“Please forgive us.”

Here it is — the video I made with Ariel for MNKINO #6: “FOOD.” The quote above is what Ariel had to say before we screened it last Tuesday.

Making this video prompted a lot of questions and uncertainties for me — enough that I was practically ready to bail at one point (glad I didn’t). Perhaps it’s worth noting that Ariel is a vegatarian and I’m not. One of the first mistakes I made was assuming that if a vegetarian seems OK with going through with this, then I must be too.

So under what circumstances is it acceptable to boil a lobster alive? Can one prove that, although symbolically more difficult than most other ways of killing animals for food, boiling a living creature is actually any worse? Are the ethical considerations of this act changed when one is filming it? What if it never gets eaten (it’s still in my freezer)?

I won’t bother you with any more of my moral hand-wringing, especially since much of it is covered in the David Foster Wallace essay we mention at the beginning of the video.

But I do have one question for you: know any decent recipes for frozen lobster?

Update: Upon re-reading this post, it strikes me as a little melodramatic. Despite my moral quandrifying, I’m happy with how it turned out and glad we did it!