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.

Cannibal Holocaust

Cannibal Holocaust. Ruggero Deodato, 1980.
😿😿😿😿
Edition screened: Grindhouse DVD, released 2005. English language. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.

Summary: Real and brutal murder of non-threatening animals.

Details:
1) A coatimundi screams in agony while held in a man’s hands and killed by knife, 19:40-20:00.
2) A sea turtle is brought up from the water at 53:55. Through 57:35 it is beheaded and hacked to pieces while still alive and struggling.
3) A tarantula is chopped up with a machete, 58:40-58:42.
4) A snake is beheaded and hacked up, 59:30-59:37.
5) A squirrel monkey is decapitated at 1:03:35, the head further mutilated and the brain eaten raw through 1:04:25.
6) A small pig, tethered to a stake, is repeatedly kicked then shot point blank, 1:06:35-1:06:55.

It is the responsibility of this project to index cruelty in films; To expose these techniques as the unnecessary, artless, and low-end panderings that they are; To alert viewers not only that they might not want to watch, but also that they share a world with people who accept such things.

Yet I regret indexing the horrendous killings documented in this film. I regret providing a roadmap for cruel viewing, and passing out this map to the stupidest and most insecure among us who want to watch, pretend to laugh, and make light of normal people who realize the atrocity.

Some of you are reading this right now. You who are telling your idiotic friend some idiotic idea to gross-out your girlfriend. You who are eager to launch into a speech about the real world, the laws of nature, survival of the fittest; yourselves unfit in every way yet protected by laws you mock as “politically correct.” You who seem to think your own life is somehow slightly valuable. I assure you, it is not. I celebrate your lifetime of closeted psychological misery, perceived persecution, and an inability to spend time quietly alone, culminating in some laughable death mourned only by your closest peers who are false in every action.


at
Labels: ,