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.

The Deer Hunter

The Deer Hunter. Michael Cimino, 1978.
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Edition screened: Universal 100th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 183 minutes.
Summary: Hunting violence.

Details:
1) The first deer hunting scene begins with pursuit at 1:04:00. The deer is shot at 1:04:48 and we witness it dying through 1:05:05.
2) The second deer hunting scene begins with pursuit at 2:17:55. John Cazale runs the wounded animal into a pond at 2:19:00, where it struggles in the shallow water. This scene concludes with De Niro deciding not to shoot his deer at 2:19:40.

The deer’s death in the first scene is emotional and condemnable, but these hunting scenes are not nearly as visually graphic as they could be. No butchering or similar porn.

Additional comments:
In The Deer Hunter, we meet De Niro as a true-to-life western Pennsylvania buck who loves to go out huntin’ with his buddies. He goes to Vietnam where he experiences the horror and reality of killing for sport, returns home, returns to the hunt, and realizes that he will not shoot the deer. Unfortunately, the lesson most of De Niro’s real-life cousins take from this fictionalized journey is the misunderstanding that an occasional and arbitrary act of decency makes you a good, compassionate man. But that isn't what happened. De Niro's newly found sophistication – yes, sophistication, even via the horror of Vietnam – this expansion of perception beyond small town culture  – this bit of terrifying, real, sophistication can help even the most conservative and provincial of souls understand issues larger than knee-jerk defense of clan enculturation: The reality that it could be you, might as well be you, was intended to be you, perhaps should have been you.

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