The Dumbo movie may well have an animal welfare message, but in malls around the world that message is stripped away and we’re left with elephants dressed up for entertainment.
Visitors to Hong Kong’s Times Square mall this month are being greeted
with a quite shocking sight – imagery I thought society was moving away
from.
A cute baby elephant in circus attire hangs from the ceiling, a delighted
smile on his face as he performs. A short distance away, the little elephant
stands on a circus stool, his face beaming with pride as he looks out toward
the audience.
Having campaigned for years against the cruelty of animal performance –
having seen the scars, chains and wounds – I find this imagery completely
misleading.
No wild animal willingly performs unnatural tricks for human audiences.
Circus animals endure lives of extreme suffering and their plight continues.
Animals Asia’s investigations into animal performance facilities in Asia
have found elephants remain a mainstay of shows. They continue to be poached
from the wild, trained through violence and kept in utterly unsuitable
conditions which cause long-term psychological trauma.
But in Times Square mall, none of this is present. Instead there is a cute,
baby elephant, happy to be performing in a circus for humans.
It takes a while to realise, but this display is actually a marketing
gimmick for Disney’s new Dumbo movie.
Early reviews suggest the new film contains a pro-animal welfare message.
That may be the case, but in malls across the world, the allegory is
missing. All we have instead is misleading images of animal performance and
life-size models for children to stand beside for photographs.
If animal performance had been consigned to the dustbin of history, that
might be acceptable. But in an era where elephants, bears, macaques,
orangutans, dolphins and a great many other species continue to be held in
conditions which cause great physical and psychological suffering for our
entertainment, it is sending entirely the wrong message.
How many families, inspired by similar Dumbo displays, will go on to
visit an animal circus? How many will seek to have their picture taken
beside real-life elephant calves? How many will pay to ride the “real-life
Dumbo”?
There are thousands of “real-life Dumbos” in Asia working in circuses,
giving rides to tourists and hauling logs. Their lives have no relation to
the life of the happy Dumbo shown in malls and likely too to be recreated in
a range of toys and other products.
Instead, their lives are remarkably similar to that of Jumbo, the
real-life elephant whose story inspired Dumbo way back in the 1940s.
Jumbo wasn’t bred in the circus. Like most circus elephants, he was poached
from the wild, his mother killed in front of him because she would never
allow her calf to be taken without a fight. Following his capture, Jumbo
endured a miserable existence in captivity - giving rides, eating sticky
buns, drinking whisky and suffering from debilitating health problems –
before dying young.
That level of abuse is characteristic of the animal performance industry
today. That cruelty is still the norm.
Dumbo’s horrific story continues to repeat and that is why we cannot be
complacent about the end of the industry.
My concern is that even if Disney has the best intentions, by setting their
story in the world of animal performance, they may end up fuelling demand
for cruelty to continue."