Oh God: PETA want Chicken Empathy Museum
Posted in Politics on 13. Mar, 2009
There’s a bankrupt poultry factory in Baton Rouge. Gov. Bobby Jindal wanted to spend $20 million on saving it to secure 1300 jobs.
PETA wrote to Gov. Jindal asking it be turned into a museum about chicken compassion.
“The museum could feature exhibits such as video footage from research . . . showing how smart chickens are. The Chicken Empathy Museum will have educational displays that highlight interesting facts about chickens, including that chickens are intelligent animals with mental abilities comparable to cats, dogs and even primates.”
I’ve read about a chimp planning attacks in advance this week. Chickens can be hypnotised by drawing a line on the ground.
“Outside the museum, children could clamber through a preserved chicken-transport truck to experience how cramped and uncomfortable the trucks are”
PETA taking exhibition tips from Artaud.
I almost didn’t know what category to put this in.
There seems to be the beginnings of a trend of building museums as an addition to a doctrine or dogma rather than educational resources and debate.
I have no idea how to comment that. It is ridiculous idea, … empathy for what? Have the empathy to stop GMO and start environmental and animal friendly farming!!! … As open as i am this is just way too daft … and way too idiotic.
Interesting post. I am definitely going to post about this at some point on my blog. Thanks for the link… you always seem to find incredibly fascinating stories. I’m jealous. :) The post really got me thinking, firstly, the idea of a “chicken empathy museum”… is quite clearly a bad idea… I can’t see it doing very well, and also its very limited in its scope. However an animal rights/animal welfare/animal liberationist/ museum… that could have legs! For a start it is a movement that has a very long history, is international in scope (so would certainly have an audience), the movement has a mass of academic literature, and massive historical archives I would presume, so has higher educational goals, and has something interesting things to say (about animals and people). In your post you suggest that museums should provide “educational resources and debate” I can’t really imagine a more hotly debated topic… and one that most of the public (and I include myself in that) are not very well educated about, or could do with being more highly educated about. Although watching a few videos of the finer side of the cosmetics industry and the meat industry… you do have a point about the theatre of cruelty! You also suggest that you see “the beginnings of a trend of building museums as an addition to a doctrine” I don’t mean to be trite but thats one of the funniest things I read in a long time… seriously you don’t think thats what all museums are? I mean for example lets take the British Museum – you don’t see any relation to British Imperialism, Eurocentrism, Post-Enlightenment Rationality in its birth? I think all of these would count as “doctrines”. Quite obviously this was a peta stunt… but its an interesting idea nontheless… isn’t there a phrase; never a truer word said than in jest. Thanks for a great post…. really got me thinking.
Maybe I should say a “return to museums as doctrines”. It could be argued (Tony Bennett certainly did) that the first museums were the treasures of the “King”, used to glorify a nationalistic sense and idolise the leader’s personality. Museum’s of the late 20th (at least in the UK, can’t speak for anywhere else) century did focus on education. It would be hard to have an educational policy that didn’t have its roots in the Enlightenment somewhere.
I didn’t want to mention them, as I feel they’re a potential powder keg, but I thought the idea of a museum-as-doctrine is what’s happening with Creationist museums. That kind of thing, a museum as institution completely geared to a single argument/viewpoint.
Nobody should go to a museum to feel “wrong”.
I wasn’t suggesting PETA should do this. However, there are farming museums… they certainly, as far as I am aware, tell only one side of the story (I’d be happy to be proven wrong). I totally agree with your idea of “return to doctrines”… but in a way is it also a return to honesty. I mean to say we all could see the role of the Kings collection, no-one dressed it up as anything else. The same with the creationist museums (which I am so going on a road trip to see). But, those museums that claim ‘objectivity’ and to be based on ‘education’ are also really only addressing a limited set of beliefs. Principally usually the belief in scientific progress (which is a doctrine like any other)… I’d say the work of Feyerabend certainly shed significant light on the real nature of the self styled “scientific method” that is at the heart of this doctrine. I also think there is a major problem in single issue museums, but, I also see that other museums are refusing to tell these stories… so essentially we only have ourselves to blame. They’re our very own frankensteins monster.
I don’t know if you want to call it “historical-accuracy” or “political-correctness”, but I worry about museums being used as an extension of someone else political means.
Maybe this a much greater ethical question then I realise. Creationist museums, for instance. I would be quite happy with a museum that taught and told me all about the Christian creation story. In fact, I believe they’re called Churches. What worries me is the Creationist Museum that claims man and dinosaurs ran around each other.
The thing about PETA is that’s a very large organisation with its fringe elements. So everything they do I agree with (banning fur, banning fox-hunting) they tend to let crazy fringes have fun (Milk gives you zits. Giving comics to kids about how their mommy murders animals). So the idea of showing “one side of a story”, museums are in a position of trust. Not just the trust of being keeper of objects, but the trust that they are apolitical or at least politically independent. I generally don’t expect museums to act as a propaganda/PR unit.
I was re-reading this because I joined a [sic] fb group called “Society for the Ethical Treatment of Imaginary Friends” and wanted to grab the url.
Making a museum doesn’t make an idea valid. It’s the process by which you get there that should.
In my mind creation museums are shrines to lobbying …and greed.