guys who go into those rings. When I saw one in Nuevo Laredo a couple years ago, the first matador got his leg sliced up by the bull. So when he came back for the next bull, he had to be especially badass, and I have to say that he accomplished that task quite well. The guy waved off the dart-bearers (picadors?) to stab the suckers in himself–but only after breaking the sticks off down to the metal tips, so he had to get extremely close to make the stabs. He then proceeded to dispatch the bull very cleanly after a few passes with the cape. Say what you want about the PETA morality of the bullfight, but it was pretty darned impressive.
But if he’d gotten his damn fool self killed, I would have called it justice.
And there is what evidence that the bulls are in any way willing to be slaughtered as part of a public spectacle?
I would have thought humanity had progressed beyond the superstitious need for ritual sacrifice. If you’re going to kill an animal for food, fine. But there’s no need to couch the act in mysticism.
Nope. You haven’t sold me. I find nothing elegant about brutality.
The thing about the slaughter house is that there isn’t a throng of yokels standing around who paid just to watch it happen.
Bull fighting exists so people can watch bulls be killed. I don’t see the attraction myself.
Darwin’s Finch
You are likely correct. We will never ever know what the bull is thinking, but it’s pretty damn obvious that the whole spectacle is not the bulls idea.
That is why I pointed out that it is required for the internal consistency of the ritual.
Your comments concerning the progression of humanity beyond ritual are again, like Muffin’s comments, reasonable debate. You and I see things differently, but at least you’re expressing your points without foolishly insulting me.
Jack Batty
Were the artisans of the Lascaux caves serial murders?
We would never have known them were it not for their ritualized portrayal of the hunt.
How on Earth do you arrive at hunting == bullfighting? It’s not like the Matador is stalking the wiley bull, which often is found in its natural environment (an arena filled with slack-jawed gawkers), to provide food for his family. 