Cut The Bull

Brendan O'Neill writes:

In the name of preventing animal cruelty, and to the whooping and cheering of Bambi-influenced animal-rights activists around the world, Catalonia has hosted its last bullfight. As of today, there is a ban on bullfighting, and a matador is no longer a showman but a potential criminal. This is a good thing, says Kitty Block of the pro-animal Humane Society, because bullfighting "isn't culture, it's cruelty… [it's] a horrible spectre of animal abuse that ends in the slow and torturous death of an animal provoked and repeatedly gored with knives and swords".

Now, leaving aside the fact that just because taunting bulls isn't culture where Ms Block comes from (she's a lawyer in that spick-and-span city of Washington DC) doesn't mean it isn't culture thousands of miles away in Catalonia, is it really true that bullfighting is cruel to bulls? One could argue the opposite: that being included in a bullfight is the best thing that can happen to a bull, since it elevates it from being a grubby and dumb beast into a performer in a piece of beautiful, arcane theatre.

To put a bull into a bullfight is to ennoble it. As a participant in a strange, centuries-old ritual, in a violent dance-off between man and beast, a bull acquires a significance far beyond its own natural existence. In fact, the only "purpose" in the life of a bull is that bestowed upon it by picadors and matadors – it is through their efforts, and their efforts alone, that a bull is transformed from being a rather pointless, instinctual beast into a noble creature worthy of being watched by an audience of thousands. In this sense, bullfighting is humane rather than cruel, since through the endeavour and labour of the bullfighting brigade a bull is given a use and purpose nature could never have designed for it.

What is a bull but a grunting creature destined to live a rather sad and short life of munching grass and impregnating cows? Through the humanity of the matadors, bulls selected for a bullfight are spared this terrible fate and are given something they could have never, in a million years, discovered for themselves: a purpose in life. It's the same with minks turned into beautiful fur coats and deers whose heads become trophies in a hunter's hallway: all of these creatures are ennobled by man, turned from wild things into beautiful things worthy of being displayed in homes, on catwalks, in arenas. Too often these days we describe as "animal cruelty" things which actually reveal mankind's creativity, our good and true desire to tame the wilder parts of nature and turn them into something beautiful.