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.

Sherlock Holmes (Ritchie)

Sherlock Holmes. Guy Ritchie, 2009.
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Edition screened: Warner Blu-ray, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 125 minutes.

Summary: Animal experimentation and butchering.

Details:
1) Depiction of a laboratory experiment involving a copper pot of simmering frogs along with a frog dissection, 46:50-47:06.
2) Holmes (Morton Downey, Jr.) holds up a dead rat by its tail then cuts off the tail, 1:19:35-1:19:39. This very brief scene cuts immediately to a pig’s head on ice, the beginning of a long scene in the butchering room.
3) Having completed the runaway mine car level and found all eight hidden coins, we now are in the butchering room, 1:19:39-1:23:12, with the predictable assortment of headless pig bodies hanging from a conveyer chain, the bandsaw where they are sliced in twain, heads on ice, buckets of parts, etc. This presentation is not intentionally gory, but quite boring and seems to go on forever.
4) A 6-second recap of the frog experiment scene begins at 1:51:42.
5) A 6-second quick-cut distillation of a rat & pig experiment/torture laboratory table begins at 1:52:26.

The entertaining CGI depiction of a premature ship launch into the harbor is more than negated by a seemingly endless kabloom scene of crates exploding on the dock, or by the thumb-twiddling tedium of the butchering room scene, in which the near-bandsawing of all three heroes is portrayed with a level of suspense approaching the sawmill finale of a 1970s log-flume ride. Fill in your own bit about getting soaked or being all wet.
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