With all the drama of medieval jousting, or a good old fashioned tractor pull, liberal champions collided last week in separate contests: Buddhism vs. the environment and animal rights vs. art.
These are conflicts, for socially conscious justice warriors, as fraught as Batman vs. Superman is for Comic-Con nerds: Who are you supposed to root for?
Two British Buddhists, in an effort to keep lobsters out of the boiling pot, got themselves into hot water. As part of ceremony meant to produce “good karma,” they released hundreds of lobsters and crabs into the ocean at the seaside town of Brighton. But, alas, they were American crustaceans, nonnative species said to pose a threat to the local ecosystem. (In Brexit Britain, it seems, even the eco-warriors are anti-immigrant.) According to the Guardian, a court fined the Buddhists some £15,000 to recoup costs borne by the government in its efforts to recapture the shellfish: To incentivize local fishermen, the crown put a bounty on their exoskeletal heads. Of the 361 lobsters released, 40 some are still at large and may—horrors!—be breeding. Ever willing to do its part, The Scrapbook stands at the ready with drawn butter.
On this side of the pond, the conflict involved modern art. The Guggenheim Museum has decided to remove three works from an upcoming exhibit, works that activists claimed promote animal cruelty. The works are certainly weird and perhaps unsettling—including a short video of dogs running at each other on treadmills, ready to fight, but unable to reach each other, and a large cage full of amphibians, reptiles, and insects that eat each other over time (as critters are wont to do). The outrage has been spectacular. Hundreds of thousands committed to insect-welfare have signed petitions; animal-rights activists swamped the museum with stern letters of disapproval; some in the bunny-and-duck crowd have threatened to give curators a right thrashing.
The flabbergasted (and clearly feeble) Guggenheim backed down. “Although these works have been exhibited in museums in Asia, Europe, and the United States,” the museum said in a statement, expressing regret “that explicit and repeated threats of violence have made our decision necessary.”
It isn’t just Nature that’s red in tooth and claw.
