Cruelty

I understand the frustration of people who witness this abuse, and Sarno is correct that the true facts need to be presented before any lynch mob can take their position. However, most of us are becoming more and more aware of the connection between animal abuse and human abuse. The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit trains students on the behavior of violent criminals, looking for particularly vicious or unusual behavior like animal mutilations. The unit offers its assistance to local law enforcement agencies.

Children murder one another in a multitude of gruesome and memorable ways in "The Hunger Games," deploying spears, arrows, rocks, venomous wasps, mutant wolves and their bare hands in a televised gladiatorial death match. The juvenile slaughterfest depicted in the film and its source material, Suzanne Collins' trilogy of bestselling young adult novels, may give audiences (particularly parents) pause — is this what contemporary entertainment has come to? But violence committed by and against children has a long, grisly tradition in literature — as an allegory for adult cruelty, a representation of the emotional volatility of adolescence and a tension-raiser for audiences.

Thank you for printing "There Should Be No Room for Cruelty to Livestock" (Commentary, June 8). It seems that it would be obvious even to people who eat meat that animals should be given at least enough room in cages to turn around or lie down. Natalie Field Rolling Hills Estates

The Florida Legislature has dropped a controversial provision that would have made it a crime to photograph or videotape on agricultural facilities without consent. We have reported previously on this blog that several states have attempted to thwart whistle-blowers and animal rights activists by making it a crime to record images on a farm, lab or other animal enterprise. Of course, many other actions such as trespassing, removing animals and other acts are already illegal. Florida was taking a lead in this push, but in the last few days its legislature has removed the image collection language - derisively called an “ag gag” provision by activists - from state House Bill 1021 and state Senate Bill 1184.

I read the interesting response of Fox Entertainment President Peter Ligouri to questions about the cruelty of the "American Idol" judges to contestants where he noted that "it's part of the show" and "viewers know what the show is about" ["Questions for the Man at Fox," by Martin Miller, Jan. 22]. Well, this viewer thought "American Idol" was about giving young talent their big chance to shine in front of a large audience. However, the show has evolved into calculated, deliberate exposure of pathetic publicity-seekers who should have been eliminated but instead are trotted out to be humiliated.

I saw the headline "Wood-Chipped Chickens Fuel Outrage" (Nov. 22) out of the corner of my eye while reading another story. My mind struggled to translate ... was it a new way of preparing poultry? Then it hit me: 30,000 live chickens had been subjected to a wood chipper. I'm still nauseated by the hideous cruelty. I realize there is horror all over the paper, and I'm not asking you to filter it. I just want to be on the record as someone who finds this act, sanctioned by a vet, disgusting, evil and wrong.

" . . . A rider grabs a small running bull by its tail and attempts to flip the animal over. Points are assigned for various maneuvers and the type of fall inflicted on the bull. . . ." Such went the wording of the article on "Charro--Thrills of South-of-the-Border Rodeo Come to San Diego" (April 14). I immediately thought of the injuries and fright of a bull pulled by its tail to flip it over. I was sickened. The Times did a disservice to its more civilized readers by depicting as "sport" and "entertainment" such primitive and barbaric acts of cruelty on terrified animals.

The letter from Darcy Sinise was heartbreaking. My heart goes out to her and her fiance at the tragic loss of their magnificent animal. Unfortunately, this is yet another incident of growing animal cruelty and human ignorance and stupidity. There is no excuse for it. To lose an animal that is so greatly loved is no different than losing a child. There are no words to ease the pain. I experienced a similar act of this low mentality last month when someone drove by and shot my cat in his own back yard.

In his Nov. 17 letter taking exception to conclusions I drew in my review of Paul Russell's "Boys of Life" (Oct. 17) about what I termed "the growing school of literary cruelty" and its lack of redemptive or admonitory qualities so that there is no real "illumination," Mr. Paul Turpin somersaults to the conclusion that I expect "first-person villains to be remorseful . . . have second thoughts . . . (be) brought to justice." Nothing in my review substantiates such a silly conclusion.

The Art of Cruelty A Reckoning Maggie Nelson W.W. Norton: 304 pp., $24.95 From a movie billboard in her Los Angeles neighborhood to the Italian Futurists, Maggie Nelson swings her lively gaze across a century's worth of art and culture in "The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning. " The starting point for this study of violence and art is Antonin Artaud, the French playwright behind the "theatre of cruelty" who wrote that cruelty in art "signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination.

In 1882, P.T. Barnum paid $10,000 to have Jumbo, the world's most famous elephant, shackled like Houdini, stuffed into a crate and sailed across the ocean to New York City. Barnum got Jumbo on the cheap because — unknown to him but well known to Jumbo's keepers at the London Zoo — the elephant had gone bonkers. Jumbo had become such a hazard that his owners feared for the safety of the many children who took rides on his back. Alumni of such rides included an asthmatic Teddy Roosevelt, who, perhaps traumatized by the experience, would later go on to kill four elephants in less than five minutes while on safari in British East Africa.

The case of a former city employee accused of treating dogs inhumanely at Los Angeles' West Valley animal shelter in Chatsworth is being referred to prosecutors for review, the head of the animal services agency said Friday. Brenda Barnette told The Times earlier this week that she had not considered a criminal referral for Manuel Boado, 64. He allegedly failed to sedate dogs before euthanizing them, placed them near other dead animals and inserted the euthanizing needle into their jugular veins during euthanasia, which is considered more painful than other locations.

Maggie Nelson, a poet and faculty member of California Institute of the Arts' School of Critical Studies, takes on a sometimes disturbing offshoot of 20th-century avant-garde culture in her new book, "The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning" (W. W. Norton & Co.). What is the art of cruelty? The question of cruelty in art is not the same question necessarily — it can be, but it's not always the same question — of what cruelty is in life, because if you presume cruelty has an object, like you're being cruel to somebody or something, the question of who a piece of art might be cruel to if it's just depicting something that makes you think, "Wow, that's a really cruel thing," the question hasn't really been answered.

The Art of Cruelty A Reckoning Maggie Nelson W.W. Norton: 304 pp., $24.95 From a movie billboard in her Los Angeles neighborhood to the Italian Futurists, Maggie Nelson swings her lively gaze across a century's worth of art and culture in "The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning. " The starting point for this study of violence and art is Antonin Artaud, the French playwright behind the "theatre of cruelty" who wrote that cruelty in art "signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination.

Sparks flew as blacksmiths fanned fires and Stephen Jada, a welder with ambitions far larger than his tin shack, rested in the shade and spoke of how this gritty, once forgotten sliver of the world was about to blossom. "A new nation," he declared, "is being born to be equal with other countries. There is much to be done. " He looked down an alley of tools and rust and listened to the hiss of blowtorches, the bite of hacksaws. Men around him hammered and sweated. Women sold beans and shooed children along bamboo fences not far from families scrubbing clothes in the Nile.

More than three decades after the war in Vietnam, a Marine named Robert Lucius had a moment of reckoning on the road to Lai Chau. A naval attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, he was bound for a rural clinic with a donation of medical equipment. When his car was passed by a motorbike with a wicker basket full of dogs, he locked eyes with one of them. "There was an immediate sense of connection," he said. "You could see the fear, the dread, the helplessness. " A vision raced through his mind: Liberate the dogs.

Exactly how much space is a chicken legally entitled to have in a California henhouse? A Modesto farmer sued the state and the Humane Society of the United States on Wednesday seeking to answer that question, as egg producers begin overhauling their operations to meet an anti-cruelty measure that was approved by state voters in 2008. The lawsuit, filed in Fresno County Superior Court by egg farmer J.S. West, is asking for a judge to interpret and clarify California's Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, known as Proposition 2. The 2008 measure, approved by more than 63% of the voters, banned small, confining crates or cages for veal calves, egg-laying hens and pregnant sows.

Simultaneously poetic, dramatic and realistic, "White Material" is an altogether stunning work. Directed by Claire Denis and starring Isabelle Huppert in a bravura performance as a woman confronting armed chaos in Africa, this is filmmaking that is at once exhilarating and chilling, powerful and powerfully disturbing. Though not a marquee name in this country, French director Denis is so respected internationally that the British film journal Sight & Sound declared "there is no better filmmaker working in the world right now. " Having grown up in Africa, which she used as the setting for her signature film, 1988's "Chocolat," Denis takes us back again, to a nameless country caught in the brutal, catastrophic struggle between a ruthless regime and a rebel army filled with child soldiers.