A Tale of Forbidden Love

This video, with a whopping ~1,000 views, has got a bit of attention within the zoo community.  So in an effort to break semi-permanently from my hiatus, I am going to talk about it.

A brief synopsis: A man, in a voice-over, talks about his romantic love for his dog, who looks to be a golden lab for you canine aficionados out there.  It's all very sweet, quite melancholy with a bit of humour to it, and though the kissing scene has been noted even by several dog lovers I know/read as really weird and awkward, its heart seems to be in the right place as this couple reclines in simple enjoyment of their secret romance.  In the end, though, come the police and misguided animal welfare activists to take away the pooch, before a woman walking her dog proclaims the man a "dog fucker" followed by a cut to the credits.  The film isn't long, though, so I still recommend you watch it so you can understand what I'm about to say about it.

I know I'm kind of an inflammatory guy; my harsh remarks against COMING SOON (which, by the way, does turn out to be a total hoax; the website for EFA was built after the video and the organization itself does not exist originally, so there) got me my first external links.  But I'm not going to completely tear apart Forbidden Love.  It does paint a picture of a scene not significantly departed from reality.  It shows a mutual, loving relationship that, if a little, almost imperceptibly strange sometimes, seems legitimate enough.  Most importantly, it depicts a story of romance that is inherently tragic right from the beginning: something that is misunderstood, forcibly covert, and inevitably doomed, and tries to tug at the heartstrings of the viewers and gain their sympathy.  Overall, for the majority of the film, it at least resembles a piece I might show a visually-oriented and empathetic person who is critical of zoophilia.

But then there is the ending.  The ending that makes you realize that this is not a film made to actually break new barriers, or challenge mindsets or educate or whatever the above might imply.  It was made entirely for the sake of art, and in this case, the genre is a very dry and hollow comedy that adores its own internal irony: after all the amour, the suspense, the pleading and the heartbreak, there comes an old lady scowling and accusing with the utmost exaggerated blatancy, "Dog fucker!" while her tiny puppy hides behind her legs, and the credits roll to a strange peppy tune.  The intent is to make fun of the rest of the film, and to make fun of the audience in doing so: to say, "Hey, you weren't just feeling sorry for an animal abuser, were you?  Sick!" To emphasize this profanity, there are the variety of archaic images depicting zooerasty flashing on the screen as the credits roll, which nearly everyone expressing themselves in the comments noticed.  As far as the irony goes, I feel that it for the most part went over the heads of the audience, although a few do catch it and even the publisher on YouTube (who was not involved in the creation of the film) places it in the category of "Comedy".

So personally, I feel that this video is not the big break that some have seen it as.  Yes, it puts zoophilia on the table, but at its core, even if it goes unnoticed, it still approaches it in the same way it always is: as the butt of a joke.  Between that and documentaries with nothing but lies, or the wrong sorts of people represented, we have a long way to go before zoos are ever given anything that can be called a fair chance in mass media.  But that's just my opinion.