Water For Elephants
Circus Cruelty Is Not A Thing Of The Past!
Join our national outreach day on Friday April 22
The movie version of the blockbuster novel about a circus, Water for Elephants, starring Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson, is set for release on April 22, and it will be huge. Because the movie's producers chose to use real performing animals for the film, which IDA vehemently opposes, we hope that you will join us outside the theaters to let movie-goers know that the circus cruelty portrayed in the film is very real and continues today.
Please save the date for this outreach opportunity: Friday, April 22 (general release).
 Many people will be drawn to this movie, which takes place in a Depression-era circus where brutalities are inflicted on human and non-human animals. As an historical romance, they will think about how sad it “used to be” and how much better everything must be for animals in circuses today. The reality is that elephants and other animals are forced to lead unnatural, deprived lives: torn from their mothers and subjected to violent training, chained, caged, and brutalized into performing tricks for the public.
Unfortunately, the film’s producers failed to take the book’s anti-cruelty message to heart. This means that your ticket to the movie funds cruelty just as surely as a ticket to the circus itself. However, the movie presents a unique opportunity to educate the people who do go.
The circus industry is hoping that the film will bring glamour and glory to a fading form of entertainment. There have already been efforts to use the film’s elephant (the elephant Tai plays Rosie in the movie) to raise money for the International Elephant Foundation, an organization created and run by and for the circus and zoo industries.
Please help IDA inform the public that there is nothing glamorous or romantic about the kind of animal abuse rampant in circuses today.
Join IDA in bringing attention to the suffering endured by animals in the circus by getting friends together to leaflet outside a movie theater showing Water for Elephants on April 22. IDA will provide leaflets for distribution. To order or for more information, please email circuses@idausa.org.
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