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.

I Spit on Your Grave (Monroe)

I Spit on Your Grave. Steven R. Monroe, 2010.
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Edition screened: Included in Anchor Bay ‘Legendary Vengeance Double Feature 2 Pack’ Blu-ray, released 2012. English language. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.

Summary: Crude violence to fish; presentation of dead birds.

Details:
1) A catfish is aggressively clubbed in a moronic game, 14:08-14:25.
2) Several images of a dead bird on a porch, 20:28-20:45.
3) Two dead birds are deposited sequentially on another porch and each body is kicked off, 1:05:20-1:06:24.
4) A fish is gutted and its entrails rubbed on a man’s face, 1:27:00-1:27:12.

This movie differs substantially from Meir Zarchi’s original 1978 release, and many of these differences improve both the realism and the horror of the film. In both films a woman is brutally attacked by a group of men, and then exacts extreme revenge upon those aggressors. The original film softens the blow by portraying the men as unrealistic goofballs complete with clownish wardrobe choices. The attack scenes and the woman’s revenge scenes include dull-witted wisecracks and we are left feeling that she, too, is a bit goofy and disturbed. 

Monroe’s remake removes the men’s clownish buffers and allows us to see that these sadistic rapists are in fact the same guys you knew in high school: they are typically vulgar, average looking, typically dressed, conceited, and cruel. Monroe also removes the woman’s irresponsible flirty behavior prior to the attack, thus reducing any notion that she was somehow at fault.

Another prominent upgrade in the later film lies in the characterization of the mentally retarded young man who is forced to participate in the rape and beating by his “friends”. In the 1978 original this character is a buffoon who fuels much of the childish Welcome Back Kotter-style dialogue. The remake styles him into a more sympathetic character, a likable and realistic Edward Norton type who helps us identify the lead aggressors as authentic and despicable.

The message of the first movie might be to stay away from cheap drive-in horror films, but the message of the second is an appropriate reminder that you are not safe among strangers. You know these men. Stay away.

















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