Please enjoy this article from the latest issue of our magazine, PETA Global. To begin your subscription, become a PETA member today!
Distinguished actor, director, and playwright Sir Mark Rylance, who stars in a new PETA video about the exploitation of bears for entertainment, fears that the invaluable connection among humans, animals, and nature is disappearing.
PETA UK: You voiced the giant in The BFG, who is a vegetarian, like you.
Sir Mark: It’s very interesting, the cruelty in that story. His brothers are all eating little children, which, if you eat veal or lamb, you are doing the equivalent to animal species. When you stop eating meat, you know that you’re not contributing to the terrible suffering of industrial farming. When I make a decision like that, I take a fuller breath–I feel more connected with the life around me. It’s important just to disinvolve yourself from something you feel is cruel.
PETA UK: We love our dogs, but when it comes to other species, there’s often a disconnect.
Sir Mark: It’s probably deep in our souls that we want contact with animals. We long for it. But there’s also this ruling cosmology that we’re somehow separate from nature, that we’re not animals ourselves. This idea that we’re somehow separate and superior has caused us a lot of trouble.
PETA UK: What can be done to help people make this connection?
Sir Mark: Our actions are intimately connected with all forms of life. You have to think holistically: The way to experience animals is to make places for them where we don’t go so they can live as nature intended and not be isolated in a cage or made to perform. We have to redress the balance, like we’re trying to do between the genders. We need a similar “Time’s Up” movement for animals–we need to look historically at how they’ve been abused and realize they still suffer.
PETA UK: You’ve done a lot of work at The Globe Theatre in London. Have we made much progress since Shakespeare’s time?
Sir Mark: In that part of London, there were very cruel animal-baiting arenas–the “bear gardens” and other places where, regularly, a bear would be set upon by dogs. Shakespeare even writes about it in his plays. Fortunately, that’s come to an end–things can get better! But there are still many bears being forced to ride bicycles, stand on balls, or wear stupid costumes–practices you would have thought had passed away, but they’re still going on.
PETA UK: In 50 years’ time, how do you think we’ll look back at our treatment of animals?
Sir Mark: In horror, absolute horror. First of all, of course, the torture is terrible and the poisoning and all that, but putting them in front of a crowd and making them dance is absolutely ridiculous and so cruel. There could be such a richer, more valuable relationship for us with animals. Hopefully, we’ll realize that everything is intimately connected.
Watch–and share–Sir Mark’s video exposing cruelty to performing bears at PETA.org/MarkRylanceBears.
