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.

Badlands

Badlands. Terrence Malick, 1973.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #651, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.

Summary: Trashy attitudes about animals’ lives.

Details:
1) A dead dog is found in an alley by two garbagemen and there is a joking exchange about eating it 1:44-1:49.
2) Kit’s new job in a cattle feed lot is shown 10:30-11:07. We see cows being force fed by ramming an enormous pipe far down their throats, Kit shoving cows in the heads with his boots while they are eating, and a black cow on its side apparently dying. 
3) A second scene focusing on animals occurs 12:33-13:13. First, Holly throws her (living, real) pet catfish in the garden to die and we see it gasping and flopping. At 12:58 we return to the feedlot where Kit is nudging a dead cow with his boot. He then walks across her stiff body as though testing a mattress.
4) Holly’s father shoots her dog at 15:42, and the scene concludes with the dumping of a duffel bag containing the dog’s body into a river at 16:10.
5) Kit’s fails to catch fish with a net, and we see him shooting into the water at 37:20. There is no depiction of dead fish, merely the evidence of his violent intentions.

The tube force feeding of the cows is accurately portrayed (that is, sadistic and unnecessarily brutal), and the entire feedlot/catfish sequence (10:30 through 13:13) can easily be skipped if you so choose. During this time, we hear narration by Holly that she and Kit are falling in love. She likes him because he doesn’t care much about sex and doesn’t fault her for being quiet and lacking personality. She comments that their lives and the world in general are full of strange things. Her apparent belief that animal deaths “just happen” rather than being the consequences of direct actions sets the stage for the emotionless human murders that follow.

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