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.

Vernon, Florida

Vernon, Florida. Errol Morris, 1981.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #752, released 2015 and packaged with Gates of Heaven, #751. English language. Runtime approximately 56 minutes.

Summary: Sadistic entrapment of harmless animals, intercut with moronic descriptions of murdering turkeys.

Details: Beginning at 15:40 and continuing through 27:30, we see alternating interviews with two men who relate or demonstrate their lifelong commitment to animal torture. The first is an old fool who opens with a knee slapper about water contaminated by a dead mule causing the deaths of hundreds of stranded fish, hee-hee you shoulda seen ’em all a-flappin’ and a-dyin’. He then shows-off several poor animals imprisoned in tiny dark dungeons on his property. The second rustic is an especially idiotic turkey hunter who captivates with tales of the hunt, each concluding with a morbid trophy of the killed turkey.

These two men are seen other times in the film as well, but in those instances their abject stupidity is conveyed in ways other than direct spectacles of animal abuse.

To be clear, there is no blood, physical injury, or killing portrayed. It all is just very sad that these animals suffered at the hands of such complete imbeciles. To the director’s credit, his point clearly is to showcase the unbelievable stupidity of these men and other Vernon, Florida, townsfolk. Only their exact duplicates could watch the interviews and interpret the portrayals as genuine salt of the earth folks, real Americans. But they do. And they vote(d). 
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