There were several things in the movie Julie and Julia that really pushed my buttons (besides the remarks about blogging). One was an experience years ago regarding an attempt to make beef bourguignon that left an unhappy memory. Another one was about the problems in making a cookbook. (I finished mine in 2007 but still wish I had taken longer and done a better job.)
But, most stressful of all was the scene with the lobsters. In the film, Julie is going to make a lobster dish and buys 3 live lobsters. She has a large stock pot on to boil but can't bring herself to kill the lobsters by sticking a knife into their heads. So, she puts them alive into the pot, one on top of the other. The top lobster keeps pushing up on the lid as it's fighting to live. It made me sick. It makes me sick to write about it. Some in the audience laughed (perhaps they were much more sophisticated than me). Maybe those ignorant people think that lobsters don't feel pain or that it's somehow necessary to boil them alive!
I didn't stay through the credits to see if there was a American Humane Society disclaimer at the end ("No amimals were harmed...") but even the representation of harm is upsetting to me.
PS: When I pressed "Publish" to post this blog, an ad popped up for live Maine lobsters! Grrrrr!
The Things We Do For Love
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4 comments:
I didn't join in the throngs who read that Julie person's blog because a while back I had read an article about her and her laughingly recounted escapades about killing lobsters and other animals...it sickens me too...I didn't care for Julia Child either...I'm a vegetarian...
I would really like to be a vegetarian and I have tried but I keep feeling this huge gap in my diet without meat-type stuff. Boca burgers just don't do the trick. However, three of my four kids are vegetarians which makes me wonder what I did right!
In the film, Julia Child refuses to meet Julie because she felt that Julie was being disrespectful. From what you tell me about the Julie Blog, it seems that Julia was right.
The thought of boiling anything alive is barbaric. My passion is chicken, ( I'm the non vegetarian child). If I had to prepare a chicken dish from the live chicken, I would not be able to eat it.
I remember Julia Child from TV. And ,I remember the wonderful desserts but not much of anything else she prepared.
Wow, I definitely won't be seeing "Julie and Julia", then. I'm a strict vegetarian (I eat eggs from free-range chickens, but that's the closest I come to meat). I can't stand to see anyone harm an animal, even animal "actors" in a film.
It wasn't hard for me to give up meat (and I was a big ol' carnivore growing up). The only thing hard about being a vegetarian is the insensitivity you sometimes encounter from people who don't understand the lifestyle, or those who insinuate that you are just meat-free because it's "hip" and that secretly you crave Big Macs or something.
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