Louis Michael: A vegan utopia

The standard for storytelling is always being raised. Whether one looks at films, games, series or books all industries that deal in narratives have felt the sting of the unsatisfied public who now expect a masterpiece or their money back. Most contenders battle it out for the public’s favour by churning out deviations from a successful formula that are slight enough to not be risky but considerable enough to be lapped up as original. But in rare circumstances we are gifted with something that transcends these competitive squabbles by entering into new and exciting realms previously unimagined. Simon Amstell’s Carnage is just that.

In a brilliant vision that is commendably both humorous and sobering Amstell projects his audience into a future that is entirely vegan. The ingenuity of this move is that by basing his narrative in the future he cleverly frees himself from dealing with the resistance veganism faces in the present. Instead, he harks back to our present within a fictional timeline that tracks the build up to the emancipation of animal kind. In the process he discusses our disregard for animal welfare and our refusal to deal with the negative implications that the animal agriculture has on our climate with the alarm and bewilderment we would accredit to Elizabethans using lead based make up.

Thanks Simon Amstell for humanising me

As the film plays out we become the pitied subjects of history living in dark, ignorant times, before the revelatory breakthroughs of the future. It shakes off the model adopted by most vegans that consists mainly of statistics and guilt and instead operates on the premise of the simple question ‘how will we look back on our treatment of animals’?

Amstell’s work is the kind that makes me grateful to have been born in the 21st century. It highlights how we are living through one of the most exciting periods in history, stood as we are at precipice of an era of upheaval and change. But more than that, it emphasises the importance of utopian fiction in a culture that is obsessed with dystopias. It is utopian fiction that offers the key to our future, by offering us visions of a golden world that is within our reach. Simon Amstell constructs a realistic chain of events, but it is up to us to make it come true.

As a vegan I want to personally thank Simon Amstell for humanising me. But as a human I want to thank him for helping to expose the serious dangers of the human ego and bring back some sorely needed balance into the world.