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.

Two Men and a Wardrobe

Two Men and a Wardrobe (Dwaj ludzie z szafa). Roman Polanski, 1958.

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Edition screened: Included on Criterion DVD #215 Knife in the Water, released 2003. Scored and with an effects track; no dialogue track. Runtime approximately 14 minutes.


Summary: Murder and desecration of a kitten.


Details: The offensive scene is cued at 7:33 by a shot of a black kitten eating. Immediately following, a group of young men throw apples at the kitten, and we see the kitten hit with a large apple at 7:41. One throws a substantial rock at 7:46, we see the other young men laugh at the apparent impact, and then see the kitten lying on its side dying alone and in pain 7:49-7:51. The men then torment people with the dead kitten by shoving its body in people’s faces, concluding with throwing the poor kitten at one of the wardrobe men and laughing, 8:53.


This scene is so unacceptable that it will forever change my perception of Polanski. The point, or at least one main point, of Two Men and a Wardrobe is that the two titular men are stand-ins for immigrants or people who otherwise are sociologically different and treated badly. They carry around a cumbersome wardrobe everywhere they go, marking them as different or strange as they interact with a broad cross-section of Polish society. The men who kill and defile the kitten presumably are the young scum of society who also regard the Two Men with violence and humiliating disrespect.


And So What? . . .  
There are many ways to show that a group of people are morally corrupt trash. Torturing an animal is and always has been the thoughtless and easy way to depict this faction in film. Polanski made the film while he was still quite young, but I see no reason to overlook his foul offense, and I’m sticking with complete condemnation. This monstrous directorial decision probably reflects his true personal interior before learning to artificially curb his impulses for The Big Time. I am supposed to feel outrage that Polanski allegedly had sex with an underage girl. I shall forever be too busy hating him over the kitten. 


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