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.

The Scent of Green Papaya

The Scent of Green Papaya (Mùi du du xanh). Tran Anh Hung, 1993.
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Edition screened: Lorber Blu-ray, released 2011. Vietnamese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.

Summary: Torture of insects and reptiles.

Details:
1) At 18:30 the older of the two boys prepares to torture ants by dripping candle wax on them. The actual event occurs at 19:40, with an extreme close-up of the intentional engulfing by wax. They struggle to free themselves before dying. He does it again at 40:50. Another scene implies that he also kills frogs with a slingshot (close-up of frog in idyllic setting, cut to boy with readied slingshot), but the actual event is not depicted.
2) At 25:00 the younger of the two boys menaces gentle young Mui with a chameleon hanged by the neck on a string attached to a stick. The chameleon does not show signs of life.

For the most part, this is a beautiful and meditative film about a young girl’s appreciative, naturally mystic relationship with the world around her. I am somewhat disgusted that her days and my viewing experience are maliciously uglified by the two repulsive boys in the family, the older one menially cruel, the younger one spielbergianly obnoxious through the entire film. I am angered to imagine that viewers of this film will look at one another, shake their heads a bit, smile whimsically, and agree that boys will be boys after all. No, NO. Films will teach boys to be cruel, and will teach the rest of us to be stupidly accepting of that learned behavior so that our own degenerate family members might be similarly excused.

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