Julie - I think we are in total agreement on Mr H.... but! Despicable would be my description if I am being nice. Glen is absolutely right. Where I was based in Lima, la Corrida 'Plaza de Toros de Acho' was less than a 1km away. The oldest in Latin America, officially 17 or 18,000 spectators but with well over 20,000. They did not kill bulls any longer by 1970, but the bulls were slaughtered and the elite paid over $60 a portion. In the immediate environs of Rimac on the edge of Lima there were nearly 400,000 people living on the dge of the desert in shanty towns with less than $20 income per household per month. Beef, ?, they got beans if they were lucky. So as much as Glen's words, there is that elite that automatically asumes itself to be the source of culture and all advances whose hypocrisy stuns me as well. If they ever stopped to think. But perhaps I ask too much.
I do not approve of bullfighting, but if the French courts do then there is little legally that can be done about it. http://www.expatica.com/fr/news/french-news/france-rejects-ban-on-bullfighting_244702.html. I agree the video clearly shows the level of intelligence of the pro-supporters but again animal rights activists put themselves in the firing line deliberately so they know what they are getting themselves into. Nevertheless, animal cruelty is unacceptable in this day and age. The hope that gradually bullfighting will die out is fruitless given the level of support it is getting right now. Ivory poaching and the killing of rhinos for their horns was on the wane until recently in Africa and it is now seriously on the increase because of market demands from the Chinese with the new found wealth and ignorant old traditions.
Whatever the case Norman, Hemingway made it 'alright' because he was a very public figure in his time and said how great these things were. It doesn't matter how inadequate he might have been, as other 'heroes' like Schwarzenegger have shown, it is fine to hurt others.
However, excellent point about Depardieu. Back to the original point and watching the video. He makes a great traditional model for the supporters giving the protesters a chance to express their voice in the manner the Revolution (at least the the Declaration...) and to have the protection thereof from the state by onlooking gendarmes.
Small add-on point, I just read that Gerard Depardieu is one of the supporters. He also has a tradition of peeing in aircraft, having punchups with assorted people as well. Sort of fits doesn't it?
Re. Hemingway there has been a lot of analysis of the man and his inadequacies in emotional areas which led to his form of macho writing and activities.
There is nothing worse than disguising (very thinly) animal cruelty under the terms of 'tradition' and 'part of our culture' . Tradition in the UK used to include Bear-baiting, cock-fighting, hare-coursing, dog fighting (which some neanderthals still seem to enjoy). Why not bring back all the 'pleasures' of these 'traditions'?
Anyone who goes as a tourist for God's sake to these perversions is only advertising their own.
My (fairly close) namesake, Glenn Allsop said just about what I intended to say!Any cruelty to animals(especially la Corrida) which involves "entertainment via perversity and torture, at the animal's expense, should be severely punished by the law.
Have just watched the video right through and can't believe some of the things the pro bull fighting people were doing. The video just shows them as a bunch of mindless thugs. At the end the police showed up (I think they were police) and just stood by and watched and seemed more interested in getting the bull fighting back on than stopping the violence.
Thanks Martin - right. Some of the Spanish regions have reduced the numbers of bulls allowed to be killed and some of the smaller local corridas just economically went down. Tourism must be a saving grace for la Corrida. The EU has kept it finger off, cowards!
I hope it is dying out in Spain - the sooner the better. But, from the group that I follow on Facebook, it seems to be going strong still and has a large following. Sadly, a lot of the interest seems to be from tourists that visit Spain and want to see some of the traditions and history.
I thought that a number of the bull fights in France were non-blood sports where the bull was not actually harmed physically - mentally is another issue of course. As far as I am concerned, they can all be banned.
Warning: Some of the things posted on the SAD Facebook page below are truly horrific, but if these things are ever to get banned, then we have to face up to the fact that there are people who enjoy inflicting pain on animals in the name of sport or tradition. Bullfighting in a ring is bad enough, but the Spanish seem to have dreamt up all manner of ways of slowly and painfully killing a bull.
Julie, Hemingway was a brilliant writer. I have several including 'Death in the Afternoon' out of curiosity. However, read about his big game hunting in Africa, deep sea fishing and womanising in Havana and you realise the man had no respect whatsoever for any living thing except himself. He popularised la Corrida outside of Spain with other Europeans and Americans seeking thrills without having to lift a finger. It is still rife from Mexico southwards although a few South American countries have now stopped it entirely. Brazil stopped the Portuguese version some years ago but Peru, Colombia and Ecuador still allow. I think Venezuela banned killing bulls fairly recently. The Portuguese and Philippines at least do not kill them in the ring and professional butchers do it out of the corrida and some are allowed to live anyway. The French version is a horror of injury and insult to the bulls, the 'course landaise' where they use cows instead of bulls would never have made it with Hemingway at all. In all forms, brutality. They are already lucky it was not banned because of the numbers of seriously injured and killed 'raseteurs' went down a few years back. Inhuman whatever.
It is slowly dying in Spain and Portugal, so why not here too. What on earth it has to with constitutional rights of people to brutalise animals is beyond me. Sport?