Violence to Animals in Film: Burden of Dreams

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.

Burden of Dreams. Les Blank, 1982.

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Edition screened: Included in BFI The Werner Herzog Collection Blu-ray box set, released 2014. English language. Runtime approximately 95 minutes.

Summary: Disrespectful treatment of animals.

Details:

1) Chickens are unloaded from a small plane, 31-39-31:46. Some are alive, some have died in transit.

2) A poisonous snake is discovered, pinned down, and killed by stabs from multiple spears, 1:20:01-1:20:20.

3) A native Peruvian partially severs the wings from a dead Macaw so that the colorful bird can be displayed with maximum wing spread, 1:20:41-1:21:18.

Burden of Dreams is a documentary filmed in the Amazon jungle about the making of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. Many scenes, including those mentioned above, show the daily lives of Peruvian people in the early 1980s.

The Criterion release also contains another short documentary by Blank, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe.