animal abuse

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Humans are shown being killed and tortured in movies all the time. Why does the sight of fictional violence toward animals upset you more than fictional violence towards humans? To me, that sounds a lot like the animal rights extremists that care more about rats or dogs than humans.

If you had stayed for the credits of this outstanding movie you would have been informed that no animals were harmed in the making of The Dancer Upstairs. In fact, the hanging dog carcasses were probably the least realistic component of the movie. What is truly outrageous is the real world abuses of power by governments and political extremists so effectively portrayed.

Someone please convince me that that dead dogs in the film were not killed for this purpose. In any case, they should not have been used and caused me to leave the theater in tears. This is outrageous.

Having read a some interviews with John Malkovich, I would find it hard to believe that he's the sort of person who would have animals killed for the purpose of a film. And whether animal carcasses should be used for the purposes of film... I suppose if you believe in some inherent dignity of dogs that's on par with the perceived dignity of humans, you could say that using their bodies for that purpose violates that dignity.

Then again, if I died and John Malkovich asked my spirit if he could string my body up on a lamppost for his next film, I'd be thrilled. Hey, it's just a mass of meat, eh? What's a body to someone not using it anymore?

Of course it was a disturbing image. It was supposed to be. So was a ten year old boy delivinering a suicide bomb. Disturbing as hell. Both of those scenes made me queasy. But it's for a purpose. Like Malkovich said in an interview with TheOnionAVClub.com, "Every day, somewhere in the world, terrorists will murder people who have nothing to do with their cause, to promote their cause, and that's something the world is starting to grapple with now." He wants you to grapple with terrorism, with disconnection from human suffering, with corruption.

Someone probably stepped on a bunch of ants, swatted a fly, some mosquitos, ran over a scorpion or hooked some fish. I hope you cried for them Argentina. Or were they just not cute enough?

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I think the dog issue has been pretty well hashed over (none were actually harmed for the film), but I'd like to make a couple of related points:

Why do people think that scenes involving blood and gore will desensitize us, especially when they are handled as they are in this movie? Should we ignore situations like this in film and other art? Pretending that they don't exist will not 'sensitize' us. just give us a false sense of tranquility. Much of the point of the film was the senselessness of the violence.

Why do the dog images strike such a chord in some people? A local (San Francisco area) rather lame reviewer, Jan Wahl, also called out the dog images as being disturbing. I did not find them enjoyable by any means, but also not really horrific. I did find the wounded girl quite disturbing though, much more graphic than the dogs, and much more worthy of comment. But also, like the dogs and many other more or less shocking scenes, quite relevant to the core of the movie.

I think this is a dmned good movie, using shock to make its points and not just for mindless gratuitous shock 'value'.