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.

Torso

Torso (I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale/Carnal Violence). Sergio Martino, 1973.
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Edition screened: Blue Underground Blu-ray, released 2011. Includes Italian language version with English subtitles, and alternate English language version. Runtime approximately 93 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.

Torso opens with a college art history lecture exploring the emotional content in Perugino’s work, specifically nuances of his depiction of St. Sebastian. Comments by the professor are insightful, well articulated, and made me want to be in his class. How sharply this contrasts to Hannibal Lecter’s remarkably stupid fly-over of Dante Alighieri and Renaissance images of the hanged Francesco Pazzi in Hannibal (Ridley Scott, 2001).

The earlier of these two films about homicidal killers is comparatively obscure and part of the polarizing giallo genre, thus inviting sneers and phony cringes over its B-movie production values, while Hannibal is a super-slick, star-studded film from a screenplay by David Mamet. The context of Torso’s lecture scene is a plain old college class populated by typical students, whereas Hannibal Lecter pontificates to a group of well-dressed Trustee types who tap the tips of Cross pens against their lips in curious interest to hear wearisome tourist twaddle about their home city.

Today’s Smackdown: Italian drive-in slasher film using insightful aesthetic comments to develop character both directly and ironically for an attentive audience VS huge budget big name production using a cartoon of book-larnin’ to advance plot and plot only for other folks. 

@ BL
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