People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) blasted Sunday’s so-called “horse porn” episode of HBO tech comedy Silicon Valley, calling the practice of horse breeding “arranged rape.”
The third season episode of the popular HBO show, from co-creator Mike Judge, went viral online after characters Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) and Jack Barker (Stephen Tobolowsky) were distracted during a conversation about their startup company by two horses having graphic sex.
While the so-called “horse porn” scene garnered plenty of laughs and buzz online, PETA was apparently not amused.
In a statement to the Wrap, the radical animal advocacy group said the process of horse breeding “may seem fun,” but in reality, horses are forced to mate against their will in what a spokeswoman for the group called “assembly line breeding for profit.”
“And it’s not as if they are making families — the foals of top Thoroughbreds will often be separated from their mothers very early on and raised by nurse mares and the stallions who are treated as if they are nothing more than money-making genetic pools for the racing industry,”PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange said.
“There’s an overpopulation crisis in racing as most horses will not win races, and many are therefore discarded and sent on hideous journeys by truck in all weather to Mexico or Canada to be turned into meat,” Lange added. “This kind of arranged rape is what has been happening since February with last year’s Triple Crown winner American Pharaoh’s first stud season,”Lange added.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about the episode this week, Mike Judge (King of the Hill, Beavis and Butthead) said the so-called “horse porn” scene was inspired by YouTube videos of horse racing.
“That’s where we saw these videos of them having sex and it was just making us laugh. That’s how it started,” Judge said.
Judge told THR that the production found a number of suitable horse stables to shoot the scene, and added the horses required “no coaxing.”
“We had lined up some other opportunities in case that other one didn’t work. But after the first one, we were good,” he laughed. “We just set up those cameras and they went at it.”
Judge also said that representatives from the American Humane Society were present on set and that no animals were harmed while filming the scene.
Watch the scene below [Warning: Graphic Content]: