Matthew Krouse
By April 9, officials of the National Council of SPCAs in South Africa had not viewed the Mexican film Love’s a Bitch (Amores Perros) with its controversial dogfight that almost led to its banning and subsequent age restriction in the United Kingdom last year.
They have, however, made contact with their British counterpart to ascertain whether the film that opens in South Africa today contains levels of cruelty that could affect its run here. In overview, spokesperson Chris Kuch noted that previous complaints about the handling of animals in the making of entertainment had centred mostly on the television industry. She drew on two examples where the NSPCA had forwarded complaints to broadcasters. The first concerned the British travel series Lonely Planet, which in one episode showed cockfighting and horsefighting. A tribunal ruled that the episode should go ahead with a warning to sensitive viewers. The second concerned popular local magazine programme Top Billing, which in its travel section showed a bullfight. Top Billing was ordered to insert two warnings, one before the entire programme and one just prior to the insert.
In response to the enquiry, the British SPCA inspectorate indicated that, in terms of the way the dogfight scene was handled in the making of Love’s a Bitch, “no British vet would approve of sedating or anaesthetising animals for the sake of filming and the scenes where dogs are ‘faced off’ against each other may well come under the heading of ‘cruelly goading to fury’, which would be in contravention of the 1937 Cinematograph Act.”
Kuch has also pointed out that, as far as film production using animals is concerned, “we are finding more and more that South Africa is being used to circumvent foreign restrictions. Cape Town has become a mini Hollywood. Foreign film crews whether in advertising or feature-film production often bypass the safety nets in place in South Africa.
“Local film-makers, like Leon Schuster, approach the NSPCA themselves, in which case we look and say we approve, or we change the way animals are being treated. But if we’ve got to get a court order we will. We’ve got qualified inspectors with nationally recognised qualifications. We base our work on either the location or the species. If it’s wildlife being filmed we may send someone from our wildlife unit, but if it’s dogs or cats the local SPCAs would be fine. Inspectors would look at two different aspects of the filming: the literal treatment of animals are they being rested, given water, food and shade but what they’d also have a handle on is the perception of the work itself.”
It is this aspect that was the major stumbling point in the release of Love’s a Bitch in the UK. The perception that the animals were being hurt led to its being slapped with an age limit of 18.
Eager to sidestep any similar concerns the South African public may have about the treatment of the dogs, the film’s distributor, Ster-Kinekor, released a statement this week that drew on the article originally published in The Guardian and reprinted alongside this. In it, Jonathan Romney points out that the animals were sedated for 20 minutes at a time, artificial blood was used to make them appear dead, and plastic muzzles were used to avoid bites.
Expectantly, officials of the NSPCA are bound to be in the audience watching Love’s a Bitch in the coming week.