Today, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sent a letter to THE OFFSPRING lead singer Bryan “Dexter” Holland asking him to pull the group’s “We Never Have Sex Anymore” music video immediately because of its “egregious exploitation of chimpanzees.” According to PETA, in the video, two chimpanzees “are dressed up and forced onto chaotic sets, including a set that looks like a strip club, where one is depicted drinking, tipping dancers, and swinging on a pole under bright lights.”
“There are plenty of things we all miss about the ’90s—but animal exploitation isn’t among them,” writes PETA Animals In Film And Television senior manager Lauren Thomasson. “Every minute your video remains online, it risks legitimizing a cruel industry, propping up the exotic-‘pet’ trade, and reversing years of animal advocacy work that has nearly ended the use of chimpanzees in Hollywood.”
According to PETA, the primates were reportedly supplied by Steve Martin‘s Working Wildlife, a notorious training outfit that “has been cited numerous times by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act, including for locking chimpanzees in cramped and barren ‘night housing’ for up to 18 hours a day and failing to provide animals with adequate shelter from the elements, adequate ventilation, clean cages, and proper feeding.” The animal rights advocate also claims that Martin “has a history of disposing of chimpanzees at roadside zoos.”
PETA — whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use in entertainment” — notes that the repercussions of this music video could be disastrous. “Not only does it normalize the disrespect and exploitation of highly intelligent, sensitive primates, it may also increase the black-market demand for endangered great apes as ‘pets,’ which is one of the main forces driving them toward extinction,” PETA claims.
PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
Photo credit: Daveed Benito
