Missed that you had started this film club, I’ll definitely have to join in going forward.
Tampopo immediately became one of my favorite Japanese films when I watched it this year, though I personally just sliiightly prefer Supermarket Woman over this one.
I love 90% of Tampopo but the sex vignettes don’t really work for me, though I can sort of see what they’re doing. But the main ramen western storyline I find perfection. That might be why Supermarket Woman works slightly better for me, as it doesn’t have the offshoots of Tampopo.
I’m actually working my way through all Juzo Itami’s films now after exposure to this one impressed me so much.
For me, the main issue is that I draw a line between killing an animal for food and killing one for entertainment. If the turtle was killed and eaten, it wouldn’t have been as distressing to me, but watching an animal get killed so that it could be filmed for my entertainment is too much.
Maybe they ate the turtle after filming the shot, but we can’t really know, and I guess my natural tendency is to doubt, since I know that most actors don’t even actually eat the food that we see them eat onscreen. Maybe they had to kill three or four more turtles before they got the perfect shot for the movie.
I personally think it’s good to be aware of the harms caused by your own eating habits, and to not eat an animal that you wouldn’t also be willing to kill, but there’s a pretty strong difference between killing an animal to eat and killing one purely for the entertainment of other people.
Having seen Tampopo before and not remembering the turtle scene (I think it just wasn’t in the version I watched, but it’s possible I just blocked the memory), I think it’d be impossible for us to think of all the possible content warnings a film as individuals (especially when it’s been years since we’ve seen the movie or never have seen it at all). It’s nice though that there are websites for that now. I think one was shared on the main club thread.
I’m sorry for hyping up the movie without remembering/knowing about that scene.
I agree, but 1. I assumed the turtle was eaten (perhaps not though ) and 2. I do not think the scene was included as a sort of spectacle. Because
I see it more as an educational message - “this too is part of how the food you eat is produced” - in the same way that the movie clearly makes an effort to make the audience care about and appreciate aspects of running a ramen restaurant that they might not have thought about before despite probably having eaten at them several times.
I think most people know it on an intellectual level at the back of their minds, but that is seldom enough to motivate change in behaviours that have been ingrained as commons sense since childhood. You need something more visceral to spark your empathy and outrage, which being made complicit in killing a specific animal for food even just as a spectator might provide (I don’t have statistics, but there’s anecdotal evidence to this effect).
The way food is produced now hundreds of millions of people may never see an animal slaughtered unless it’s shown to them in media, which it very seldom is on account of it being uncomfortable and not entertaining, and I believe we would have way more vegetarians and animal rights activists if more people witnessed rather than heard about the actions most of us are complicit in anyway.
Seriously, I don’t think any apology is needed by anyone. Even if someone has seen a movie before, even multiple times, I don’t think they could or should be expected to remember every detail, or predict what may be upsetting to others. It’s not like any one of us is the movie creator.
By the way, I was looking through the Parents Guide on imdb, and it seems the youtube version I watched was missing several scenes (or I just totally forgot them?)
A nude/sexual scene occurs in which a woman’s breasts are shown multiple times from different angles. The scene becomes somewhat explicit, as a man puts salt and lemon juice on her breasts, and uses another food item on her vulva to arouse her. Her vulva is never seen (although barely covered in some shots), and no intercourse takes place.
The end credits is of a mother breast-feeding her baby. The camera pans closer to her and eventually zooms very close to the breast she is using to nurse her baby.
The second I don’t recall, but it’s such a natural act that it probably wouldn’t stand out to me especially in comparison to the sensual tension of the oyster and hotel scenes.
Hahaha, these were some of the WTF scenes of the movie, and topics of great discussion within the discord. But yeah YouTube wouldn’t show explicit scenes of course.
animal discussion
I guess I can see that being the case, though it would have been nice if they just faked it lol.
That’s true but even if people saw it, while we would get more vegetarians, I don’t think the industry would change. Governments do not care unless their hand is forced.
I just agree with what you said before that people really should put in more care into where they get their food from. It would actually benefit me if people did because that means maybe halal food would be more accessible. Like whenever I go to Canada to visit, the popeyes have halal chicken so I think that’s really nice, since in America popeyes and basically any known store is off limits besides stuff like fries, assuming they don’t cross contaminate…
Yeah, to be clear, I don’t think anyone needs to apologize for recommending the movie! None of you made this film, so you aren’t responsible for the decisions that the filmmakers made, and I don’t blame anyone for not being aware of the animal cruelty stuff or for not remembering that that scene happened. Mostly I just wanted to clarify why this was such a sticking point for me.
Oh yeah, both of those scenes are totally in the version that we watched, haha! I wonder if they omitted them on youtube because they didn’t want the film to get marked explicit?
animal cruelty discussion
Yeah, I’m in agreement with Haseeb in that I feel like they could’ve gotten the same message across with a fake turtle death instead of a real one. They could’ve found a way to still make it look very visceral without actually needing to kill a living animal.
I think there’s a place for showing real animal deaths in, say, a documentary, where the filmmaker is recording events that would still be happening with or without the film being made (like a documentary about how a slaughterhouse works, for instance, or a documentary about how real food is cooked and prepared). But for a film where everything else is being staged and performed by actors, you should either find a way to stage the animal cruelty as well or omit it from the film.
I guess for me, what it really comes down to is that if you have to do the bad thing for real in order to educate people about the bad thing, then that’s not really morally better, because, well, you’re still doing the bad thing .
Same goes for some roles that could be performed by child actors, but which involve things that could be traumatizing to the children even for them to merely perform the scenes without it being “real”. Like, yes, you could say that a film is educating people about child abuse, but if an actual child is traumatized in the making of the film, I don’t think the educational message is worth it. Adults can consent to getting hurt or doing unpleasant things for a movie, but animals and children can’t.
Do we know for a fact that it wasn’t staged? I mean, I know there were no other special effects in the movie, but still.
My hope is that they went to an actual professional (since it had to be done a special way) for the filming, and if the turtle was really killed, it was in the process of actual food preparation.
Fair points all around but for me showing the act, even outside of a documentary context can be a positive thing although I agree that if it wasn’t eaten afterwards then faking it would be much better. Also, I feel like killing a chicken for a broth that won’t be eaten and not showing the act is no less morally bad than killing a turtle that won’t be eaten and showing it, so from that perspective the movie industry ought to employ a lot of fake food (which I hope they are doing).
I guess I don’t personally know for a fact, though considering the film was made in the 80’s, the turtle and its death looked pretty realistic, and I don’t recall seeing any sort of “no animals were harmed in the making of this film” message" (though I suppose one could’ve been there and my Japanese reading ability failed me), I can’t say I’m particularly optimistic, unfortunately.
I’d hope that as well, though I’m somewhat doubtful it’d be used for actual food, since actors generally don’t even eat the food we see them putting into their mouths and chewing onscreen.
It’s a bit pessimistic, perhaps, but I tend to assume that filmmakers will go for the cheapest and easiest solution that they’re legally able to do, and they probably care a lot more about the financial logistics of their decisions rather than the moral implications.
So maybe they went and filmed that scene documentary-style and recorded an event that would be happening regardless of if Tampopo existed or not, or maybe they just brought in a bunch of extras and staged the whole thing and threw out the dead turtle after they got the take they wanted. It’s hard to say without knowing the exact behind the scenes stuff. My default position is just not trusting any of what I see.
Yeah, I think that’s a valid point, and I do think that props should be used instead if the food isn’t going to be eaten. I’d guess that it probably comes down to what’s easiest/cheapest for them to do. In some cases probably the real food is more expensive, and in other cases it’s probably cheaper.
Though, there are more and less humane ways to slaughter animals, and I don’t feel like I can trust a filmmaker to make good decisions there, since most of them would probably care more about getting the kind of shot that they want, and often the humane way to slaughter an animal doesn’t look as good on film. So I still feel that there is a difference between killing a real animal onscreen and wasting real meat (purchased from the store) in shooting a scene.
We certainly could make better strides as a society though to be less wasteful with food in general, especially food that something died for, and to have better practices for raising and slaughtering animals for consumption. I’m definitely in agreement there.
I’d like to clarify something: when I say that showing the scene is a good thing I don’t mean that as a holistic statement. When considering the morality of a situation we might distinguish between the intentions behind an action, the action itself, and the effects. In this case the intentions are unclear; I’d guess they’re somewhere between bad and dubious but they might potentially be good (often the individual actors in capitalism have good intentions even as they serve bad ends, e.g. many pharmaceutical researchers working for shitty companies), the act itself is bad (though not as bad if the turtle was killed by a professional and eaten), but I think the effects can be positive for the reasons mentioned regardless of the intentions and surrounding circumstances. In the worst case scenario I think it at least “says the quiet part out loud” which in many contexts is a good thing in spite of it not being a case of good people doing good in the world. I am not advocating for intentionally mistreating animals to convince people that animal cruelty is bad and I hope I haven’t given that impression^^;
I don’t think many people in Japan particularly care about animal rights, especially in comparison to the West. Given how it is today, I doubt they would have cared much in the 80s and I wouldn’t be surprised if no Japanese films used “no animals were harmed in the making of this film”
) and 2. I do not think the scene was included as a sort of spectacle. Because
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