Simply Smith

WHAT do you think of circuses? I don't believe you can sit on the fence with this question. Recent news involving cruelty to circus animals has highlighted the dilemmas associated with circuses.

On the one hand there seems to be a market for watching animals perform (probably unnatural) tricks, and on the other hand the environmental lobby that sees this kind of activity as exploitative and in the very worst of tastes.

Here's a big word for you: anthropomorphism. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it as "attribution of human form or personality to an animal".

Here's another work for you: dehumanise. It means to divest of human attributes.

In my opinion, if you take the trouble to go to a circus you both take away from the animals their natural and appealing characteristics and also take away from their human audiences those higher qualities that raise mankind above these other members of the animal kingdom.

I have to say that I would, on a certain level, link this attitude to the observing of films involving humanised animal characters.

I cannot see the attraction of such films. Certainly, curiosity may be a factor in their success but the story-lines are usually weak and frequently predictable.

One of the worst features is that of enabling these creatures to speak and giving them human emotions.

Unlike humans, animals are basically wild and we must accept them as such. If we have to involve other species in story telling let them assume their own characteristics and let's be realistic about it. I blame Aesop.

We demean ourselves when animal-kind is substituted for human-kind.

It is difficult enough to maintain human dignity in this world without having that dignity usurped by a pig or a rabbit appealing to an unreasonable sentimentality whose ultimate aim (I say cynically) is to make money.

But, getting back to my original question, the history of circuses goes back to before Roman times and is littered with tales of barbarity and senseless animal slaughter.

Have we learned nothing since then, that otherwise sane and sensitive audiences gawp and wonder at the activities of captive creatures who know little of their natural habitat and even less of the joy and danger of life in the wild?

I know I'm going to get stick for being a kill-joy (not least from my own family).

Consider it logically. Does the creation of human-like characters in animal form do anything for our children's notion of human nobility, and does it enhance their perception of the magnificence of wild creatures: the tiger, the elephant, the crocodile? I think not.

We should be encouraging our children to believe that creation's highest achievement is each one of us.

Every time we substitute for ourselves the creatures of the wild we do ourselves a disservice.

There is little enough in this world about which we can congratulate ourselves, let's at least affirm that each one of us was made in the image of God, not Peter Rabbit or Babe.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.