Kelly Palka Gallagher

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism

admin — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

I will say it, here and now: I eat meat. Now that I have announced that, I fear that Melanie Joy will fly through my window to tell me how the meat industry recapitulates Nazism. Okay, I don’t really. But you catch my drift: this woman is serious.

As a person with very close vegetarian friends, and who has also purchased, prepared, eaten, and enjoyed seitan, quorn, and tofu, I would say that I have a decent understanding of vegetarianism without actually practicing it. I am not convinced, however, that Joy’s book offers much that is new to the vegetarian rhetoric.

The title led me to expect a book that delved into humankind’s history with animal relationships, that would try to scratch the surface of when and why certain animals took on specific functions in our lives and others didn’t. But rather than that, this book is focused on the psychology that “allows” humans to be comfortable with meat eating. To talk about this topic, Joy has made up a word for meat-eaters: carnists. She defines carnism as “the belief system that enables us to eat some animals and not others.” Throughout the work, Joy examines how the carnist mindset and the meat industry work together to keep animals as a dinner item despite various displeasing realities connected with the practice. While doing this, Joy describes the inhumane conditions at slaughterhouses and factory farms, and the effect that the meat industry has on the Earth.

And I don’t dispute any of that. I believed it the first time I read it, in books such as Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which Joy quotes and references an obscene number of times in her 150-page book. So much of the book is gleaned from other works that it reads very much like a college thesis paper; I suspect it once was.

Despite her legitimate arguments regarding the disgusting and hidden reality of factory farms, Joy doesn’t take into account people who raise their own animals in perfectly humane conditions or who hunt legally, or people who have any number of health issues that make a vegetarian diet anywhere from impractical to dangerous. The meat debate is a huge topic that goes far beyond the dualism of carnism and vegetarianism, and Joy doesn’t come close to covering all the bases here.

As I implied before, this book also has an irritating tendency to mention Nazis a lot. While I understand the connection Joy’s trying to make on a cerebral level, something about describing meat eating—not cruel factory farm conditions or inhumane slaughterhouses, but just eating meat—as being akin to being a member or supporter of the Gestapo is just distasteful to me.

I do applaud Joy on her willingness to acknowledge the suffering of slaughterhouse workers and others whose employment in the meat industry is dangerous and taxing. Many times, when it comes to arguments against the meat industry, I feel as if workers are under attack for earning a paycheck and given no sympathy whatsoever for the dangerous work they do. This author doesn’t suggest that the fate of the human animal is less important than other animals, and I appreciate that.

Written by: Kelly Palka Gallagher, March 28th 2010

That's Why We Don't Eat Animals: A Book About Vegans, Vegetarians, and All Living Things

admin — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Ruby Roth

North Atlantic Books

If you are planning on raising a vegetarian child who will be well-prepared to explain his or her beliefs to inquiring peers, teachers, and friends’ parents, That's Why We Don't Eat Animals is a great start.

Did you know that turkeys blush? Or that newborn quail start walking the moment they are hatched from their eggs? I didn’t, but any child who reads That's Why We Don't Eat Animals will know. Facts like these work to emphasize the connections between living things in a way that small children in the book's targeted audience (about age 4 and up, in my estimation) will understand and appreciate.

The book shows animals in their natural habitats, and explains the difference in the quality of life an animal will experience if it is running free versus living in cramped quarters on factory farms. The book also illustrates the effect that factory farming has on various biomes and the health of the Earth overall. The animals are charmingly drawn in a caricaturist, almost geometric style, and their environments are depicted with bright or dark colors, depending on their living conditions. The vocabulary is simple and straightforward, doesn’t get too dark or complicated for children, and avoids a preachy, overbearing tone in favor of a sensitive, informative one.

In another review I’ve written this month on a book promoting the vegetarian lifestyle, I’m not nearly as praiseful. The books share primarily the same messages—that eating animals is morally shady and bad for the environment—but the book for adults tends to alienate and divide, as if putting meat-eaters and vegetarians on opposing sides of a war, while the children’s book emphasizes the connectedness of living things. Whether or not the children ingest the other moral and environmental messages of the book, that one message trumps all.

Written by: Kelly Palka Gallagher, March 27th 2010

One Summer in New Paltz: A Cautionary Tale

admin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Directed by Nancy Nicol

Intervention Video

Weddings always tug at my heartstrings, but there is nothing quite as heartwarming as hearing people sing in the streets. The Whos in Whoville taught me that.

The name New Paltz may ring a bell. It is a small college town in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York State that gained national attention in 2004 when the town’s twenty-six-year-old mayor, Jason West, married two dozen same-sex couples, an idea that was the result of a conversation between West and a local same-sex couple during a house painting project. As a consequence, charges were brought up against the mayor, crowds and cameras flooded New Paltz, and copycat weddings and demonstrations began to occur far and wide.

One Summer in New Paltz is framed around the concept of a fairytale. In the beginning, a voice-over describes New Paltz as a little village in a large kingdom (the United States) ruled by a powerful king (George W. Bush), and continues throughout to speak like the narrator of a Brothers Grimm story. This is perhaps one of the only aspects of the film that does not quite hit the mark. It is clearly intended to bring us back to traditional storytelling elements and present the story in a simplified manner, but the half-rhymes and dreary tone fall flat, and the device feels corny as a result.

If you’re looking for a debate on the morality or legality of gay marriage, this film is not going to provide it. However, if you are looking for a close look at the events that followed West’s decision, a taste of what went on beyond what made it onto the news, and to hear people who defend their lifestyles and their support of gay marriage with class and poise, you’re looking in the right place. In one tense yet powerful scene from the film, the town is paid a visit by members of the congregation of Westboro Baptist Church (a Kansas-based group known for their neon “God Hates Fags” signs and for screaming the word “perversion”) who shout slurs at gay marriage supporters. In response, the group is met by a chorus of “All You Need is Love.”

Part of the beauty of this story is the unlikely setting of such a monumental stand against precedent. The shots of New Paltz and the nearby Catskill Mountains show nothing spectacular, which is of course the most important message of all: change can start anywhere.

Written by: Kelly Palka Gallagher, March 23rd 2010

I’m Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen—My Journey Home

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:30:00 +0000

By Shoshana Johnson

Simon & Schuster

I was working in my college dining hall when I first caught wind of Jessica Lynch’s capture back in 2003. As I scraped steam trays, I compared our situations. She is a brave soldier somewhere in the sands of Iraq. I am a pansy who spent her days in purgatorial peace in the tundra of upstate New York. I didn’t know—many people didn’t know—that five other soldiers, including Shoshana Johnson, the first African-American female prisoner of war, were also being held. I’m Still Standing, recounts the capture and twenty-two-day imprisonment of Johnson and four male co-prisoners at the dawn of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Johnson is many things: an army cook, a survivor, a mother, and a brave woman who endured great hardship for her nation. She is not a professional writer, though, and it shows. Writing this book has undoubtedly been therapeutic for her, and it gave her a platform to tell the world her story, but as a reader I found myself desiring deeper contemplations on her experience than what she provided. We get a play-by-play, and I wanted a reflection.

This book presents several potentially riveting subjects, such as how the military portrays itself for the media, the ethics of keeping prisoners, the perception of the Iraqi people, and the experience of a female soldier. Being an American female solider serving in the Middle East seems like a particular double-whammy, since women remain a minority in the military and many countries in the Middle East traditionally treat women in a way many Westerners find unacceptable.

Johnson had many experiences during her ordeal that are unique to a female solider. When her gender was discovered by her captors, they stopped beating her while the beating of male soldiers continued. Johnson was held in a different room separate from her male co-prisoners for several days, and she hints about feeling ignored by the men. Later, after telling her captors that she was not married, some began to say that she should marry an Iraqi man, a comment she feared was not a joke. At one point a cloth was tossed over her body to conceal her exposed skin and she was told, “This is Iraq.” After her rescue, she found that many people assumed she was raped in captivity.

Many scenes are ripe with poignancy, but I feel she ran over them in an attempt to remember everything, and gave herself no room to meditate on what it meant. It seems every time a chance to explore subjects in depth was presented, the author merely skims the surface and moves on. I recall a quote from writer Lucy Grealy, who was asked how she remembered the details of her childhood that resulted in her book Autobiography of a Face. She replied, “I didn’t remember it. I wrote it.” Indeed, nonfiction writing needs to have that organic quality to it.

After Johnson’s rescue and return, the book morphs into a defense against accusations she says were piled upon her by the Army and the media. Many lines are unveiled attempts to send personal messages to people in her life, such as an old lover. That can be done in a private, rather than in a national publication.

Despite the limitations of the book, this soldier endured hardships, and I thank her for having the courage to fight for the nation and to tell her story.

Written by: Kelly Palka Gallagher, January 18th 2010

Tehran Has No More Pomegranates

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by Massoud Bakshim

Documentary Educational Resources

Massoud Bakshim’s Tehran Has No More Pomegranates identifies itself as “a musical, historical, comedy, docu-drama, love story, experimental film.” Attempts to classify the film—as a postmodern visual stew, as a sarcastic video collage-portrait, as a half-tribute-half-roast—don’t quite encapsulate the its nuances. This resistance to simple definition also fits the film's subject: the Iranian capital of Tehran.

This portrait of Tehran is not a straightforward, traditional documentary comprised of facts and interviews, and there is no startling revelation about the city around which the documentary is centered. Early in the film viewers are told that the subjects interviewed throughout the footage may seem real, but are not, and that the facts and history provided are "probably inaccurate." Viewers are told the film is not finished, and that the footage they are watching is the research collected for a project that will never come to fruition, a sort of allegorical way to indicate that it is impossible to successfully complete a film that would depict the true realities of Tehran. The film’s greatest accomplishment is not in any one particular subject or goal concerning Tehran; rather, it is the commentary cleverly tucked throughout.

Tehran Has No More Pomegranates dissects the city by comparing old footage and photographs to images from today, bringing into question the true extent of its progress. Women's attire is used by Bakhshim to demonstrate. Garments worn by men and women of the past are shown to the viewer; then the narrator cheerfully moves to address modern clothing, pointing to how men and women have many choices. The camera shows men wearing a variety of clothes and women wearing the veil and scarf, who can be differentiated from each other only by the colors they choose.

Aside from simply comparing and contrasting the present with the past, Tehran Has No More Pomegranates addresses specific issues that beset modern day Tehran, all with a biting sarcasm. Once the film begins to address modern times, the mischievousness reveals itself and the film’s spunky qualities liven up the pace during the search for “Tehran’s biggest problem.” Unfortunately, sardonic humor and history can make confusing partners, and during the first portion of the film, it was difficult to identify the legitimate historical information. The language barrier—the film is in Farsi with English subtitles—combined with my limited knowledge of Iran's history intensified this effect, and the film’s unique approach suffered.

Tehran Has No More Pomegranates is a bit of an inside joke, and a Tehrani will see a different film than someone raised on a farm in rural Wisconsin. He or she will have the benefit of reactions based on personal experiences while the rest of us can only sit back and absorb.

Tehran Has No More Pomegranates treats the title city as one would a beloved scoundrel of a friend. The polluted, overcrowded city is not cast in an entirely despicable light, and there is a constant undertow of familiar love. Without that sense of caring, the sarcastic tones would have fallen as flat as a “your mama” joke to an orphan.

Written by: Kelly Palka Gallagher, December 15th 2009

make/shift: feminisms in motion (Issue 6)

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:34:00 +0000

Edited by Jessica Hoffmann, Daria Yudacufski

Make/Shift aims to thrust the ignored populations into the greater recognition. Native Americans living in urban settings rather than rural reservations tend to be invisible in our nation’s consciousness. Society shies away from the combination of disability and sexuality, and when it comes to women’s prisons, many question the validity of empowerment through peer education health programs. The Fall/Winter edition of Make/Shift explores these and a wide variety of other social issues. It highlights individuals working to improve the world on personal, local, international, and virtual levels through social action or artistic ventures.

A letter from the editors tells readers that the theme of the issue is movement, but some of the articles that follow move more efficiently than others. A few of the more personal pieces struck this reader at a trifle tedious. A piece about losing one’s ethnic identity by using a certain hair product makes about as much sense to me as the belief that using spray-on tanner would force me to concede my Whiteness. An article entitled “Vocabulary Lesson” questions the queer world’s borrowing of the word wife from mainstream society when that word has many negative historical connotations attached to it, but the execution came off condescending, and seemed to push for the continued separation of the two groups.

Many stories move quite fluidly, however. A tale about a formerly battered woman’s journey into professorship hits the mark, as does a story about a Haitian lesbian’s encounter with a skinhead on a train. A collage piece on kitchens examines how this politically charged space changes depending on the occupants and attitudes. A series of segments on health focus on specific issues concerning women’s health, such as environmental hazards connected with work traditionally performed by females.

Another focuses on the push to provide health care for transpeople. As a health care provider featured in the article puts it, “If someone has a cervix, they need gynecological care,” yet many trans people harbor fears of discrimination and simply discomfort with entering a clinic. A piece on immigration explores how the nation’s policies affect those in the queer community.

The magazine doesn’t focus long on any one issue or demographic. Make/Shift strives to reach out to all who identify as female, no matter what their origin or back story, and there is a tidbit for everyone—hopefully more, if you’re willing to learn something.

The design would benefit from more art and photographs to further connect readers to the subjects of the articles. This shouldn’t be difficult, considering that this is a magazine that celebrates artists. I don’t know if the lack of image distribution is a reflection of the magazine’s relative newness, a lack of resources, or failure to see the need, but either way, the need is evident.

Written by: Kelly Palka Gallagher, December 2nd 2009