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.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

O Brother, Where Art Thou? Joel Coen, 2000.
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Edition screened: Universal DVD, released 2004. English language. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.

Summary: Depicted machine gunning of cows and crushing of a frog.

Details:
1) A cops-n-robbers car chase includes gangster George shooting a machine gun from his car. While passing a pasture of cows at 34:10, he shouts “I hate cows worse that coppers!” and fires into the herd. The simulated bullet impacts on a running cow are shown at 34:12.
2) At 34:23 a speeding car slams into another cow and kills it.
3) John Goodman crushes a frog in his clenched fist at 54:10, and hurls its body against a tree at 54:19.

The statistical reality of watching a lot of films means that I see a lot of violence to animals of all types and severities. OB,WAT? intends to be a yuck-it-up good time and seems to be loved by just about everybody. But the scenes noted above always seem particularly mean and convey a reality of cruelty that transcends both the film’s fictional nature and the certainty that the Coen brothers didn’t really harm any animals. They unfold like instructional documentaries of how people truly treat animals in the real world all too often, offensively encapsulated in grinning good ol’ fashioned fun.

Animal cruelty supporters typically are interested in only popular, easily available films that coincidentally must flaunt that no animals were harmed. This insulated exposure leads to the confident assertion, Well, it’s all just simulations, what’s the big deal?, a point equalled in inaccuracy only by irrelevancy. Similarly, I frequently am informed by the book-learnin’ sort that depictions of animal cruelty develop the fictional character, a vital component of good writing. But there are many ways to demonstrate and develop character. A truly endless palette of words, gestures, mannerisms and plot devices are available. The decision to develop character through The Great American Asstime of animal abuse is a particularly cheap and artless option, and one that does not reflect well on the writer in most cases. And back to so what's the big deal? …

O Brother, Where Art Thou? reminds viewers of a not-so-distant past where it was OK to torture and murder black people because it was an American Tradition. The film rewards our enlightened awareness that we have progressed past such barbarism, and then slams the book shut with a cute little song so that we can ignore the remaining American Traditions of abuse and torture patriotically endorsed on 99¢ bumper stickers. Our true tradition is a commitment to cruelty, validated in OB,WAT? not only as normal and appropriate, but downright hilarious, and inflicted upon whatever target is legal at the moment.

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