'60 Minutes’ Describes Bullfighting as Art by Katerina Lorenzatos Makris
“Blood Brothers,” a segment that aired again this month on CBS 60 Minutes Presents,
spotlights the lives and careers of Francisco and Cayetano Rivera
Ordonez and other Spanish bullfighters, or matadors. (The segment first
aired in October 2008.)
“Bullfighting is one of the oldest
and bloodiest spectacles in the world,” says reporter Bob Simon
in the opening moments of the piece.
He asks bullfighting aficionado Noel Chandler if bullfighting is an art.
“If
it wasn’t an art,” Chandler replies, “I
wouldn’t be interested. It would just be massacre—it would
just be killing animals. It’s a profound, beautiful art.”
Simon
also interviews a photographer who has been following top matador Jose
Tomas for ten years. He asks her, “He [Tomas] has been described
as a king, as a saint, as an angel, as a gladiator. Which one is
he?”
“For me he is a poet,” she replies, “who is writing with his cape a poetry [sic] in the sand. Or I compare him sometimes as [sic] a musician. It depends on the day. If he’s more violent or more tender.”
The segment includes several bullfighting scenes.
Before
the matador enters the arena, men on
horseback—picadors—stab the bull with long spears. The
horses are draped in thick pads in an attempt to protect them from the
bull’s horns, which the bull tries to use as he struggles against
the stabbings.
“Next,” says Simon, “the banderilleros, the flag men, have their moment.”
In
the banderilleros’s “moment,” they taunt the bull and
stab him repeatedly with sharp spikes, which are left lodged and
hanging in the animal’s back for the duration of the event.
The stab wounds bleed, weakening the bull, and covering him with a shiny mantle of red gore.
“Now
it’s down to the bravery of the matador, and what Spaniards call
the nobility of the bull,” says Simon as the bullfighter makes
his entrance. “It’s the moment every matador waits
for.”
“It is a blood ritual, and it will always end
in death,” says Simon. “The bull will die by the
matador’s sword. The matador could be impaled on its razor sharp
horns. He will be judged by how close he can bring the bull to his
body. It’s all about the flick of the wrist—the agility of
a gymnast.”
“It is a ballet,” Simon terms it, “with a bull.”
As the event continues, the bull pants, apparently out of breath. His tongue hangs loose.
“Then,”
narrates Simon, “what is called the moment of truth—the
most dangerous moment of the fight. The matador has to lunge over the
bull’s horns and plunge the sword between the bull’s
shoulder blades and into the bull’s heart.”
“The
kill can be quick or brutally slow,” Simon explains. “This
bull doesn’t die right away. Cayetano [the matador in this fight]
has to use a second sword. Despite that, the crowd waves white
handkerchiefs—that is Spanish applause. It signals that Cayetano
deserves a prize—one of the bull’s ears.”
“That was a good fight,” says Simon of Cayetano's performance.
He continues, “The brilliant matador, it is said, is like a sculptor who is molding not clay but the animal.”
“Cayetano is doing just that,” Simon tells us.
Time
after time in the 60 Minutes segment, picadors, banderilleros, and
matadors drive their lances, spikes, and swords into bulls’
bodies. The animals try to defend themselves but are panicked,
overwhelmed.
In the end, each time, their legs buckle; they
collapse. The matadors receive their ears as trophies. The ears are
held high in the bloodied hands of the matadors, and paraded around the
arena. The crowd cheers.
Art? Poetry? Music? Ballet? AnimalBeat invites your comments on this page, below.
When
contacted for a response to this article, a CBS spokesman told
AnimalBeat.org that Bob Simon was traveling and unavailable, and that
the network does not typically comment on opinion pieces about their
programs.
You may voice your opinions to the producers of 60 Minutes at:
60 Minutes 524 West 57th St. New York, NY 10019 Email: 60m@cbsnews.com Tel. (212) 975-3247
Katerina Lorenzatos Makris
is the author of 17 novels for publishers including Avon, E.P. Dutton,
and Simon & Schuster, and hundreds of articles for publications
such as National Geographic Traveler, San Francisco Chronicle, and
Veggie Life. She wrote a teleplay for CBS and short fiction for The
Bark magazine. With coauthor Shelley Frost, she wrote Your Adopted Dog
(The Lyons Press). Holding a B.A. in Environmental Science Studies and
a lifelong interest in animal issues, she spends a lot of her time
battling a severe addiction to dogs.
