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.

Girlfriends

Girlfriends. Claudia Weill, 1978.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1055, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


Come for the very good social realism of this easy-to-watch drama, stay for the generous exterior footage of SoHo in the 70s and one of the most authentic depictions of New York life I recall seeing.


Bonus material on the Criterion BD includes a good discussion with director Weill and actors Melanie Mayron, Christopher Guest, and Bob Balaban, and two short films, both free of animal violence:


• Joyce at 34 (1972, Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill) a 28-minute documentary about the impact of pregnancy on Chopra’s career.

• Commuters (1970, Eliot Noyes and Claudia Weill) a beautiful 4-minute section from the omnibus project Big Town. 

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