Death Be Not Shown, at Least Not on CBS

The slaughter of a wild pig for food on the Feb. 15 episode of “Survivor: The Australian Outback” is drawing outrage from animal rights groups.

“Taking a life for crass entertainment is wrong,” Gretchen Wyler, president of the Ark Trust in Los Angeles, said this week. She added: “Killing for titillation is wrong. Killing for ratings is wrong.”

And killing for food is wrong, some of us believe.

Although Wyler’s logic is unassailable, I’m of two minds about the “Survivor” episode. I deplore the act, yet regret deeply that CBS was too timid to show in entirety this sentient creature’s butchery and suffering. You can bet every squeal and thrust, including Michael Skupin slashing its throat, is on tape. Yet preceded by an advisory, CBS showed only a bit of the chase, some stabbing motions by Skupin and the dead pig, not the actual kill.

As it was, horrified responses by some of Skupin’s hungry Kucha tribe colleagues spoke for themselves. “Gross,” said one. “Oh, my God, this is like a murder scene,” said another. Then they ate.

Speaking of inconsistency, TV gives us predators killing prey in the wild. Why blur the carnage merely because the predator is a human hoping to carve, slash and chomp his way to $1 million? Why deny viewers the opportunity to get more of a sense of the grisly slaughterhousing by which meat arrives on their plates, even though most wouldn’t be comfortable with the grim epiphany?

Cards on the table. My daughter once worked for the Ark Trust, and some of my best friends are animals. In addition, I come to this without objectivity, having a deep prejudice against animal cruelty and those mistreating animals to make a buck. And surely we all can agree that stabbing a feral young pig to death--as Skupin did before dipping a finger in its blood and painting red stripes under his eyes--was no act of kindness to the pig.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an expert on staging events, suggests even that the pig killing was a setup, that CBS brought in a tame animal to be slaughtered in what’s known as a “canned” hunt, something the network denies. Of course, this is the network that’s been calling “reality” a “Survivor I” and “Survivor II” milieu that’s been tightly edited, staged and largely scripted in its broad strokes.

Even giving CBS the benefit of the doubt on the “tame” pig charge doesn’t absolve it of blame.

By allowing and even encouraging the animal killing, CBS was engaging in a double standard. Would it knowingly participate in the killing of animals on any of its other entertainment programs?

The “no animals were harmed” seal is absent from “Survivor,” which doesn’t come under the purview, apparently, of the American Humane Assn.’s embattled film and TV unit, which claims to be looking out for the welfare of animals on domestic TV and movie sets.

Yet “Survivor II” is no prime-time sports or hunting show. Built into each hour episode is an entertainment premise calling for its participants to supposedly live by their wits and find their own food. That doesn’t mean gnawing on tree stumps.

Which made fair game--and supporting cast members, in effect--of any unprotected edible species in the Australian wild where the series was taped. These animals were a crucial part of the scenario, last week’s “hunt,” for example, being a centerpiece of the entertainment.

Dingoes? Nope, protected. Flying foxes? Nope, protected. Emus? Nope, protected. Feral pigs?

Knife ‘em.

Oh, the producers instead could have furnished the participants with some basic rations other than the rice they’ve had available. That would have pleased Kimmi Kappenberg, the Kucha member who calls herself a vegetarian even though she eats fish. But that wouldn’t have been as much fun as seeing someone go after an animal with a spear or knife, or hack off a rooster’s head. That, too, happened on the Feb. 15 episode, during which some of the participants ate fowl after winning a challenge that rewarded them with three chickens and that rooster.

But can you imagine a domesticated animal in a series being killed in the interest of producing a more entertaining show?

Lassie’s ratings are down. Let’s throw her off a cliff.

The howls would be deafening from coast to coast.

They weren’t during “Survivor I,” when rats were at times the fare, even though humans who’ve lived with these guys when they’re domesticated know them to be clean, loving and intelligent, breaking your heart only when dying after just a few years of life. But most humans seem not to feel as passionately about rats, or lizards, or fish.

This was written before Thursday night’s “Survivor II” episode, thus without knowledge of subsequent meals on the show or if Skupin himself got the knife from his fellow Kuchas. When it comes to competing, they’re all carnivores.

Clearly, though, he felt providing them a pig to eat helped his chances for advancing in the show. He told the camera: “I feel better about my position now that I’ve made this kill.”

The kill that CBS decided to soften.

We should have had it all. We should have had full knowledge of what this animal endured to fill the bellies of “Survivor II” participants en route to another night of big Nielsens. That would have been reality.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted by e-mail at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.