“Electrocuting An Elephant” signals a shift in conceptions of mass entertainment at the turn of the last century. Though electrocution was arguably more “humane” (and cinematic), Edison’s ulterior motive was to trump up the effectiveness of his own high-voltage direct-current system. (The attacks seemed at least a bit retaliatory, since one was prompted by one of Topsy’s trainers trying to feed her a lit cigarette.) Edison intervened, suggesting electrocution instead. After being deemed a threat to people due to a few attacks, Topsy was sentenced to death by hanging. Topsy was a circus elephant that worked on Coney Island’s Luna Park. But Thomas Edison’s 1903 short “Electrocuting An Elephant” is worth mentioning, since it chronicles an animal death at least partly orchestrated for the sake of a paying audience. So we largely excluded cases where animal killings were captured in documentary films, like Roger & Me or The Cove. “Electrocuting An Elephant” (1903) This list is meant not as a grim catalog of animal abuse for its own sake, but as a list of accidental or deliberate harm done to animals in the process of creating filmed entertainment.
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