This past Friday, I attended Cornell Cinema’s screening of House Fellow Lynn Tomlinson’s short animated film “The Elephant Song” (as well as the subsequent showing of the film Love & Bananas). Since I was a child, I’ve always had a passion for conservatism/animal rights and environmentalism—so much so that I’ve shaped my career path around it. Because of this, I was extremely excited to be able to attend this event.

As I am studying the fields of environmental engineering and environmental economics, the vast majority of the time I’ve looked at these issues from a more mathematical perspective. This short film really served to highlight the fact that it is incredibly important to have both an analytical and a qualitative perspective of these issues, which my formal education has greatly lacked (so far, at least).

The film tells the story of a “show elephant” brought to the US through the eyes of a farm dog. It’s a story of loneliness and abuse, all at the hands of the humans who own the elephant. The animation is wonderfully vibrant, done in a style that I’ve never seen before. I only barely grasped the explanation of how it was accomplished, but it seemed to be almost a sort of two-dimensional stop-motion that was incredibly reminiscent of water color. This really gave the story life, and fit very nicely with the soundtrack of the film. The entire time, I was enthralled by what was happening on-screen.

I think my biggest takeaway was the theme of animal suffering. “The Elephant’s Song” brings to light the trauma that animals often experience at our expense. Too often we seem to look at ethical or environmental problems like this with numbers and figures, but that only shows a part of the full picture. I genuinely believe that our choices as consumers reflect our personal values, and this film served to reaffirm that idea. Next time any of us wants to visit a zoo or a circus, or when we choose to purchase meat or dairy when grocery shopping, we all need to think about more than just our personal enjoyment. There is a living, breathing, emotionally intelligent creature on the other end of that purchase. Is a few minutes of your own pleasure really worth a lifetime of trauma for them—or even their death?