Bullfighting

Always been opposed to Bullfighting, but recently tried to read Ernest Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon to try and learn more about the other side of the argument. Admired his honesty in saying he first studied Bullfighting because it was the best place at that time to learn to write about life and death, but was disappointed and appalled by much of what followed. For example, he kept using the word “comic” in describing in gory detail what can happen to horses (never mind bulls) in the bullring, whilst apparently claiming not to find it “comical” himself. I quote; “There is certainly nothing comic by our standards in seeing an animal emptied of its visceral content, but if this animal instead of doing something tragic, that is dignified, gallops in a stiff old-maidish fashion around a ring trailing the opposite of clouds of glory it is as comic when what it is trailing is real as when the Fratellinis give a burlesque of it in which the viscera are represented by rolls of bandages, sausages and other things.” And; “I have seen these, call them disembowellings, that is the worst word, when, due to their timing, they were very funny.” As you will probably have guessed by now, the book has done nothing to change my view of Bullfighting as sheer barbarism.