The Revanant might reveal your vegan misanthropy
Anyone of us would be horrified and transfixed by scenes of brutality in the film, The Revenant. But if you are a vegan there will be another moral facet to the horror. Everyone will squirm and wince at the blood from Glass’ wounds, spurting in pulses from the hole in his throat, and pooling in the long deep gashes on his back. But as vegans, we also recoil from scene of the pelt operation in the forest clearing, where animal bodies are skinned by the dozens and their hides are stacked high. We feel regret as Captain Henry’s men are killed in a sudden ambush. But as vegans we also spare a thought for the horses as they are forced across icy terrain, into freezing rivers, and off steep cliffs. We deeply feel the injustice as the Chief accuses the white settlers of taking everything away from them, including the animals; but we also note that we humans have taken everything away from the animals as well.
We cannot but fail to ask, that as Glass seeks vengeance for the murder of his own son, who will avenge the murder of the bear? Even before the grizzly who attacks Glass is seen, we spy along with Glass her two cubs. Their calls are plaintive, and their gait a toddler’s waddle. Their mother cannot be far behind. The sow charges Glass, who shoots and stabs and finally kills her. The other men hear the gunshot and come to aid Glass, the cubs call out and scamper away. What happens to those cubs? Who will take care of them? They will surely die. Who will avenge them?
The cubs aren’t the only ones to lose their mother. Glass’s own son, Hawk, suffered a similar fate. His Pawnee mother was shot by white settlers who invaded their camp when he was little more than a toddler himself. The small bird of life flew out of her chest. Flame burned his face, and left a scar that is a constant reminder. He misses his mother even now, as an adolescent. His father took care of him, but only until he couldn’t, and then Hawk himself is stabbed to death.
How easy it is to want to protect the vulnerable, the victim, and how easy it is to spin that around into hatred for the perpetrator. The movie knows this, and knows how to work it. In the book by Michael Punke, upon which the movie is based, there is no son Hawk, and no murdered Pawnee mother. A murdered wife, a bereaved son, and then the murdered son — these are the forces that work inside Glass and carve his intent, much like the wind, the cold, and the snow melt chisel and anneal the bleak mountain landscape. Glass literally etches his singular burning motive, Fitzgerald killed my son, onto the rock surface overhead, if we needed to be reminded.
In the book, the revenge motive is weak and watery. As I read the book, I felt no strong hatred toward Fitzgerald. Yes, Fitzgerald left Glass for dead, and took his precious Anstadt; threw Glass’ knife to Bridger, left Glass with nothing with which to defend himself, no tools to catch food and no flint to spark a fire. But the massive arc of this story of survival and return, from crawling to almost soaring, is too epic to be reduced to retribution against thieves and deserters. The book’s courtroom denouement comes as an anti-climax. No wonder the movie decided to elaborate and augment the impetus for revenge.
It wasn’t enough for Fitzgerald to just take away his gun and other possessions. He has to do more than that for not just Glass, but also the audience, to feel the acute pang of loss and the sustained throb of injustice throughout the movie until the final reckoning. Fitzgerald takes away his son who Glass has treasured and protected for years, in a series of quick stabs to his abdomen. He kills Hawk quickly and disposes of him summarily, while he fails to kill Glass who is almost dead anyway. A young and vital life, snuffed out in a moment.
We all wished and burned for revenge, along with Glass. We are rekindled when we see more of the back story of Hawk’s mother, the brutal killing of her camp. We later see another woman who reminds us of her. Fitzgerald and Bridger walk through another similarly ravaged Native encampment, with the dead bodies of men, children, and women lay strewn about. A sole woman drifts out of a dwelling and Bridger silently leaves her food. A third woman, Powaqa, is kidnapped and raped by French trappers, and she wreaks her own revenge after she is freed by Glass.
So given that we are repeatedly reminded that this is a movie of revenge and given that Fitzgerald is unrelentingly churlish throughout, is it any wonder that we are waiting for the final peak of gratification as he is vanquished, in some way? How bloody do we want it to be, how much do we want him to suffer? Surely as a vegan, with all my empathy for other animals, surely I couldn’t be as susceptible to the movie’s manipulation as other, regular people would be. If I regret the physical suffering of the bear, the horse, the buffalo, the wolf, then how could I exult when Fitzgerald is stabbed?
I did indeed feel a moment of satisfaction as Glass’ knife stabs Fitzgerald in the calf as he crawls away on the snow and ice. That’s not all: I think that I was a tiny bit disappointed that Glass does not ultimately kill Fitzgerald. These are startling admissions. Not because my reaction would be any different from what others in the audience would feel, because we had all been primed to feel revenge. This is the genre where bad guys get what they deserve. But against the background of my sympathetic suffering for animals throughout, wanting someone hurt is thrown into stark contrast. How can I, who felt grief for the giant grizzly who almost killed Glass, feel thankful that Fitzgerald was being hurt? As Fitzgerald says to Glass, killing him is not going to bring the boy back.
Philosophers say that humans, unlike other animals, are moral agents. We know right from wrong, and we are justified in expecting moral behavior from other humans. A desire to punish people who harm others seems natural to us. Accordingly, studies have shown that when a person intentionally inflicts harm on another, we mete out greater punishment than when harm is unintentional. But what is more disturbing is that research has shown we feel pleasure as others are punished for their wrongdoing. Our neural reward centers light up when we see people getting their comeuppance.
It is true that animals suffer in the wild. All animals suffer when food is scarce, all animals suffer extremes of climate and other natural disasters, and from injury and illness. But nature has no intention to harm, nature has no intentions at all; the outside world is just a series of happenings, one after another. I do not quarrel with nature, I accept it. Predators kill their prey in some horrific ways, but that is a struggle for survival and those predators know no different, they are not ‘moral agents.’ They are blameless also.
No, as a vegan, and as an activist, I really only oppose one form of animal suffering, that inflicted by humans. It is the human domination and mistreatment of animals that I object to, and that is what I want to end. As Fitzgerald killed Hawk, humans kill animals. So it is easy to begin wishing for vengeance against humans when I begin to identify or empathize with the nonhuman animals treated callously by humans. Even when my motive is not to exact physical harm, I might be reacting to a non-vegan world in words or deeds of aggression or microaggression. Acts of microaggression in particular are said to be unconscious, without knowledge of the perpetrator.
Vegan misanthropy is a thing. So The Revenant made me wonder, first, if I was harboring any motives of vengeance as a result of vegan misanthropy. Second, whether I might undertake practices to counter them. Because how complete can an empathic conversion be, if we are wishing for some kind of harm to come to humans, who are animals like the others we care about? A movie will use methods to pull and twist my emotions in different ways, and as I sit in the theater, I temporarily give it permission. I am there for the ride. In the real world, I might be subject to similar emotional manipulations, but I would like to think that I have more control over what those impel me to feel or do.
