Killing an Animal vs A Human and The Purity of Innocence

There’s a reason it seems every revenge pic since John Wick seems to center on the killing of a dear pet: it strikes a chord.

Why?

At the risk of infuriating some, I think it is might be possible to see the killing of an animal to be more offensive than that of, say, a child. The creep who kills a child, for whatever reason, knows he’s a no good evil creep. He would never expect that to go over with anyone, anywhere, ever — except possibly another like-minded sociopath. But a killing a beloved pet — which studies show can be equally distressing as that of a family member — could be seen as no big deal by the perp. In Pig, the animal in question is killed peripherally, after being grabbed as if just so much loot. They didn’t care at all about the pig’s life or the grief that his keeper would feel for the loss of his only companionship. There’s a perceived pure innocence of animals that we may not always attribute to, say, children of strangers — and this may somehow rile our sense of injustice even more.

Or maybe movies and the media have simply worn out our empathy for humans by parading an endless stream of dead bodies round the world, most of whom we never knew or had any connection with.