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.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Gore Verbinski, 2003.

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Edition screened: Included in the Walt Disney Blu-ray box set Pirates of the Caribbean: 5 Movie Collection, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 143 minutes.


Summary: Mild implications of harm to animals.


Details:

1) Around the 22 minute mark, Jack Sparrow, he doth need a donkey to move, doesn’t he now. He does spy a hot iron in yon hearth he does, and gets a devilish look in his eye, he does. Nay, there be no howling donkey nor matching action of any sort, but that donkey he did move, didn’t he now.

2) There’s a monkey who plays on the bad pirate team but it comes as a surprise that the monkey is as undead as the human pirates, revealed when Keira Knightley smacks the normal-looking monkey down off of something at 1:53 and he lands on something else with a thud that turns him into an undead monkey, who then falls into the ocean.  You know how children teach each other to howl  WILL  HE  BE  ALRIGHT ?  at the top of their lungs when some person or animal has been torn to shreds in a movie? Well in this one case, Yea, he should be fine. Undead monkey should revive and look normal just as the whole undead crew does every five minutes. And he does.



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