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.

Spend It All

Spend It All. Les Blank, 1971.
😿😿😿
Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #737 Les Blank: Always for Pleasure, released 2014. English language. Music by the Balfa Brothers and others. Runtime approximately 43 minutes.

Summary: Graphic slaughtering and butchering of a young pig; persistent fishing violence.

Details:
1) The first six minutes of the film is generously intercut with fishing gore such as a large live fish scalded with hot water and crawfish cleaning.
2) Scenes of gathering, cleaning, and transporting shrimp, oysters, and crabs, 17:35-19:55.
3) A young pig is killed sort-of-barely off-screen, followed by rather graphic butchering and idiotic buffoonery with entrails and the head, 34:35-35:53.

It seems that Les Blank set out to make a documentary about drinking Schlitz from the can, then decided to promote the film as an exposé on Cajun culture instead. And here’s another one of those pig-butchering-party scenes that concludes with fat ugly guys clowning around with the entrails. As always, it comes across as an embarrassing display of misogyny and sexual anger disguised as just relaxin’ and bein’ yo’self. This time, one of these jackasses takes the skinned pig head and chases a child around with it while the womenfolk glance up from their cans of Schlitz to hoot and laugh. This is not the same jackass who extracts one of his own teeth with a pair of pliers a few minutes earlier as part of the picnic entertainment. Man, those Cajuns. They sho’ do know them some fun I’ll tell you.
















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