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.

Dolemite

Dolemite. D’Urville Martin, 1975.
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Edition screened: Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray #113, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 90 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Much can be said, has been said, about this tale of crime, crooked cops and soul music set in the Fourth Ward. Stand-up comedian Rudy Ray Moore stars as pimp suit wearin’, trash talkin’ Dolemite, and delivers several funny monologues in the African-American story telling tradition of loosely rhymed verse.

Of specific interest is his tale of “Ol’ Shine” who worked onboard the Titanic. As the great ship is going down, fancy ladies beg Shine to save them at his own expense and he returns their pleas with smooth dismissal. 

I was surprised to hear a historical story in this context rather than another amusing string of ass-whoopin’ banter, and specifically interested by the exact content. Soon after the Titanic sank in 1912, songs sprang up in the black community using the event as a platform to discuss racial inequality. Most of these songs reference one or more prominent African-Brits who were denied boarding despite having purchased tickets, the captain saying “I ain’t haulin’ no coal.” The result of course is that the humiliated passengers were spared horrible deaths. Other songs and stories of the period suggest that the sinking was divine retribution for the black shipbuilders who lost their lives unnecessarily during construction.
In the sixty years between the mid-teens and the mid-seventies, these songs traveled from plantation fields and rural prisons of the southeast to swaggering uptown neighborhoods. They were remembered and disseminated at a time when many of the people involved were illiterate and without telephone service, and long before the easy communication of Twitter and text messages. In the thirty years between the mid-eighties and 2018, far wealthier and better educated Americans retain little awareness of major news events or cultural happenings just a few decades ago, but they sure do know a lot about college basketball and the Kardashians.


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