Thanks to the wonders of Netflix I was, umm... blessed?, no; graced?, definitely not; I guess I'm going to have to go with plain, old "delivered" as the adjective here. I was delivered the recently released award-winning documentary "ZOO". I can see why it was honored at both Sundance and Cannes, Robinson Devor has made a creepy-beautiful-weird-stunning-disturbing piece of poetry for the eyes. The subject matter, wrongly described by Netflix as bestiality, is still in the category "things I can't quite wrap my mind around" for me, but I am a little closer to grasping the fringes of the edge of the shawl that covers understanding.
In short, ZOO is about Kenneth Pinyan (aka "Mr. Hands"), whose death was a direct result of damage done to his colon by allowing his horse to sodomize him. Technically; bestiality. But Pinyan's death was simply the thing that brought everything else out into the open, and the film is really about the "everything else". What is everything else? What else, really, could there be? There's so much more than I imagined, so much more than I really needed to know about, so much more that I don't really get.
After watching it, I had to do some research. Devor tastefully skirts around the edge of the sexual aspect of the film by using artful misdirection and innuendo so there's no visual burned into your brain that you later wish you'd never seen. However, I've been around the internet for a while now and it's been years since I wished I'd never seen that particular visual and I wasn't about to give myself a refresher course. No, what I needed to research was zoophilia, of which bestiality is only a small (and often unindulged) part.
The thing with these guys, apparently somewhere between 6% and 10% of the population, is that they feel they have a relationship with a specific animal. They are not people who love animals in general, or love a particular species of animal; nor are they people who simply have a desire to exploit an animal sexually. These people; zoophiliacs, to be specific; are in love with a specific animal. They feel they have a relationship with the animal. That particular animal. There are enough people who openly fall into that category, in fact, that you can find a gallery of "wedding photos" on marry your pet. (Yup, there really is an internet site that will perform a wedding for you and your chosen animal spouse. I feel I need to point out that it has a sister-site though... divorce your pet.)
And that's where they lose me. For some reason this phenomenon seems to happen most often with horses and, surprisingly, men. I grew up with horses, I know the soft blowing sounds they make that carry on the night air like whispers, I know the comforting way they can drop their head over your shoulder and give you a "hug", and I know that if you ask it correctly a horse will willingly go against it's instinct and do something unnatural for you. Be it allowing you to ride it (not something they're born knowing); or riding willingly towards something dangerous, such as fire or a bunch of dogs (horses are flight animals); or something a bit more unnatural, like mount you. I also know that the common thread of all things that don't occur naturally is training. Sure, you may "love" a particular animal, they have personalities as unique as people's after all. But how do you know they love you back? How can a trained response be considered love? If "love" means to you specifically conditioning behaviours into your partner then I can understand how the unpredictable nature of free will is something you might find unsettling in human relationships, but I still don't see how you can call it love.
