Dogs Kill 9-Year-Old Boy in Australia
Just two days after I posted a recommendation for the film, A Cry in the Dark*, and 8 days after my friend Sandra's 6-month-old grand-nephew was eaten alive by a family dog in Virginia Beach, there is this tragic story of another child being mauled and eaten by dogs. Canines are NOT people, nor are they cartoon characters. They follow their instincts, and humans would do well to respect the basic "nature of the beast". Domesticated or not, dogs are unpredictable.
I saw A Cry in the Dark when it was released in 1988, at Carnegie Theater in in Manhattan. The film made an indelible impression on me. Here is a brief synopsis by Marshall Fine, from Amazon.com:
My Post of Saturday, July 9th, Repeated Below:
A Cry in the Dark, Starring the Great Meryl Streep and Sam Neill
Convicted in the Court of Public Opinion
The Press and the Public Accurately Depicted in all Their Vulture-Like Glory
Julia Louis-Dreyfus's Elaine on Seinfeld once offered a non sequitur at a party just to relieve her own boredom: "The dingo ate your baby," she blurted in a bad Australian accent. It was a reference to this harrowing film by director Fred Schepisi, based on a true story. Meryl Streep and Sam Neill play a married couple on a camping trip whose baby disappears. Streep maintains that the baby was carried off by a dingo--a wild dog--but she winds up as the victim of a hard-hearted prosecutor and the target of a nationwide hate campaign, in part because she was a religious fundamentalist who seemed unsympathetic and, thus, became an easy target for the tabloid press. Streep and Neill are both outstanding in this fierce, realistic drama about the ways faith can bolster even in the face of outrageous persecution. --Marshall Fine
I thought of the movie two weeks ago, and we bought it for our home film collection. Then two things happened last week that prompted me to mention A Cry in the Dark on Elegant Survivalist: the not-guilty verdict in Casey Anthony's child-murder trial and the intense public attention to the entire matter; and, the fatal mauling of our good friend Sandra's great-nephew Salvador by a dog last weekend. The Anthony story caused non-stop public outrage, while the death of a six-month-old baby at the teeth and claws of a dog has been completely ignored by the press. Irony and hypocrisy abound more than ever in the new world order, but not much has changed since the heart-wrenching true story of A Cry in the Dark.
©M-J de Mesterton
