Tuesday, October 11, 2011

On the humanization of animals....

Merriam-Webster's defines the term anthropomorphize as "to attribute human form or personality to things not human."

People like to attribute human characteristics to animals for some reason.  Hollywood does it all the time with movies like Hotel for Dogs, Air Bud, Beethoven, Flipper; the list goes on and on and on.  We just can't seem to get enough of these movies, the cute little animal hijinks make us giggle like school girls and we come away at the end of the movie feeling warm and wonderful.  Well I don’t, but many people do.  Then you have the movies where the animals are giving stock tips, are stars on the local basketball team, or foil some devious criminal plot.  These are the kinds of movies that signal the end of acting careers; if you're the star of one of these movies your career has given up the ghost.

So my question is simple:  We like to pretend that animals are so smart and can talk, so why do we always pretend that they can’t spell?  Here are a couple of examples that come to mind.  First, the classic Chik-fil-A stuff:


These cows are supposed to be smart enough to scale this billboard to write this message, but aren't smart enough to snag a dictionary on their way up?

And this:

In the interest of full disclosure, I hate these, they annoy the crap out of me; they aren't cute and they aren't clever, but to each his own. This particular cat picture thingy is from a WEBSITE and whoever founded it seems to have made it their life's work to collect and post these.  They even have a generator where you can make your own.  And, you can register for a collectible "Purrito" that looks like this:


So what's the reason for this cat's poor grammar and spelling?  Should animals have the same access to a quality education as people enjoy?  I don't know the answers, I'm just asking the questions.

1 comment:

  1. Minding the fact that this is pre-Gabby.

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