page_title: Cockfight
section_title: In visual arts
hierarchical_section_title: Cockfight / Legal status / In visual arts
caption_attribution_description: English: Alexandre Falguière's statue Le Vainqueur au Combat de Coqs (The Winner of the Cockfight). - It is not Le Vainqueur au Combat de Coqs but Le Vainqueur à la course from 1870 (see catalogue Musée d'Orsay Français&#160;: Alexandre Falguière, sculpture de 1870 Le Vainqueur à la course
context_page_description: A cockfight is a blood sport between two cocks, or gamecocks, held in a ring called a cockpit. The history of raising fowl for fighting goes back 6,000 years. The first documented use of the word gamecock, denoting use of the cock as to a "game", a sport, pastime or entertainment, was recorded in 1634, after the term "cock of the game" used by George Wilson, in the earliest known book on the sport of cockfighting in The Commendation of Cocks and Cock Fighting in 1607. But it was during Magellan's voyage of discovery of the Philippines in 1521 when modern cockfighting was first witnessed and documented by Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan's chronicler, in the kingdom of Taytay.
  The combatants, referred to as gamecocks, are specially bred and conditioned for increased stamina and strength. Male and female chickens of such a breed are referred to as game fowl. Cocks possess congenital aggression toward all males of the same species. Wagers are often made on the outcome of the match.
  Cockfighting is a blood sport due in some part to the physical trauma the cocks inflict on each other, which is sometimes increased by attaching metal spurs to the cocks' natural spurs.
context_section_description: The painting The Cock Fight (1846) an academic exercise of the French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, Vainqueur au combat de coqs (1864) bronze statue from the French sculptor Alexandre Falguière and the painting Cockfight (1882) from the Flemish painter Emile Claus are samples of the presence of cockfighting in visual arts.
  The Expressionist painter Sir Robin Philipson, of Edinburgh, was well known for his series of works that included depictions of cockfighting.
  The 1930 cartoon Mexico shows Oswald the Lucky Rabbit challenging a bear in a cockfight. The 1938 cartoon Honduras Hurricane features the pirate John Silver forcing Captain Katzenjammer into a rigged cockfight. Other cartoon depictions portray humanized roosters treating cockfights like boxing matches; these cartoons include Disney's Cock o' the Walk (1936), MGM's Little Bantamweight (1938), and Walter Lantz's The Bongo Punch (1958).
  Live-action films that include scenes of the sport include the 1964 Mexican film El Gallo De Oro, the 1965 film The Cincinnati Kid, and the 1974 film Cockfighter, directed by Monte Hellman (based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Charles Willeford).
  The 1990 film No Fear, No Die centers around two men who are part of an illegal cockfighting ring.
  Cockfighting is depicted twice in the 2011 film The Rum Diary.
  The Spike TV show 1000 Ways to Die features a death involving a cockfight, where a man who bets on a rooster attaches razors to its claws to ensure its winning, but is slashed to death himself.
  In the Seinfeld episode "The Little Jerry", Kramer enters his rooster into a cockfight in order to get one of Jerry's bounced checks removed from a local bodega where the cockfights actually take place.
  In the HBO series Eastbound & Down, Kenny Powers moves to Mexico and is in the cockfighting business until his cock "Big Red" dies.
  The 2011 Tamil film Aadukalam revolves around the practice of cockfighting in Madurai, Tamil Nadu.
  In the FX Network's police drama, The Shield episode titled "Two Days of Blood" (season #1, episode #12), Detective Shane Vendrell and Detective Curt Lemansky go undercover in a cockfighting event to track down an illegal arms smuggler.
caption: Falguière's Victor of the Cockfight, book engraving c. 1900, with added drapery
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