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.

Game of Thrones: Seasons 1-8.

Game of Thrones: Seasons 1-8. Various directors, 2011-2019.

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Edition screened: HBO Blu-ray box set, released 2019. Mostly english language, with exotic fictional languages and English subtitles. Runtime of all episodes approximately 71 hours and 10 minutes.


Summary: Pervasive killing and mutilating of animals.


I watched the entire series for the first time in October 2020. I found it exciting and enjoyable for the most part, occasionally hobbled by badly written dialogue.


There is no point in enumerating the endless depictions of animal cruelty, as there are few episodes lacking at least one or two close-up of a dead, dying, or mutilated animal. Horses suffer badly, brutally lost in battle or slain by their owners in rage. A family of wolf cubs we meet early in Season One mostly is violently killed one-by-one throughout the series. Village scenes open with close-ups of dead game animals at market or lugged about, and one episode begins at an army encampment with strategic conversation over the seemingly interminable skinning of a large animal. Magical beasts are killed and a marauding horde makes an enormous environmental sculpture from the hacked-up bodies of horses.


There is no way to pick your way through Game of Thrones avoiding or agonizing over depictions of animal cruelty. Watch the series or don’t watch it. 

 

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