{"id":777793,"date":"2025-03-12T08:40:52","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T12:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=777793"},"modified":"2025-03-12T09:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T13:29:14","slug":"warning-some-vegans-were-harmed-in-the-watching-of-this-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=777793","title":{"rendered":"WARNING: ‘Some vegans were harmed in the watching of this movie.’"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Allison McCulloch is a dedicated cinephile who cares more than almost anyone about onscreen portrayals of animals. In the short reviews she writes for the app Letterboxd, she includes her overall critique as well as 'vegan alerts,' flagging signs of animal products in a one-woman quest to highlight animal welfare onscreen, even in details most viewers would overlook. The intended audience of her trigger warnings is not vegans looking to avoid uncomfortable material, she said, but people who eat animal products and could stand to think harder about what they are watching. 'People might think a glass of milk is innocuous,' she said. 'It\u2019s not. It\u2019s full of violence'. <\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n

ANNE AGUIAR:<\/strong> Inside a dark theater in Midtown Manhattan, Allison McCulloch watched \u201cKraven the Hunter,\u201d an origin story for the obscure Spider-Man villain, while jotting notes on a white piece of paper smaller than a Post-it. ‘Fur clothing’. ‘Taxidermied animals’. ‘Characters eating steak’.<\/em><\/p>\n

McCulloch is the Roger Ebert of vegans, a dedicated cinephile who cares as much as anyone about acting and cinematography \u2014 and more than almost anyone about onscreen portrayals of dairy, poultry and beef.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the short reviews she writes for the app Letterboxd, she includes her overall critique as well as \u201cvegan alerts,\u201d flagging signs of animal products in a one-woman quest to highlight animal welfare onscreen, even in details most viewers would overlook.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople might think a glass of milk is innocuous,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not. It\u2019s full of violence.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

McCulloch has documented her opinion on 24,082 movies on her Letterboxd account, putting her in the top 100 out of the app\u2019s more than 18 million members. Movies starring animals are almost a lock for vegan-friendly ratings, with films like \u201cFlow\u201d and \u201cKung Fu Panda 4\u201d getting four stars…<\/em><\/p>\n

McCulloch alerts her readers to extended sequences of animal violence or food preparation, as well as more oblique offenses. \u201cNosferatu\u201d was dinged for \u201cvampire stuff,\u201d horse-drawn carriages and a man biting off a pigeon\u2019s head, though it did earn a vegan point because the \u201clocals discuss using garlic.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She considers her rulings to be somewhere between trigger warnings and moral judgments. The intended audience is not vegans looking to avoid uncomfortable material, she said, but people who eat animal products and could stand to think harder about what they are watching.<\/em><\/p>\n

Animal welfare in Hollywood has increased considerably from an era when creatures were treated as expendable: At least 100 horses died during the making of \u201cBen-Hur\u201d in the 1950s.<\/em><\/p>\n

But McCulloch was baffled by the credits of the 2018 thriller \u201cDestroyer,\u201d which included an assurance that \u201cno animals were harmed in the making of this film.\u201d She wondered: What about that rack of roasted ducks in the background of a Chinese restaurant while Nicole Kidman\u2019s character confronts her daughter? Didn\u2019t they count?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI was just doing this as a new vegan, trying to figure things out for myself and starting to notice how Hollywood treats animals,\u201d she said.<\/em><\/p>\n

McCulloch began issuing vegan alerts in 2017 after watching \u201cAmnesia,\u201d about an intergenerational friendship between a young man and an older woman in Ibiza. In one scene, the young man catches and guts a fish to use as bait.<\/em><\/p>\n

The quiet moment was \u201cbrutal\u201d for McCulloch. Having already removed fish from her diet over mercury concerns, she had recently turned to veganism for health reasons.<\/em><\/p>\n

Seeing the fish flayed open was too much.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt made me, I don\u2019t want to say nauseous, but it was intense,\u201d she said. \u201cI can handle violence, but this was violence of another kind”…<\/em><\/p>\n

McCulloch\u2019s reviews can inspire strong reactions online, including mockery on other social media platforms. That is in part because she unapologetically flouts popular opinion; she gave Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s \u201cApocalypse Now\u201d 1.5 stars, citing the \u201cunacceptable\u201d death of a real water buffalo during filming in the Philippines.<\/em><\/p>\n

She said she had received several death threats in the comments of her reviews, which disturbed her enough that she now only allows comments from people she follows.<\/em><\/p>\n

One supporter of McCulloch\u2019s mission is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which has its own Letterboxd account to recognize the winners of its annual \u201cOscat\u201d awards for animal advocacy in film.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lauren Thomasson, the director of PETA\u2019s Animals in Film and Television division, said in a statement that McCulloch was \u201ca great resource for kindhearted cinephiles who want to watch movies that match their morals.\u201d <\/em>SOURCE…<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

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