Animal rights campaigners are up in arms because Disney+ is able to use a legal loophole to broadcast a scene of a rat being forcibly immersed in liquid. The RSPCA has slammed Disney for showing a controversial scene from the 1989 thriller The Abyss where a live rat is deliberately submerged in fluorocarbon liquid. The rat is seen struggling during the scene and the charity said the experience was clearly one of ‘terror’ for the poor little rodent, although the filmmakers insist it survived.
The scene had previously been cut from all UK screenings by the British Board of Film Classification, which ruled that it breached animal cruelty laws and must be removed from all cinema releases, DVDs and traditional TV broadcasts. But streaming platforms such as Disney+ aren’t covered by the same rules, so they’re not technically breaching any codes by including the rat scene.
I think that if we want to reduce animal cruelty we need to see more of it on our screens, not less of it
As a self-confessed preachy vegan who’s written for this very publication in defence of rats, you might expect me to be angry about this too, but I’m really not.
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