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.

Bus Stop

Bus Stop. Joshua Logan, 1956.
😿😿
Edition screened: 20th Century Fox Blu-ray, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 94 minutes.

Summary: Typical rodeo violence.

Details:
1) Bull dogging, in which a young steer is chased, attacked, and wrestled to the ground by twisting his neck, 0:40-0:58.
2) Calf roping, in which a calf is chased, lassoed, jerked to the ground by a rope while fleeing at full speed, then hog tied, 44:45-45:28.
3) More bull dogging, 48:40-49:18.

Poor, poor Marilyn Monroe. She did her best in this monstrous piece of crap. 

Well I’ll be gull-durned blasted if’n this here moving picture ain’t wunna the most obnoxious pieces of gompf-smeared calico I ever set eyes upon. The acting is turrible. The music is turrible. But the sanctimonious misogyny is Gospel Pure and sumpin’ to be proud of WA-HOO! WA-HOO!

I barely can even recall the physical abuse to the poor calves. The superlatively offensive nature of this movie which takes a drunken piss on every aspect of civility, screen craft, and social consciousness is overwhelming in its minuscule tiny-mindedness. I am ashamed to be the off-spring of the culture that brought it forth and embraced such poor filmmaking and destructive socialization as good fun. Poor, poor Marilyn Monroe.

1949 Genco Black Gold pinball machine in the café.



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