My Cultural Awakening: Chicken Run Made Me a Vegan | culture

forWhen I was 15, I was torn between my love of animals and the taste of McDonald’s 99p chicken mayonnaise. As a child, I was a picky eater, with meat and carbs being the mainstays, but as I got older, I found it harder to justify eating meat. A lifelong animal lover and one of those annoying people who joke about their “affinity for animals,” I never pass up an opportunity to pet the neighborhood dog or say hello to a group of cows in a field.

So, when I was a teenager, I knew that eating meat wasn’t really compatible with my way of thinking. But like most people, I found it easy to put those concerns aside when I scoffed at Greggs steak. It wasn’t until I was 15 that I got the motivation I needed to jump into veganism.

It came in the form of an unexpected animated film aimed at 5- to 10-year-olds: Chicken Run. I’ve always had a special attachment to Aardman’s cartoon, which centers around a group of chickens’ desperate attempt to escape the farm where the evil owner Mrs. Tweedy plans to turn them all into pies. The film was released the year I was born and is regularly quoted in my family home thanks to its wholesome humor and charming characters: Ginger, the clever political strategist; Bunty, the strong-willed mother hen; And my personal favorite, Babs, the salt of the earth chicken who always loves you. “I don’t want to be a pie,” she shouted at one point, “I don’t even like gravy.”

But when I was fifteen, my attitude toward what I had previously considered endearingly silly comedy suddenly changed. As I sat down to rewatch the childhood classic, my nagging doubts about my meat-eating habits became impossible to ignore. Suddenly I saw Chicken Run for what it was: a battle between the workers (the chickens) and the employer (Mrs. Tweedy). The hardworking hens lay eggs day and night and see no rewards from the profit of their labor, but are further degraded when Mrs. Tweedy sees that she could be more profitable in death by feeding the people of Britain’s insatiable appetite for pies.

It was Mrs. Tweedy’s husband who inspired my actual moral calculation. Despite his main role as a dim-witted sidekick, Mr. Tweedy realizes that the chickens are smart and organized enough to plan a revolution. Rewatching the film, I saw myself in his shoes: someone with knowledge of the value and intelligence of animals but no courage to do anything about it.

It’s strange to watch your favorite childhood movie and realize that you’ve become the villain. For all I supported these fictional mud chickens in their escape from a cruel, gravy-soaked fate, in real life I was feeding the Tweedy family values ​​in my guilty consumption of pies. When watching such obvious hero/villain films, you usually want to identify with the hero and their struggles, and Aardman did such a good job portraying the lead chicken, Ginger, that I knew I would never eat a chicken – or any animal – ever again.

I can’t pretend it was the only factor in my dietary decision. I’d been learning about raising battery chickens in school, and I felt increasingly aware that my animal-loving inclinations weren’t compatible with my meat-eating habits. But the chicken run was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I immediately cut out all meat, which came as a shock to my completely carnivorous family. Although we shared a love of Chicken Run, no one followed me. This was difficult to explain to people at the time: even just 10 years ago plant-based alternatives were limited, and I was lucky that my parents were supportive. I never acknowledged the role of these fictional chickens in my decision, prioritizing environmental concerns and love of real animals in my interpretations. To this day, when people ask me why I don’t eat meat, I feel like people want me to say it’s a healthy lifestyle choice and not a moral issue.

Last year, the film was revived in Netflix’s Dawn of the Nugget sequel, a film so powerful that its director, Sam Vail, stopped eating chicken nuggets. Despite my initial wariness after recasting the main vocal characters, the sequel convinced me and confirmed the validity of my dietary decision. Highlighting the horrors of meat production, Mrs. Tweedy attempts to turn all the chickens on her farm into chicken nuggets, exposing the cruelty that comes from viewing living creatures as sources for human consumption only.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of me becoming vegan and the 25th anniversary of Chicken Run. I’ve watched the movie every year since, and I watch it with pride knowing that I stand by the chickens, plasticine or otherwise.