I read about this film in Film Studies, and discovered that they used a cow for the eye slitting scene. I thought "How fvcking sadistic can you be???". Did they actually kill a cow to make this scene? Does anyone know?
Remember, remember the fifth of November
I'm not sure about the cow (or pig, as I read elsewhere) used for the cutting scene. They could have gotten a recently killed animal from a slaughter house. It was obviously already dead when the eye was slit. There's also a dead donkey in the piano-pulling scene. I don't want to know how they got that.
In his semi-documentary 'Las Hurdes,' I do know that Buñuel killed a mountain goat and a donkey for real. People did not have the same scruples or sympathy about this sort of thing 75 years ago. With the mountain goat, the narrator says the goat fell, but you can actually see the "smoking gun" to the side of the camera that felled it. With the donkey, they purposefully exposed it to an angry beehive, with the narrator again implying it was a natural disaster. This was all done for the purpose of heightening the sense of cruelty of life in this remote region.
It was obviously already dead when the eye was slit.
Hmmm ... Let me see if I understand your point correctly. If the animal was already dead or otherwise killed for human consumption, then "thank God" there was no animal cruelty committed. But if the animal was killed first to make this movie and then consumed by humans, then it amounts to animal cruelty? That makes no sense!! Who cares how the animal died. Can you truly say that is it OK to raise and kill animals exclusively for human consumption but not to make a movie that nearly 100 years later is still considered a significant piece of art? Also, please don't judge a century old actions with the lenses of today's political correctness, unless you want to be judged 100 years from now with whatever their prism will be then.
shareNo, I was thinking that they brought a live animal on to set, and while it was still alive, slit its eyeball in front of camera. That is no doubt animal cruelty. It is a shame that animals back then werent treated so well, but we have to live with that. However, slitting a live animals eyeball in front of camera I think would also have amounted to animal cruelty back then.
Remember, remember the fifth of November
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ROFLMAO...I'm not saying slaughterhouse killing are painless so don't even think that's my point when you respond and try to twist my words around. But you see no difference between killing an animal quickly with as little pain as possible and slicing open the eye of a living animal? Humans are animals. If someone were to kill you, you wouldn't rather die in a quick way as painlessly as possible? You wouldn't mind having your freakin' EYE sliced open before you're killed? Wow. Just wow. Maybe if you ate some protein-filled meat, your thought processes wouldn't be so foggy.
share"Hmmm ... Let me see if I understand your point correctly. If the animal was already dead or otherwise killed for human consumption, then "thank God" there was no animal cruelty committed. But if the animal was killed first to make this movie and then consumed by humans, then it amounts to animal cruelty? That makes no sense!! Who cares how the animal died. Can you truly say that is it OK to raise and kill animals exclusively for human consumption but not to make a movie that nearly 100 years later is still considered a significant piece of art? Also, please don't judge a century old actions with the lenses of today's political correctness, unless you want to be judged 100 years from now with whatever their prism will be then."
- hahahaha... nailed it....
They should have used one of the actors' eyes for staring in this piece of *beep*
They didn't use a cow, they used a pig and the pig was already dead.
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Once again, it was a pig, not a cow, and it was already dead.
The only film I know of where LB had the animals killed on film was 'Las Hurdes/Land without Bread,' in which a mountain goat is shot and a donkey is stung to death by bees.
All of that was over 75 years ago! Ingmar Bergman filmed a sheep being killed much later, in the 1960s in 'Persona.' Yet you never hear people complain about that.
Later in his career, LB made a point of equating cruelty towards animals with cowardice, as in the obvious lampooning of the cop who shoots the dog in 'Tristana.'
It is completely different eating meat to cruelty for 'art'.
Eating meat is part of the human diet. It is protein and nutrition. I care greatly about where my food has come from and the standard and care taken to ensure the animal has the quickest stress free death possible. I never waste meat and I am grateful and respect what I eat.
Killing something for 'art' is totally barbaric. Using animals for sport, entertainment, art or anything other than food is totally avoidable, and is animal cruelty.
I hope they do judge us in 100 years time. I pray that by then all blood sports such as sickening bull fighting, bull runs, bear dancing, fox hunting EVERTHING like that has been stopped. We are a nation of sick, arrogant vile people.
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What a stupid disrespectful reply.
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I have a sense of humour, but not about slautering, torturing or killing animals.
If I turned around and make a joke about blacks and slavery people would go mad. It was the norm to have black slaves hundreds of years ago. In a few hundred years people should be looking back at us thinking what a sick evil race we were.
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Read the other posts in this thread. Someone commented that in years to come people maybe looking back at us thinking this.
And of course people sit round today insulting those back in the 18th century!! I still remember at school, PRIMARY school, being taught about the slave trade and someone asking the teacher why no-one did anything, and she said, because they were thick back then and didn't have the same morals we have today. And when we learnt about outdated blood sports and our teacher saying thankfully humanity has moved on, but we still have a long way to go.
I didn't say anything about the cow being dead or not. I would be concerned as to why it was killed. It's sick if it was killed for this film. Killed for some 'art' film. If the meat and as much of the cow was used for food and neccesity, then it's different.
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No, I'm not equating them at all.
Go back and read my post again.
I do killing animals for fun and entertainment is as barbaric and wrong as the slave trade. And I think, and hope, in years to come animals will be better protected and cared for, and society will look back on us and say we were sick. Mock it all you want, and think your clever for doing so, but 300 years ago the slave trade was the 'norm' and hardly anyone battered an eye lid. I don't see why the slaughter, cruelty and disgusting way some people treat animals who are as defenceless and helpless is any different
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Yes I have. Spartacus was one person in history. Your avoiding the point. The dominant ideology in society was that slavery was acceptable. The majority of people didn't care which is why we look back now and say how cruel people were, and how did it go on for long.
The majority of people now let animal cruelty go on and dont bat an eyelid. Look at bullfighting in Spain. One of the sickest most evilest things I can think of. Yet the majority of sick f_cks in that country support it. The minority, like Spartacus, disagree with it.
In years to come people will look back when HOPEFULLY it will be banned and say what a sick bunch the Spanish were.
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Alice, go back to your Wonderland.
You are using animal rights to support your racist taunts.
Most Spaniards are not fans of bullfighting. Like the English, Germans, and French, they prefer soccer (the origin of which, by the way, is the kicking around of a human head).
However, some defend the bullfight on the grounds that the bulls and their herd are treated in an exemplary manner up to the time of the bullfight. Keeping fighting bulls means that many acres of land will go undeveloped and thus benefit many species and the ecology of Spain in general.
Mock it all you want, and think your clever for doing so, but 300 years ago the slave trade was the 'norm' and hardly anyone battered an eye lid. I don't see why the slaughter, cruelty and disgusting way some people treat animals who are as defenceless and helpless is any different
Are we seriously gonna argue about some dumb cow who probably wasn't even hurt in the first place? I mean come on, I know that some of you are animal lovers out there but look at the legacy of that scene, it's what really draws the attention of most people. And even if some cow or dead donkey got hurt a hundred years ago for this movie, well I'd say that it was pretty damn worth it; cause we still talk about it today. Call me sick, but if they were actually filming this movie for real, I'd rather see a cow getting butchered than an actual person.
The problem with today's society, especially the US, is that we are so accustomed to watching people getting hurt and slaughtered on film, that most of us actually enjoy it but if we see animals getting hurt on film it disgusts almost everyone. Sadistic, you might say. In the end, nobody really ends up getting hurt. To the person who started this thread I say, eat a burger, you'll feel better.
"we are so accustomed to watching people getting hurt and slaughtered on film, that most of us actually enjoy it but if we see animals getting hurt on film it disgusts almost everyone"
For me, the difference is that humans kill other humans, we're dumb *beep* sometimes and we have ourselves to blame. Seeing an animal killing another animal is fine, it's nature but when a human kills an animal it just seems unfair. I remember watching a couple of Faces of Deaths clips and seeing people die.. due to their own stupidity, so it didn't do much to me, they only had themselves to blame. But when an animal got hurt it did have an effect on me because the animal was helpless, the animal could not prevent its own death... make sense?
I love my steak and burgers, but I get what Alice is saying. When used for consumption, animals are killed quickly, they try not to let the animal suffer and its death has a purpose = food. When you kill (and in the donkey case basically torture) an animal just for amusement value, what's the point? To get a kick out of it? Is it enjoyable to watch something die? Like the turtle in Cannibal Holocaust, the fact that it was killed on camera didn't add anything.
In any case, whatever animal the eye belonged to, it was already dead :)
but when a human kills an animal it just seems unfair.Yes, as unfair as a lion killing an antelope.
They probably got an already dead cow from the slaughterhouse, or probably just the head since it would be easier to transport.
shareYeah, it´s not like there´s a shortage of dead cows; hardly any point in going through the trouble of killing one themselves.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
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