It’s no secret that our society’s standards for what constitutes as “art” have been steadily declining. I had hoped we would rebound and recapture our eye for what’s good and what’s absolute trash, but when that stupid photograph of two mice fighting in a London Underground station won the People’s Choice Award for wildlife photography I knew it was time to abandon hope altogether.
There’s so much wrong with that stupid photograph. First of all, the award is for wildlife photography. This “photographer” wasn’t even in the fucking wild! He was barely underground and totally protected from the elements. You know what I had to do? I waited in a tree in the freezing cold for five straight days. FIVE FUCKING DAYS! I had my own piss frozen to my leg because if I had made any sudden movements I would have disturbed the family of eastern screech owls and my opportunity to get that great photo of them fleeing their beloved tree nest after it caught on fire would’ve been lost forever.
On top of that bullshit, the lack of detail is a joke. You can’t even tell what’s going on! The “photographer” claims they were fighting over a scrap of food. Okay, so now we’re just letting everyone take shitty zoomed-out pictures and then make up their own backstory? Fine. I’ll take my phone down to a dumpster, take some bad shots of cockroaches and tell everyone they were trying to teach each other the choreography to “One” from A Chorus Line.
The detail in my photograph was incredible. No one needs a cute backstory to understand the scene. The unbridled fear is clearly evident in the once-calm blank eyes of the mama owl. A cloud of newly grown feathers ripped from the panicked chicks created a halo of innocence over the scene as mama owl tossed them into the sky for their abrupt unscheduled flight. That other guy’s picture… honestly, it looks like a scene from some film mashup between Fight Club and Stuart Little.
What boils my blood the most is the lack of sacrifice it took to capture this photograph. He “visited different stations over the course of a week” and “laid in wait” until he got the shot. Fuck this guy. I waited for five straight days in a tree freezing my ass off for a spectacular opportunity to present itself. But I had to take matters into my own hands. Mama bird left the nest one night and I had to move quickly. I sustained multiple injuries on my hands and face quickly climbing down my tree and up theirs. This jerkoff laid on his belly for an hour and had to “ignore curious glances from passersby.” Wow. Such a martyr for his craft.
I burned both fingertips lighting the tree on fire. Eastern screech owls nest in tree cavities so I had to light the entire tree on fire. Have you ever lit an entire tree on fire? It’s damn near impossible. But I did it and made it back to my tree stand just in time to capture the glorious escape. And then you’ve got baby belly mouse boy. What, he had to hang out in an underground station for a little bit? Boo-fucking-hoo.
No one understands art anymore. Not the people who voted for that dumb mouse photo and certainly not the criminal justice system that charged me with aggravated animal cruelty because my actions were “malicious” and done with “extreme indifference to life.”