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.

Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life

Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, 1925.
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Edition screened: Milestone DVD, released 2000. English intertitles, no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 71 minutes.

Summary: Animals are forced to their deaths.

Ah, yes, The Triumph of the Human Spirit … my least favorite theme that contains neither the phrase ‘coming of age story’ nor ‘When a streetwise young [whomever] meets …’. In Grass the human spirit triumphs - as usual - at the great expense of animals who had no choice in the matter.

This documentary film observes a real nomadic Persian tribe that periodically must cross a frozen mountain range and a turbulent river in their search for pasture land. This river is particularly wide, fast, and full of rocks and white water. The tribe has goats, sheep, donkeys, dogs, chickens, probably cows, etc., that are loaded onto rickety rafts that may or may not even float, or sometimes tied onto rickety rafts that may or may not even float, or simply driven into the rapids and told to head for the opposite side. And the noble tribesmen persevere as the dogs drown. The young and old, strong and weak, shuffle feartoothlessly onward as the sheep are dragged down and never seen again. And the young chieflet who will lead this journey next year learns much of the Divine Spirit that is within us all as the baby goats are dashed against the rocks. His father makes him repeat the lesson learned today: This is life, the one you get, so go and have a ball. Straight ahead and rest assured you can’t be sure at all.

Merian C. Cooper was a genuine explorer and adventurer, as well as an important early director and innovator in cinema. Cooper and Schoedsack cut their teeth on this documentary and admitted some real reservations about various aspects of the project. Hinting at the sly dexterity to come in their later films, a few scenes in Grass fail to disguise the less-than-worthless nature of the financier who insisted on accompanying the film crew and nomads.

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