Elephants are depicted in most stories as docile, kind, and intelligent. I was inspired by the film ‘Electrocuting an Elephant’, Topsy the circus elephant was electrocuted in front of a crowd. During the Battle of the Currents between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, to discredit the alternating current system, Edison performed many cruel animal experiments in front of journalists: Topsy the elephant was one of the victims of Tesla’s current war with Edison. That’s a brutal truth, but there’s a bigger story behind it.

In May 1902 Topsy killed a spectator by accident who threw a lit cigar into her mouth. She was considered a bad elephant since then. She was sold to the Luna Park later that year. After the moving of the Luna Park in October 1902, Topsy’s handler William Whitey stabbed Topsy with a pitchfork trying to get her to pull the amusement ride. When confronted by a police officer, Whitey turned Topsy loose from her work harness to run free in the streets, leading to Whitey’s arrest. The occurrence was attributed to the handler’s drinking. In December 1902, the drunk handler Whitey rode Topsy down the town streets and or tried to ride her into the local police station. Accounts say Topsy tried to batter her way through the station door and caused a panic. The handler was fired after the incident. However, the circus had no one else to take care of her; Because of her bad reputation no one would take over, the circus couldn’t afford such cost, therefore she was electrocuted. Both the electrocution and the film were carried out by the Edison Company, which commercialised the death of the elephant to promote direct current electricity.

What killed the elephant was the bad impression that people superimposed on her. The elephant itself could not speak, and people could not understand and misjudged her crime.

People’s perception and wrong judgment killed this elephant. Topsy was electrocuted right in the middle of the unfinished new amusement park, where she disappeared, and the people are indifferent.