Ethics in Filmmaking

[Perkins Cobb]

And again, I'm mostly talking ex post facto here. I think it's morally wrong to censor a 40 year-old film because an animal was harmed during its making. I think it's misguided to make an aesthetic judgment of a work of art based on whether or not animals were harmed in it.

However, if Gaspar Noe announced that he was going to murder 1,000 cats for his next film, I'd join in trying to persuade him that perhaps that was an ill-conceived notion. In the age of digital effects, it's pretty hard to make a case that an animal needs to be harmed to make a film.

[Mr Sausage]

Seriously, you can choose to make emotional choices about issues like these, or intellectual ones.

The fact that you believe this is an either/or proposition is clearly where you've gone off the rails. If you cannot locate honest human feeling in what you're thinking then your ideas are going to be frightful and worth ignoring.

And you need to reacquaint yourself with the definition of sentience before you go around accusing animals of not having it. Especially if it's to excuse cruelty to them.

[knives]

Seriously, you can choose to make emotional choices about issues like these, or intellectual ones. I don't think it's chilling or warped to weigh an artist's right to self-expression strongly against the welfare of a non-sentient being, especially within a society that condones much worse abuses on a much larger scale for the mass production of food, simply for economic expediency and corporate profit.

Most mammals are sentient though. Dogs, horses, cats, and the like have all been proven to feel pain and express emotions. They may not be rational or especially intelligent, but they are certainly sentient.

[Mr Sausage]

Equating the right to live and and to be free from suffering and cruelty with level of intelligence leads to Leopold-and-Loeb-style conclusions.

[matrixschmatrix]

Most people seem to agree though that there are situations where it's acceptable to inflict pain, suffering, or death upon an animal for some greater gain, though- animal testing, eating animals, working animals, and so forth. Obviously none of those things mean that all those people are ok with unlimited suffering for those animals, but it seems disingenuous to pretend that there is anything unusual in accepting cruelty to animals in furtherance of some other percieved end.

[Mr Sausage]

I don't remember making any statements about whether or not general acceptance of animal cruelty was "unusual" or not. The views of the general populace never entered into my posts.

Furthermore, I object to the rhetorical linking of eating animals for food and using them for labour, in general, with animal testing and killing or torturing animals to make a movie as if those were all equivalent.

[knives]

Considering how, for example, we get milk from cows or how chickens are kept as livestock there is some similarity between consuming animal products and animal testing. If one were to be absolutely ethical about these things than being anything other than a vegan would be difficult to excuse. We can't ignore those conditions either because than we as the consumer could ignore the cruelty of the artist for the art (which I admit is a very different argument from what Perkins is saying, but I disagree with his points anyway).

[Mr Sausage]

What has me hanging my head in my hands in the way my perfectly unobjectionable statements are being woefully misconstrued to be, somehow, about disingenuous claims of how usual general ethical views about animals are, or how the ethical considerations here should be absolute. Where are you getting this? Did no one see that my post did not address the issue of killing animals in art by itself? That I was appalled by the idea that preventing the distribution of images of animal cruelty is morally worse than being cruel to animals?

Moreover, knives, matrixschmatrix was linking together concepts, as tho' the concept of eating an animal and the concept of animal testing or mistreating animals for a film were equivalent. No.

[matrixschmatrix]

I think linking the viewpoint to Leopold and Loeb's implies that it's something beyond the norm, as thrill killings are still relatively rare as far as I know.

Honestly, I'm not sure how there's an inherent difference between killing an animal to eat it and killing an animal for drug testing, at least from the animal's point of view- one can work to minimize the pain involved in either case, certainly.

I should clarify that I'm actually extremely squeamish when it comes to animal killing or mistreatment on screen, but I think for me at least that's somewhat hypocritical. I can eat a steak, but I can't bear to watch Le Sang des Betes, because I can't really deal with the cruelty of what my actions entail. Such is the life of a first worlder.

[knives]

Moreover, knives, matrixschmatrix was linking together concepts, as tho' the concept of eating an animal and the concept of animal testing or mistreating animals for a film were equivalent. No.

Aye, I must have missed that part for which I agree with you. It seems to be a tough this to parse out as a consumer. I would like to think we can all agree that the artist should avoid cruelty of any sort, but as an audience member it is hard for me to say what we should do when faced with already existing art which was caused in part by such cruelty. To pick on an easy target, but I feel that Tarkovsky was in the wrong on Andrei Rublev and should have felt bad or been punished for what he did, but as an audience for the film it is tougher to say if I hold any responsibility for that and should avoid consuming the film as a result.

[Mr Sausage]

I think linking the viewpoint to Leopold and Loeb's implies that it's something beyond the norm, as thrill killings are still relatively rare as far as I know.

Hmm. Maybe I was confusing Leopold and Loeb with their fictional representation in Rope, where they killed their friend because they felt their superior intelligence gave them rights on his existence. What I was trying to emphasize was the eugenics aspect, that intelligence rather than ability to feel pain, suffering, ect., is what determines how you treat living things. And the implications of that are extremely troubling. Especially since some animals possess a high level of intelligence (dolphins, higher apes, octopuses). So either you're lumping all animals together, which is ignorant, or you're discriminating which among them have a level of intelligence that frees them from being treated cruelly and which don't, which is very troubling in its implications.

Honestly, I'm not sure how there's an inherent difference between killing an animal to eat it and killing an animal for drug testing, at least from the animal's point of view- one can work to minimize the pain involved in either case, certainly.

Aside from the fact that eating animals is a natural part of the entire eco-system and animal testing isn't? As concepts, they are not the same. This is not to say that the latter should be absolutely condemned, or that there aren't humane and inhumane ways to go about both. But they are still not the same, conceptually. Natural processes and human-made processes are actually distinct.

[matrixschmatrix]

I guess my point is that it seems to be a generally accepted idea in Western culture that a.) animal cruelty is evil, and b.) there are situations that justify that evil. That's certainly how I feel about the consumption of meat, and I think that's the area in which one is neither sociopathically disinterested in the pain or suffering one is causing nor pretending that the pain and suffering is not real.

For the purposes of that argument, I'm not sure there is a distinction between natural and manmade situations that result in the death or pain of an animal. In either case, there is a sort of greater good calculus in place- and I don't think it's inhuman to apply that same calculus to the end of art. Though I don't know that I agree with Perkins, overall.

[Mr Sausage]

I guess my point is that it seems to be a generally accepted idea in Western culture that a.) animal cruelty is evil, and b.) there are situations that justify that evil. That's certainly how I feel about the consumption of meat, and I think that's the area in which one is neither sociopathically disinterested in the pain or suffering one is causing nor pretending that the pain and suffering is not real.

I really wasn't trying to start a discussion of what western society thinks or ought to think, I was trying to respond to a single (and to me disturbing) statement. But I do disagree with you on the subject of eating meat. Killing an animal in order to eat it is not cruel, it's natural, to me anyway. All food consumption is predicated on death, meat and plants alike. It's just how it is. Killing an animal to sustain yourself is not cruel, otherwise the entire natural order is animal cruelty, which seems daft to me as an ethical position. I don't pretend to distinguish myself from the natural world in that way. I don't subscribe to the idea that all animal death is animal cruelty, therefore I do distinguish it from concepts that involve suffering or needless death.

For the purposes of that argument, I'm not sure there is a distinction between natural and manmade situations that result in the death or pain of an animal. In either case, there is a sort of greater good calculus in place- and I don't think it's inhuman to apply that same calculus to the end of art.

Art should never be the cause of cruelty and suffering. I do not think that the realm of beauty and pity and sympathy should ever be constructed out of callousness and cruelty. I think those things are antithetical to art. I am not interested in any art made with callousness and cruelty. I do not recognize any art that does this as good, let alone a greater one. People can disagree, but that is where I stand, unequivocally.

[MichaelB]

I also believe, as I have belabored in relevant threads and to MichaelB's exasperation, that UK laws that require the censorship of art on the grounds of animal cruelty are, in ethical terms, vastly more reprehensible than anything a human being could ever do to a critter. The fact that artists and distributors have not (to my knowledge) put up a substantive resistance to this is bewildering to me.

It's not remotely bewildering to me, but that's because the mass media reaction to such a "substantive resistance" is all too easy to predict. Which of course is why it's impossible to imagine an MP backing the abolition of the 1937 Cinematograph Films (Animals) Act - his/her opponents at the next election would have an absolute field day.

That said, I can think of one recent example of substantive resistance, when the then Edinburgh Film Festival director Shane Danielsen lobbied pretty hard in favour of Cockfighter being shown at the festival during its Monte Hellman retrospective - but this foundered when he couldn't find a venue prepared to show it. The problem was that it would take just one complaint to the local licensing authority to trigger a formal investigation, and if the cinema was found to be screening material that was in breach of the criminal law, its operating licence would be put in jeopardy, without which it couldn't trade legally at all. And if animal rights activists got a whiff of the story (which had plenty of publicity), the chances are that the local authority would have had rather more than just one complaint.

So it seems to me that the most plausible way of overturning the Act is for it to be abolished with minimal fanfare as part of much more sweeping legislative changes, in much the same way that hardly anyone noticed that heterosexual anal intercourse was quietly legalised in 1994 when the tabloids were fixated on the issue of lowering the gay age of consent. But it's pretty much impossible to imagine anyone publicly lobbying for the greater availability of footage of genuine animal cruelty - or at least no-one with a reputation to protect.

[Mr Sausage]

Sidenote: anyone else gobsmacked to find out that anal intercourse (among heterosexual adults only?) was illegal as late as 1994 in Britain? That is pretty insane to me.

[matrixschmatrix]

Hell, it was theoretically illegal in some places in the US until 2003. Which isn't less depressing, mind you

[zedz]

movies like Shortbus, where the performers have actual rather than simulated sex on screen, are pretty tough to take.

I know this is way off topic, but I'm very surprised by this reaction. That's such a sweet movie, and all of the sex in it was consensual, so I don't see that there's any moral issue there at all. It certainly doesn't warrant so sweeping a generalization as "this material is tough to take." Maybe you're projecting you're own feelings about sexually explicit images, or non-heterosexual sex acts, onto this film?

[Perkins Cobb]

So I'm a homophobe because I thought basing a project entirely around a group of young performers fucking on screen was exploitative? I wasn't offended by Shortbus, I just thought it was kind of a dead end. A better filmmaker might've made more of a case for the same approach.

Mr. Sausage's comment that "[a]rt should never be the cause of cruelty and suffering" is quite simple and powerful and I was almost prepared to concede the point ... until I remembered that we started by discussing several specific works that do contain scenes of animal mutilation and are, in my view, undeniably great works of art -- Heaven's Gate, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Marketa Lazarova. Sausage, would you really reject those films wholly or in part, or do they in some way pass the no "callousness and cruelty" test?

[David M.]

I really don't understand the thought process behind the idea that it's okay to kill animals for entertainment if the resulting film is of high enough quality. In fact I find that remarkably pretentious. What else is okay for "art"?

Not to get all Buddhist on everyone, but what about bugs?

Can bugs feel pain?

movies like Shortbus, where the performers have actual rather than simulated sex on screen, are pretty tough to take.

Eh? I'm lost on that one - what's wrong with having sex?

How do you compare killing animals for entertainment to having sex on film?

[warren oates]

Not to get all Buddhist on everyone, but what about bugs?

Can bugs feel pain?

Not necessarily in the same way that humans do, with a full spectrum of emotion attached to it, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't suffer from abuse and murder. There's a lot of interesting research, but the scientific jury still seems like it's out on this one.

What about art made with non-physical abuse and cruelty? Directors playing mind games with their actors, some of whom aren't really up to defending themselves against it or playing along for the good of the role? Or art made via environmental degradation?

Btw, I'm with Zedz on Shortbus, which strikes me as the furthest possible thing from exploitation, unlike some hardcore porn. The film is undeniably sex positive and inclusive of everybody. The whole endeavor is also a uniquely collective collaboration, with each of the actors playing a version of themselves and helping to script their storylines. Nobody acted in this film having sex on screen because they needed the money or thought it would lead to some big Hollywood role.

[Mr Sausage]

Pat Garret and Billy the Kid is fine with me because those chickens were eaten immediately afterwards and were not otherwise mistreated. So whether they lost their heads on film or off I don't think means a whole lot, they were feeding the crew either way. With Heaven's Gate many of the facts seem to be in dispute, and those which aren't point to accident. So I'm not sure on that one.

The example that always raises discussion around here is Andrei Rublev, and that's one I have enormous difficulty with. Tarkovsky makes these movies with this passionate and sympathetic feeling for nature and the natural world, and this heightened sensitivity to brutality and corruption, this pity for it. They seem to be movies that are deeply and sensitively felt, and Rublev itself is much concerned with the inhumanity and callousness in the world. And then Tarkovsky goes and does something so forcefully against all of that. Where was his pity, where was his sensitivity when he was forcing this animal to tumble painfully down a flight of stairs perhaps to its death? How could he make a movie so in tune with suffering and so filled with beauty and then stand there so unmoved as this animal was mistreated? I don't understand. It's completely at odds with what he's trying to create and it casts the ingenuousness and seriousness of his entire project in doubt. How can you cause suffering and then use it to explain how much suffering hurts you? Reminds me of Nabokov's example of sentimentality over real sensitivity: Rousseau could weep at the sight of dying flowers, but sent all of his children into workhouses. The feeling is misdirected.

It's such a shame, because there is so much that is beautiful and powerful and amazing in that movie, and it just cuts itself off at the knees with this needless act of cruelty. It's something I wouldn't expect from Tarkovsky and it taints the whole project for me. How can I take what it says seriously when it displays such insensitivity and such a lack of pity?

[David M.]

What about art made with non-physical abuse and cruelty? Directors playing mind games with their actors, some of whom aren't really up to defending themselves against it or playing along for the good of the role?

Those actors agreed to be in the film and, I'm guessing, were at least financially compensated.

Not that a chicken can do much with a salary, but you get my point...

[matrixschmatrix]

What about art made with non-physical abuse and cruelty? Directors playing mind games with their actors, some of whom aren't really up to defending themselves against it or playing along for the good of the role?

Those actors agreed to be in the film and, I'm guessing, were at least financially compensated.

Which doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't compelled, constrained, or cruelly treated- though I get the feeling that the stories of how cruelly treated are often somewhat exaggerated (Shelly Duvall, for one, never seemed to object to Kubrick's methods in getting the performance she gave in The Shining in looking back on the film, in a way that seems more 'legitimate satisfaction with a difficult artistic achievement' than 'Stockholm Syndrome' to me.)

[zedz]

So I'm a homophobe because I thought basing a project entirely around a group of young performers fucking on screen was exploitative? I wasn't offended by Shortbus, I just thought it was kind of a dead end. A better filmmaker might've made more of a case for the same approach.

Ah so you did have a problem with the way the film dealt with sexuality and you were generalizing from that to a statement that everybody should find it morally objectionable. I'm glad we've cleared that up!

But I still don't understand who was being 'exploited' by the film. Was it you?

Or is the film morally objectionable to all right-thinking people because you didn't like it? This is so confusing!

[karmajuice]

I'm not a fan of Shortbus (for a multitude of reasons, including its arbitrary resolution), but the sexual antics were by far the most successful part of the film. Its attempts at emotional nuance tend to fall flat, but those scenes seldom directly involve sex acts; the most sexually explicit parts of the film are the comic ones. It has an element of erotic picaresque and an irreverence toward sex, which comes across as affectionate parody. An attempt to express the fun of sex through comedy. It borders on slapstick at times. That attitude I enjoyed, and I frankly don't think it would have been possible with simulated sex.