5. A Watershed Moment for Hollywood's Animal-Rights Movement?

         This article by Noah Gittell presents pros and cons to the animal-rights movement. Gittel focusses on the impact Hollywood has caused in the past years on animal-rights. Celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, Alec Baldwin, James Cameron, Michelle Pfeiffer are mentioned as protectors of the animals, all of them are vegans. He gives facts on events that happened in the past, like the execution of Topsy. the elephant, and filmed by Thomas Edison to the death of 27 animals during the filming of the movie, The Hobbit by Peter Jackson. Giving support to technology Gittell cites examples of the movie rise of the Planet of the Apes that took advantage of technology and did not use animals during their filming, instead the director Rupert Wyatt used cutting-edge motion-capture technology to bring the chimps to real life through a computer screen.The author concludes that the concern of fil directors have caused impact on animal-rights protection, but the situation will only improve when technology is big enough to stop animals usage for entertainment.
         As a whole the article is rich in information and talks regarding a global issue present. Gittel uses a really good attention getter, using a escandalous event that happened in the past, that today would have been seen as a tragedy. The author seems null to the big question debated throughout the article, but by the cloncusion it can be recognized as a informational paper and not perssuasive. Even by being from a neytral point of view the text slightly bends towars the animal-rights protection side, even by being the most favored one in general. By citing many famous artists and celebrities it gives his article a lot of credibility, for example Peter Jackson has many protests claimed over the death of animals during the filming of one of his latest movies. Gittel also gives the example of the documentary that is going to be released called Blackfish about the mammals being used for entertainment like in the amusement parks. The article does a good job providing events that happened in the past and now, showing how the intensity of the issue has increased throughtout time. He provides credible evidence on how Hollywood has helped with the cause, and concludes that even though situation is getting better for animals it still has not been completely resolved, and it will take time, which, may upset the reader.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/08/a-watershed-moment-for-hollywoods-animal-rights-movement/278687/