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.

Apocalypto

Apocalypto. Mel Gibson, 2006.
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Edition screened: Buena Vista/Touchstone DVD, released 2007. Whatever language and/or with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 139 minutes.

Summary: Typical goofball revelry in animal butchering.

Details:
1) The film opens with a tapir being pursued by Injuns. The tapir is gruesomely impaled at 2:48, convulses and dies for another minute, then his organs are removed and passed out like Little League trophies through 5:30. Follow-up butchering, 7:58-8:25.
2) A black panther is stabbed and beaten to death 1:37:30-1:38:03.

The easiest way to launder our brains of this stupid movie is simply to say what Mel Gibson wants to hear, and be done with it. There’s no arguing with him anyway. So: Dear Mel, I sure learned some important life-shaping truths watching Apocalypto. Turns out, ancient civilizations were extremely brutal, kept slaves, and killed graphically for practically no reason. That being the case, what right do liberals have criticizing modern first world Christian Capitalists for acting the same way? 

Or we can emulate Mel’s 7th-grade English teacher who picked up the DVD in BestBuy, read the cut line on the cover “No One Can Outrun Their Destiny”, put it down and kept walkin’. 

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