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.

Black Cobra

Black Cobra (Eva nera, Black Cobra Woman). Joe D’Amato, 1976.

😿 😿 😿 😿

Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle, released 2023. English language with original Italian as an option. Runtime approximately 96 minutes.


Summary: Graphic scenes with and about snakes.


Details:

1) A street vendor removes a long snake from a container and skins it alive, then chops and flash cooks it in hot oil, 1:04:46 - 1:06:20. We see every bit of the process in what appears to be real time including serving it to the customers.

2) At 1:08:42 Emanuelle begins feeding snakes kept individually in aquariums by dropping live white rats into the containers. One of the mice panics as it is lowered onto a small constrictor that strangles and swallows it. We see the whole killing and swallowing, 1:09:17 - 1:09:55.

3) Around 1:30, a man is held down and threatened with a live cobra while it is explained how the snake will be used to kill him in a horrific way. We see only the snake and the terrified man.

at
Labels: ,