The Curse of Carnivores and the Bloody Progress

Referring to Space Dogs (Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, 2019), the paper reflects on the fate of the homeless animals that, at the beginning of the space age, were used as experimental animals. There are two main hypotheses in the paper: the first one explores the “curse of carnivores”, i.e., the problem of a predatory lifestyle, and plays with the possibility of this lifestyle entering the consciousness of the dogs portrayed in the film, thereby subjecting them to the existential burden of being – the sin of devouring other creatures in order to sustain their own senseless existence. The second hypothesis reflects on the problem of progress, the fact that many lives were sacrificed for the well-being of future generations. The main idea expressed here is that this is a good and a bad thing at the same time. The paper thus invites us to view progress in a paradoxical way: as both good and ferociously violent.