PopMatters Film and TV Editor
Spooked
Blinders
Regular airtime: Friday, 7pm ET (Documentary Channel)
Peter Otero drives a carriage in Manhattan. As his horse, Junior, clops along in front of him, he looks back at the camera in his carriage and offers up some “history,” pointing out Strawberry Fields and other sights along his route. His customers appear happy with the ride, noting especially its likeness to “scenic” qualities and its “old movies.”
As Otero and the clients speak, the soundtrack in Blinders becomes almost unbearably clinky, so sweet and upbeat and faux-nostalgic that you’re about o turn away after just a two minutes of it. And then, a skritch and a sharp turn: the documentary reveals that it is not, in fact, about these seemingly charming experiences, but is instead focused on “another part of the business, which is working in the streets.” Subtitled “The Truth Behind the Tradition,” Danny Moss’ film goes on to lay out the New York industry’s many horrors and abuses, from the miserable lives of the horses to the corrupt and cruel practices of the drivers and owners.
Plainly a labor of love and outrage, the film is at once heartfelt and sensational, limited by a low budget and amateurish craft, but expansive in its legal and political charges as well as its emotional effects. Elizabeth Forel, of the Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages, initiates the argument, remembering “a horse named Spotty” who was spooked by a noise as he worked (”It’s not unusual for horses to spook in the city,” she notes, as they are by nature prey animals and not predators, fearful and skittish and quick to bolt from danger). Poor Spotty ran off, his carriage clattering behind him. A witness remembers, “This horse was really out of control,” as the story ends badly: Spotty and his carriage smashed into traffic and he had to be put down. The film cuts to a newspaper headline proclaiming the event and a candlelight vigil for Spotty, both leading to the decision by Forel and her cohorts that they needed to “go for a ban.”
Blinders goes on to present the pertinent issues, with intertitles posing categories from “Safety” to “Housing” to “Disposal” (”The horses are discarded like yesterday’s trash”), as well as pointed questions with obvious answers (”Is it humane?”). Chris Berry, of the Equine Protection Network, points out the problem with preserving the past in this instance: on “crowded, congested streets, it just looks like a time warp” to see horses struggling to make their way, their metal shoes clanking on pavement, a surface completely detrimental to the delicate balance of a horse’s physical structure. The blinders most of the horses wear don’t quite save them from becoming afraid of sudden noises (horns, sirens, screeches, screams, jackhammers, crashes, barks) or movements (”Someone tossing a beer can nearby”) . Not only that, Berry notes, the horses, being so fundamentally unable to cope, pose a risk to pedestrians or passengers in vehicles that might be hit by a flying carriage or 1,200 pound animal. Paramedic Danielle Cohen adds that the carriages, slow and unwieldy, impede ambulances’ progress in emergencies.
If the safety factors are not enough to convince you that the carriages are a bad idea, the documentary points out the mistreatment of the animals. Though paying customers might assume that the horses go home to fields of grass or large box stalls where they eat fresh green hay and loads of oats, the truth is, the animals are typically neglected, their injuries (sores, lameness, malnourishment) left untreated or poorly treated (horses are sometimes “underwatered on purpose,” reports an activist, so they will urinate less).
They live, more often than not, in standing stalls, on second or third stories in buildings with concrete floors, such that the horses never get a break from the hard surfaces that damage their hooves and legs by definition. (In one notorious case, a stable caught fire and 21 horses perished, as there was no legally mandated exit route from the upper floors.) The sad effects of close-ups of bloody wounds and emaciated ribs are compounded by shots of these stalls, where horses cannot lie down, cannot even turn around, but are instead forced to stand all night, heads hanging and eyes drooping.
If these images of distress and suffering remain mostly unseen (civilians are not allowed inside the stables), Forel recalls an incident involving a horse named Juliette (Forel names all the animals she cites, to reinforce the notion that they are individuals, with lives and feelings), who collapsed in central Park. Her driver beat her to get her to rise to her feet, creating a scene so disturbing that press gathered and a policeman passing by intervened by drawing his gun on the driver. “Juliette never did get up,” intones Forel, “It was a terrible image that went out into the world.”
Still, such public displays have not been enough to stop the practice. Though some efforts have been made to document abuses and present legal cases, these have been thwarted by political and financial interests. (Mayor Michael Bloomberg has called it a “great tourist industry,” adding, “People love the horses,” apparently unironically.) One clip has a documentary camera being assailed by a man in a face mask, yelling at the camera crew, “You got a fucking problem with the fucking horses? You pair of fucking wankers!” It’s a disturbing scene, even without a horse in sight. Forel concludes, “What has to happen to make the city wake up is a death, unfortunately, the death of a person. Obviously the death of a horse hasn’t done it.” It’s surely a grim thought, but as Blinders demonstrates, likely true.
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Donny Moss
Written By: Donny Moss
Cast: Tony Avela, Chris Berry, Vicky Berry, Marjorie Caruso, Holly Cheever, Elizabeth Forel, Andrew Lang, Emily McCoy, Ingrid Newkirk, Sherry Ramsey, Jackie Vergerio, Jill Weitz – Veterinarians, drivers, tourists, animal rights members, politicians
Screened at: Critics’ DVD, 3/6/09
Race horses and horses drawing carriages are both exploited for profit. But compare a photo of a race horse at http://horseracing.about.com/od/famoushorses/ig/Curlin-Photo-Gallery/ with one copied onto http://blindersthemovie.com and you’ll see why some people with a strong sense of ethics would like to ban the equine animals from city streets. Even the horses that draw carriages around Central Park are a sad lot, when standing still waiting for the next customers to take romantic trips around the landscape. The other day, in fact, I was walking around Central Park, looking at some of these no-longer-noble equines. They were not in traffic, just parked by the curb and they looked awfully sad. They have every reason to be depressed: to see why, order a DVD through the website http://blindersthemovie.com. Here is what I found on that disk.
The tale opens on an idyllic scene. Central Park, New York City, in the summer. Lovers are walking arm in arm, some kissing. Horse-drawn carriages ply their trade, making tourist dollars for New York (assuming that the drivers pass on their takings each year to the New York State Department of Finance and Taxation). But something is wrong, even outside traffic lanes in the protected area of Manhattan’s great, natural landmark. The heat of the asphalt can reach two hundred degrees, the horses having inadequate protection on their legs. The air is filled with fumes, resulting in some horses getting lung ailments. Horses freak out from noises, even as soft as the opening of a beer can, and certainly from police sirens. When they break loose, they can cause havoc as noted in some cases when people are run down and killed. Drivers ignore the law sometimes by acting like Ben-Hur to make the traffic lights, though the law calls for nothing faster than a trot. Drivers are distracted—on cell phones, talking to passengers, even reading the paper while working. These images are captured well under writer-director Donny Moss’s supervision.
The stables are multi-story buildings, making evacuations in fire nearly impossible. In one case twenty-one horses at Brooklyn’s Bergen Beach stable were burned to death on June 11, 2000. Some owners are kind, some are rough, yanking their steeds around, in one case even whipping a guy on the street who was taking down a license number. Speaking of licenses, carriage drivers do not need them and there is no road test to qualify.
If you think of writing to politicians, forget Mayor Bloomberg. He believes that the carriages are good for tourism, period. Yet cities that have banned the carriages suffer no loss of visitors: Paris, Beijing(!), Toronto, Las Vegas, Palm Beach, London, among others. Tony Avella, member of the New York City Council has introduced legislation to ban carriages but his fight is uphill.
Metaphorically, it’s the people who summon carriages to ride around Manhattan, often right in the middle of traffic, are the ones with the blinders—just like people who unthinkingly wear fur coats.
The DVD is put together nicely, good resolution, a large number of talking heads mostly in favor of banning the trade. The luckiest horses are at least rescued by good Samaritans such as members of the New England Horse Rescue group, who pay about forty cents a pound to buy animals who would otherwise be sold to Japan for horse meat. They are released into an open field where they can do what they were meant to do. They are social animals that love to be with their own kind. and do not particularly like to be petted by New Yorkers, showing their displeasure by moving their heads from the eager hands. The production’s greatest irony is that after devoting years of their sad lives to owners, who make a living from them, horses that are not rescued are euthanized via a nails driven into their brains, in one case serving as the film’s most graphic image.
Unrated. 50 minutes 13 seconds. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
Throughout the year, tourists from around the world travel to Central Park to ride in one of New York’s legendary horse-drawn carriages. Yet the future of this industry is the subject of a highly charged debate being aired on the streets, in the press and at City Hall. Carriage operators say that horse-drawn carriages should stay because they are a cherished symbol of New York City that bring in tourist dollars. Advocates for animals say the industry should be banned because it’s inhumane and unsafe. They believe Hollywood has romanticized horse-drawn carriages and claim that life on congested city streets is anything but romantic for these nervous animals that are easily spooked.
As a result of three dramatic and fatal accidents since 2006 that received international media attention, the plight of the NYC carriage horses is now in the public eye more than ever before. But the public doesn’t know much more than what they see on the streets and in the news.
Through original footage taken with hidden cameras and interviews with carriage drivers, veterinarians, accident witnesses, animal rights activists, politicians, tourists, residents who live near the horses and people who have rescued NYC carriage horses from slaughter, BLINDERS takes viewers behind the scenes to expose the truth behind the tradition.
