Bruno Bozzetto, illustrator, animator and director, the "father" of the well-known Signor Rossi, symbol of the average Italian, has created a new cartoon for Animal Equality Italia, openly taking a stand against the treatment reserved for animals locked in cages. The cartoon is pared-back, made up of a few "simple" brushstrokes, yet tremendously effective, conveying all the anguish experienced by farmed animals that spend their entire (brief) existence confined in tiny cages. This is, after all, one of the powers of art: the ability to carry a message and, through a single image, contribute to the shaping of thought.

How would you feel if you couldn't move?

Bozzetto has used a well-known but always effective device: identification, employed to emotionally engage the viewer and "compel" them to step outside their own existence and be transported into a parallel dimension — terrible and real — that of intensive farming. The cartoon depicts a man trapped in a lift for hours, drawing a parallel with animals that spend their entire lives in a similarly cramped space, with no possibility of moving.

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A drawing against indifference

"The indifference and cruelty of people towards defenceless animals who ask only to live makes me literally feel ill," declared Bruno Bozzetto. "Drawing something in their favour helps me bear this pain and gives me hope that, by encouraging people to reflect on this issue, some result may eventually be achieved. I hope so with all my heart. I deeply appreciate Animal Equality because it helps me and all those who think like me to realise this dream: continually awakening every person's conscience on issues that are considered marginal, but which are in fact dramatic and increasingly terrible for the lives of millions of sentient beings."

A life in a cage

In Europe, more than 300 million animals live confined in cages awaiting slaughter; in Italy alone the figure exceeds 45 million. Cage systems, Animal Equality reminds us — an international organisation working to put an end to the abuse of animals raised for food — "are cruel because they limit and prevent the expression of animals' natural instincts." Scholars working on animal welfare agree, not that there was any doubt, that confining animals in cages considerably compromises their wellbeing. The impossibility of movement restricts most of the species-specific behaviours of animals, forcing them to lead an existence of pain and frustration and reducing them to mere machines for meat (or for milk or eggs), stripping them of their individuality and their status as living, sentient creatures.

There is no life without movement

This fate is shared by a wide variety of farmed animals, from laying hens to rabbits, from sows to geese, from calves to quails. Bozzetto's drawing reminds us that, even if we tend to forget it, we are more similar to other animals than we care to admit, and that no life worth living is possible without the ability to move, whatever species one belongs to.

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