That's No Bull, Or Is It?

We have all experienced that moment in the movie theatre when something that is familiar to us from our day to day life just isn’t represented well on the big screen. Usually these moments are accidental, or at least thought not noticeable to the vast majority of the audience. Television may even be guiltier, but then again I am generally more forgiving to that format of entertainment.

The most memorable and flagrant example of misrepresenting a situation occurred for me over the holiday season while I was watching a DVD with my kids. The movie was called Barnyard, a 2006 animated production about farm animals that can talk when humans are not looking or listening. An additional important metamorphosis that occurs to these critters is they stand upright whenever there is no risk of disclosure. I am pretty sure this might actually be accurate, ‘cause many a time I thought I heard voices and the faint odor of a cigarette coming from the barn back in my childhood. Oh well.

My concern is specifically related to the cattle herd, the main characters in the movie. The two lead animals are bulls. The voices of Ben and Otis are Sam Elliot and Kevin James respectfully. These are two of my favorite actors and of course who doesn’t love Sam Elliot’s voice. Ironically, well known for the “Beef, it’s what’s for Dinner” campaign. These two male animals stand up proudly through a fair part of this movie, clearly displaying their udders, yes that’s right udders. You know that low hanging device near the back end of a cow that gives milk. Let’s be clear, bulls don’t have udders, they have testicles. I totally understand the producers of Barnyard not wanting to show a bulls private parts flopping around like they generally do on a full grown animal, but I completely disagree with replacing it with an udder, only found on females, or as known on the farm -- cows.

The obvious question is whether or not it is important for Hollywood to accurately portray the anatomy of the bovine species. It would have been easy to simply leave off the udder on the males, but of course noticeable. Some parents may have had to answer the question; “hey dad why does she have those parts and he doesn’t?” But holy cow everybody we’re talking about milk here, the mainstay of a healthy diet, right? Shouldn’t we have the responsibility of accurately educating our kids; but let’s face it, it's likely a large majority of adults don’t understand the difference either. It would be interesting to know if the developers of this movie actually knew they were making a mistake. Hmmm?

Comments

[Tracy Andrews]

Okay. It's called an "artistic license." Artists (of all mediums) are allowed to add, alter, or subtract certain features and characteristics to portray their "vision," if you will, of a creature or object. Udders represent cows. The artists must have had strong feelings about giving an accurate representation of the "bovine," albeit a "bull," in order to attempt to accurately portray the animal in general.

[deirdre Krotz]

randy
come to www.crazywalls.com
and learn more about bulls

[deirdre Krotz]

lalala