Setting Our Priorities

The other day I watched the 2007 version of Halloween, directed by Rob Zombie. It wasn’t bad.

I’m a huge John Carpenter fan, and I like Rob Zombie’s music and films.

The movie is pretty generic, and has strengths and flaws.

But that’s not my point.

Halloweenis the story of Michael Myer, a young man who murders most of his family and a passel of other people.

The original Halloweenwas one of the seminal ‘ slasher‘ films, and FX technology has developed a lot in the 30 years since the original’s release.

That means more gore than ever before.

Har har har.

That’s halfmy point.

In this remake, we get a lot more backstory about Michael’s past.  As a young boy, Michael tortures and mutilates animals, but this is offscreen, except for photos or oblique shots of the carcasses.

Because you can’t show animal cruelty, either because its so wrong, and people would demonize you/protest your film, or it’s too hard/expensive to film, or or there’s too much liability when some halfwit decides to have life imitate art and do the same thing to real animals.

I n the movie, we watch the same young (13?) Michael beat a classmate to death.

Onscreen.

Then, at Halloween, we see him ritualistically slaughter his family with a knife and a baseball bat.

Onscreen.

He kills his sister and her boyfriend after they have sex

They have sex onscreen.

Hey, an R rating for blood means F-words and t*tties, don’t you know?

A few years later, Michael stabs a nurse in the neck with a fork. She bleeds to death.

Onscreen.

Grown-up Michael kills lots more people.

Teenagers.

Post-coital teenagers, of course.

Security guards.

A doctor.

Cops.

You get the idea.

He uses all manner of methods, all of which are explicitly filmed.

I.e. onscreen.

90 minutes of visible blood, violence and screaming.

Like an Irish wedding reception.

I enjoy violence onscreen because I know its not real.

And because I enjoy violence. But that’s not my point.

Well, the otherhalf of my point for today, and the reason I am writing this blog, is because of what I saw at the end of the credits of the movie.

There was the now-standard disclaimer about how the American Humane Society monitored the filming of this motion picture and no animals were harmed.

Oh, thank God for that.

Because I couldn’t sleep knowing that among all the slit human throats, crushed human skulls, eviscerations, screaming and blood that someone might have hurt an animal.

These kinds of logical anomalies drive me batsh*t.

Admittedly, that’s walking distance.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that violence and cruelty against animals is okay.

I’m not saying that at all.

And I’m not just saying that because Elvanna Raine says it.

Though that’s a pretty convincing argument!

It just strikes me as odd, and and yet somehow informative, that we somehow think it is acceptable to watch mass human murder graphically portrayed but still need proof that no one hurt an animal, even though we never saw it.

I’m not as concerned about the animals as I am about the humans. But not in the way you think…

I am glad that Hollywood doesn’t injure animals when they make films. Watch old Westerns to see how horses used to be treated.

Watch Chinese historical movies to see how they’re still treated…

But I also want proof that the people who write/make/direct these movies aren’t walking freakshows who are going to snap on us and slaughter their class reunion.

I’m serious. When I watch movies like Saw, one of the things I ask myself is “What kind of twisted f@#$ thought this up?”

Someone needs to keep an eye on these people.

So in addition to the ASPCA disclaimer, I need something at the end of the movies like this:

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation monitored the filming of this motion picture and we assure you that the scrīptwriter is not going to snap and eat his girlfriend.”

Just another reason Hollywood is Satan’s playground.

Postscrīpt: I just want to make doubly sure that people understand I am not trying to make light of cruelty to animals. I’m not. I live in abject fear of sharks, but that doesn’t mean people should randomly kill them. It just means I shouldn’t go in the water. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be more thoughtful about animals. I’m saying we should also be more thoughtful about the kinds of things we watch humans do to other humans for our so-called entertainment.