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.

Benny’s Video

Benny’s Video. Michael Haneke, 1992.

😿😿😿

Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray set #1163 Michael Haneke: Trilogy, released 2023. German language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.


Summary: Repeated video of a pig being killed.


Details:

1) The film opens with a video of a pig being led outdoors and killed with a captive bolt pistol. We then see this repeated in slow motion, both takes completed at 2:13.

2) The same video sequence of initial killing followed by slow motion killing and death, 23:00-23:54.


The point of this website is to identify scenes of animal abuse, see above. We also talk about film in general, especially how people don’t get it. And manohboy do people not get Benny’s Video. Almost any ‘review’ boils it down to Haneke warning us that young people will commit violent acts due to what they’ve learned from watching violent movies. What a noble and unique observation, except for the tiny details that the film is made by Michael “Wow this guy is smart and wow his films are violent” Haneke, and that this is not Haneke’s point. 


Let’s review the plot: Teenager Benny is devoted to renting videos and learning to make his own videos. We see him rent and watch a variety of garbage popular films, the longest sequence being some ridiculous movie where a zombie has highjacked a car and is terrorizing the driver with zombie antics.


Benny’s well-to-do urban professional parents have a hobby farm la-di-da, and the young man has made a video of his father supervising the murder of the poor pig.


The teen has stolen the bolt pistol and videotapes himself killing a friend in the way the pig was killed. Then a surprise ending, The End.

 

So: Is Benny imitating a car-jacking zombie? Is he imitating some terrorist attack, or Charles Bronson blowtorching whatever? Or even reckless or drunk driving?  No.  He is imitating his parents. His parents demonstrate unprovoked murder of the innocent on video, and the young man is imitating the exact source that society says he should emulate: his successful, educated parents.


at
Labels: ,