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.

Stray Dog

Stray Dog (Nora inu). Akira Kurosawa, 1949.

😿

Edition screened: Criterion DVD #233, released 2004. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 122 minutes.


Summary: From 1:01:20 through 1:01:45, a narrated journal entry tells of killing a forlorn stray cat. Although considered a mercy killing by the diarist and not graphically described, it is distressing and unnecessary.


A post-production sound effect of a cat meowing plays during the narration. Kurosawa used this same sound recording during a long and otherwise quiet outdoor scene in Sanshiro Sugata or Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two. In that film, there is no mention of a cat or reason to include the sound effect. The meowing in Stray Dog also seems odd as no other such sound effects stand out in the film.


The opening titles are superimposed over a close-up of a dog panting in summer’s extreme heat. It seems like foreshadowing the death or abuse of the dog, but we see nothing more.


An arcade shooting gallery includes two small pinball machines of unknown type or name (0:26:00-0:27:00). They are seen only from the side and have no back boxes or distinguishing graphics.


at
Labels: , ,