With a harsh social critique, the animated short film ‘Save Ralph’ captured the attention of a worldwide audience in just a few minutes. The message is clear and forceful: the testing of cosmetic products on animals is cruel.
No one is left indifferent after watching the video, but the production is meant to be both thought-provoking and incite action. It’s not just a matter of mourning Ralph’s fate, Humane Society International is trying to make people more conscious when consuming in order to stop these tests.
The idea was developed by Humane Society International, with script and direction by Spencer Susser, production by Jeff Vespa and voices by Taika Waititi, Zack Efron, George Lopez, Rodrigo Santoro, Rosario Dawson, Olivia Munn, Ricky Gervais, among others; it is dubbed in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Vietnamese.
The moving video promotes change from a humorous and ironic perspective, demonstrating that there is no need for great sermons or messages of cancellation or hate to make a strong denouncement.
The project, developed in a mockumentary format, follows Ralph’s working life for a day. The adorable lab rabbit explains that he belongs to a family of cosmetic product testers. His job has caused blindness in his right eye, chemical burns on his back and a constant buzzing in his ear.
However, the suffering is downplayed by Ralph, “It’s no big deal, it only really hurts when I breathe or move around.” He tries to be strong and accepts his fate for a ‘good reason’: the safety of humans.
The little rabbit considers the humans superior. After all, as Ralph himself says if it wasn’t for the humans, he would lose everything.
“I’d be on the streets, well not the streets, more like a field I guess, you know, like a normal rabbit.”
The video was widely shared around the world reaching millions of views on different platforms. Taika Waititi invited everyone to meet Ralph, “his job is to have cosmetics tested on him -a practice that’s gross, archaic, and needs to stop. Please watch this film and let me know if you feel anything. If you don’t feel anything you might be dead”.
These animals endure high levels of pain and stress, on a path to a slow death, all to ensure human safety in their products. It seems that a deodorant, eyeliner, shampoo, lipstick or cream are more important than another living being.
In the short film, Ralph is subjected to a cruel procedure that leaves him completely blind. This experiment is known as the ‘Draize Test’ and is a toxicity test often used on rabbits and rats to verify skin and eye irritation. Some effects observed are discharge, redness, hemorrhage, ulceration, opacity and blindness.
Animal testing is currently banned in 40 countries, but is still legal in many places where they subject animals to painful tests. The #SaveRalph campaign is a global initiative, but concentrates its efforts especially in 16 countries including Mexico, Chile, South Africa, Brazil, Canada and 10 Southeast Asian nations.
Campaigns to stop using cosmetic products tested on animals have resulted in more than 200,000 companies joining a cruelty-free world. From there, other large corporations are working on the suppression of these practices within their facilities.
To achieve a greater reach, they conveyed the message from the voice of those affected in a friendly, but powerful way, through the stop-motion animation technique. Although the video is less than 4 minutes long, it took months to produce due to the great attention to detail needed for Ralph’s world to be appreciated.
In this way, the audience does not look away from the harsh and cruel images generated in a test lab, but instead absorbs the information, empathizes, shares and engages in the journey to ban cosmetics testing on animals.
At this point it is not only companies and countries that must take steps, consumers can also assume responsibility by choosing not to buy products tested on animals. To find out which cosmetics are animal cruelty-free, look for the seal on the packaging. The certification may vary in design, but they usually have a rabbit next to the words cruelty-free.
To support the campaign, you can sign Humane Society International’s petition to stop animal testing and make companies choose cruelty-free and more sustainable alternatives.
Image credit: kinkates