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.

Gunpoint

Gunpoint. Peter Graham, 1972.
😿😿😿
Edition screened: Included on Arrow Blu-ray Blanche, released 2014. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 11 minutes.

Summary: Murder of many pheasants.

This glimpse into sophisticated sporting culture is a collaboration between Graham and Borowczyk, filmed during an actual shooting weekend and permitted because our filmmakers remained mum that they actually hated these miserable fuckers and wished to expose them accurately as violent psychopaths. We first see hatchlings being handled roughly, hand fed and partially tamed, then trained to not fear automobile noises and human screeching. Finally the big day arrives and a stream of luxury automobiles pulls into the gated estate, out of which tumble over-dressed yapping galoots armed as though they had something to protect. They and their dogs proceed into the woods and kill everything they can, the most adorable sequence being a grinning pony-tailed bitch stomping on a peasants neck to kill it. They all retire to the estate in high spirits and enjoy a fine dinner.

Gunpoint is so straight-faced that I have difficulty believing that the hunting type would even understand that they were being exposed. Heck, it jest looks like nice folks havin’ a good weekend’s fun before political correctness ruined everything. They got them some nice birds, they did.

The Arrow Blu-ray of Blanche also includes Daniel Bird’s new 5-minute interview with Graham, Behind Enemy Lines: The Making of Gunpoint, in which Graham discusses the deception necessary to make the film, his decision not to expose that most of these fine gentlemen were away for a weekend’s bloodlust with their girlfriends rather than their wives, and the personal consequences of releasing such a factual exposé. 

at
Labels: , ,