Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

Profound Desires of the Gods

Profound Desires of the Gods (Kamigami no fukaki yokubô). Shôhei Imamura, 1968.
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Edition screened: Eureka! Masters of Cinema Blu-ray #10, released 2010. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 173 minutes.

Summary: Pervasive presence of animals in an exotic context.

Details:
1) A fisherman climbs into his small boat at 2:10, slits open a raw fish with his fingers and begins to eat it. This would be distasteful to some, and is over at 2:27.
2) A rat is grabbed at 3:15 and held in a stranglehold through 3:33, but there is no attempt to actually kill him.
3) A girl torments, but doesn’t necessarily hurt, a lizard while a village elder sings a creation myth song. This lasts from 7:10 through 11:00, with most of the time spent on the song and occasional focus on the girl in the background with the lizard.
4) A pig falls from a small boat into the ocean at 12:15, and is attacked by a shark for five seconds beginning at 12:40. This scene is conceptually alarming and we see thrashing and blood in the water, but not actual mutilation of the pig.
5) A lizard is run over by construction equipment at 2:06:00, and his bodiless tail twitches reflexively until 2:06:14.
This highly symbolic film explores universal themes with atypical depth and resolution. The setting is a contemporary Japanese village that lives and governs as though it were the 17th century although they are affected by 20th-century culture. Animals appear throughout the film, often reptiles and usually underscoring themes of sexuality or impending danger. At times the perspective of the narrative seems to be through the eyes of animals we encounter, making them a composite omniscient character/narrator. The girl who harasses the rat and lizard is slow witted, overly sexualized, and essentially an animal herself. Her actions and fate are intertwined with those of her village and the whole of Japanese culture.

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