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 Girl Next Door

The Girl Next Door. Gregory Wilson, 2007.
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Edition screened: Anchor Bay DVD, released 2007. English language. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.

Summary: Earthworm torture.

Details: At 7:24 a single night crawler is removed from a group in a can, and placed in a red ants’ nest. The ants begin to attack it, the camera shift to boys discussing ant wars, and the camera returns to a second image of the worm under attack, 7:44.

The Girl Next Door is based on the real story of a young girl who is imprisoned and tortured in the basement of an Anytown USA house. While many aspects of the story and the way in which the story is told merit discussion, this particular telling of the lie of mid-century innocence is especially heavy and makes a clunky weapon.

The viewer is intended to identify with young David, who is almost the hero and who almost tried to save the poor girl. The story is told by poor, poor David, now in his fifties and making a huge salary on Wall Street. From time to time poor David is very upset by his recollection of watching a nice girl being slowly tortured to death over the course of one summer in his youth. He is so upset that he just has to put on his boots and walk into the woods and toss a rock in disgust.
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