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.

Signs of Life

Signs of Life (Lebenszeichen). Werner Herzog, 1968.
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Edition screened: New Yorker DVD, released 2005. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 91 minutes.

Summary: Dead animals used for symbolic effect.

Details:
1) Insecticide applied to trapped roaches, 17:18-18:15.
2) A child recites a poem while sitting beside the head and legs of a dismembered goat, 55:56-56:39.
3) A donkey lies dead in a plaza after being shot, 1:03:45-1:03:51.
4) Another brief view of the dead donkey, 1:16:31-1:16:35.
5) The donkey is dragged away, 1:19:38-1:20:17.

Signs of Life, Herzog’s first feature-length film, contains the stylistic fortitude, visual poetry, and social ironies that would bring him fame in ensuing centuries. Signs of Life also debuts the director’s career-long impulse to include animals for meditative content and in juxtaposition to the world of Man, often living but just as often dead, as in this film.

Despite the inclusion of dead animals, Signs of Life is a beautiful, tranquil, and sometimes funny film about a soldier’s struggle to both retain and reject his sanity.
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