Raising Awareness for Animals through Film
A study about changing worldviews from anthropocentric to ecocentric with a case study concerning dogs in fiction film.R.M. Derksen Supervisor: Dr. F.A.M. Laeven
10171150 Second reader: Dr. C.M. Lord
Rosa.derksen@student.uva.nl Media Studies: Film Studies
Word count: 22314 University of Amsterdam
Abstract
The purpose of this research is to gain insights in how to create a more ecocentric view of the world through the anthropocentric medium of fiction film. This is important, because our relationships with animals and nature are strained which makes solving the problem of global warming more difficult. A way to address these relationships can be done through fiction film, which is interesting, because fiction films are often seen as less serious than documentaries and might
therefore be more entertaining to watch. The starting point of this thesis is research into the field of animal studies and its connection to film which is then based on a literary study concerning the concepts of representation, feminism and postcolonialism to expose the awareness of certain power tools. On the other hand, a narratological and cinematographic analysis is done to indicate the meanings associated with these power tools. Two films (White God from 2014 and
White Dog from 1982) are analyzed and compared to each other, from which one
is a recent film that tries to create awareness for animals purposefully and the other, which is an older film, tries to create awareness for a human concept through the use of an animal. The conclusions that can be made through the analyses is that the recent film does create a more ecocentric view of the world by taking an animal standpoint cinematically and throughout the narrative, and that the older film supports a more anthropocentric view of the world by using the animals as a symbol for human behavior. The reason why the older film does not really address animal cruelty is then because times have changed and back then it was more urgent for our society to address the concept of racism than the abuse of animals on our planet Earth.
Ecocentrism, Animal Studies, Representation (Metaphors), Postcolonialism, Agency, Feral Feminism, Naturalisation, Anthropomorphism
Index
1. Introduction………4
2. Animals and Film………..……….9
2.1 Animal Studies……….…9
2.3 Canines and Cinema……….11
3. The Animal Standpoint………..……….12
3.1 Representation……….12
3.2 Postcolonialism………13
3.3 The Postcolonial Animal………..………..……..16
3.4 Feral Feminism……….18
3.5 Animal Human Relationships……….20
3.6 Animals and Children in Media……….22
4. Method of Analysis………25
4.1 Film Narratology……….25
4.2 Model of Analysis………26
5. Case Study Part One: White God (2014)……….28
6. Case Study Part Two: White Dog (1982)………....49
7. Conclusion………...66
8. Bibliography………71
8.1 Literature……….71
8.2 Films……….73
9. Appendix………..75
9.1 Short Summary White God………..75
9.3 Short Summary White Dog……….88 9.4 White Dog Notes………89
1. Introduction
The question if humans are the same as animals and what exactly separates us has been an ongoing debate for decades, as is how we should treat them. Why for instance is eating guinea pigs animal abuse in The Netherlands but a normal lunch or evening meal in Peru? How animals are different from each other is also a question that is still too difficult to answer for now, but one thing that is
happening nowadays because of these and other debates about animals and their rights, is that people are trying to raise more and more awareness for non-human animals by protecting their living grounds and showing how they are being mistreated or being slaughtered.
Another reason for writing about or researching an ecological subject like animals, is because we first of all need to get more aware about environmental injustice, which not only hurts our human environment but also affects animals like the polar bears, many sea animals and the living ground of creatures that live in the jungle. The environment affects animals and the other way around, so both often get hurt when one is being neglected or mistreated. In the successful Hungarian fiction film White God (Mundruczó 2014) we see how a fiction director tries to raise awareness for dogs by showing the cruelty that gets inflicted on them by humans. This film is about the ecological crisis, because the film critiques the meat industry apart from how the dogs are mistreated in Hungary. It shows some of the awful things that go on in that industry and how it looks up close from an animal standpoint and point of view.
An important notion that ecology professor Timothy Morton makes about the ecological crisis for example, is that we need to change our worldview and that we need to let go of our conception of nature, because this forms our view and it is a paradoxical human invented idea based on the natural. We have to rethink and reconstruct this so our view will change and we can handle the crisis in a better and less human centred way. Writing about an ecological subject like animals then is because we need to get more aware about environmental injustice that concerns humans and animals, and because it is believed that animals have profound agency which impacts our world. In White God this will be researched when analysing the film, because the director claims to be trying to give us a
human view, but also a view from the animal standpoint. This is still not
completely what Morton is getting at, but it can be argued that this film does try to reconstruct our vision. This animal point of view can maybe in the long run help change people’s view from anthropocentrism (a human centred view) into ecocentrism (an ecology centred view), which is Morton’s preferable new view of the world (2). This is important for environmental reasons as is shown in the above, but it is also scientifically important to research more about how to create awareness for ecological subjects in a ‘fun’ way like through the medium of fiction film instead of through a more serious minded documentary film. Especially this is important for me personally, because I find it interesting to research how to mix enjoyment and art with important ecological subjects that will better the world for everybody in it.
Going back to why the 2014 film White God is used as case study, is because it is a recent successful fiction film according to the reviews from for example The New York Times, Variety, Empire, Los Angeles Times, Roger Ebert and multiple others (MRQE), in which the film allegedly includes an animal perspective and raises awareness about how homeless dogs are mistreated in Hungary. The film won the Prize Un Certain Regard at the Cannes film festival and was selected as its nation’s official submission for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (Brooks 2014). Another reason for this film as the case study is because it is a fiction film (as was mentioned before) and not an animal documentary, which has the main purpose of showing real life animal extinction or cruelty. This film is therefore an interesting case of creating awareness for animals; it is not primarily made solely to create awareness, but also to entertain and be seen as a piece of art in a different way than documentaries do. The director Kornél Mundruczó explains in an interview that the idea for the film came to him when he visited a dog pound in Budapest. He was in shock for two weeks after his visit and he felt ashamed that the dogs were behind fences just waiting for their own death (Roberts 2015). He thus wanted to show his audience how the dogs, which he calls minorities in the interview, are treated. After the film was shot, he then also made sure that all the street dogs that were used in the film got new homes, which shows how
committed he was for the cause.
But his so called ‘revenge film’ (MRQE) has a second protagonist; a thirteen year-old girl, who can also be seen as a minority in the Hungarian society
according to Mundruczó. With these two different minorities (the term minorities is used here to address groups that have been treated as lesser throughout history, not to address groups that literally concern lesser people than bigger groups), Mundruczó touches upon some social threats like xenophobia and the egotistical minds of humans who are indifferent to the suffering of others, human or non-human creatures (Buder 2015). The film thus wants the audience to be aware of the animal cruelty (that was the first premise of the film (Roberts 2015)), but it also gives a human perspective which connects directly to the animal cruelty that is witnessed in the film. Is this film then really predominantly about animal cruelty or does the human narrative take over and lead us away from the animal protagonist?
It is interesting to compare the analysis of this film to an older film with almost the same name in English; White Dog (Fuller 1982). In the already mentioned interview, Mundruczó is asked about this film because of the name, but also because the film is about minorities. In Samuel Fuller’s critical and controversial film from 1982, a white dog that has been trained to attack black people gets retrained by a black animal trainer to stop attacking black people. The film questions through this story if racism is a treatable problem or an incurable condition. Fuller claims to show with this film that racism, or even better, the feeling of hatred, is a ‘poison’ that can never truly be banished from those it infects (Taylor 2008).
Both films are trying to critique things that affects minorities with a dog as one of the main characters and in this way raise awareness for them. In Fuller’s film though, a lot of metaphors in the dog’s behaviour can be found which reflect human behaviour, whilst Mundruczó claims in his interviews that the dogs in his film do not reflect human behaviour and therefore do not function as metaphors. Using an animal as a metaphor can be considered as objectifying an animal, which is not very positive when trying to bring awareness to him or her, because it diminishes the animal to an object. It is therefore interesting how the analysis of
White God compares to an older film like White Dog, because White God claims to
portray dogs in a different and better way without symbolizing them. White Dog will thus be used as a comparison and White God is the main focus of this research.
A problem with the film medium is that animals will always be humanized through this human made medium. And in White God the animals are not only humanized by the medium itself, but also because it is claimed that the dogs begin to act in a certain human way in the end of the film. They are coming together and rising up against the humans, taking revenge, which is not really possible for dogs to do offscreen. On the other hand, the film does try to give the dogs a more realistic animal standpoint. In White God we sometimes see through the eyes of the dogs which gives us their non-human animal point of view and we therefore get a more realistic view of how homeless dogs live in Hungary without any humans around. It will for this reason be interesting to research the point of view of the dogs in this film and how the director tries to raise awareness for them. In what ways do the dogs have agency for example and how do they attain and use it?
The starting point of this thesis is research into the field of animal studies and its connection to film. This is then based on a literature study on the one hand which incorporates concepts from feminism and postcolonialism to expose the awareness of certain power tools. On the other hand, a narratological and cinematographic analysis will be done to indicate the meanings associated with these power tools. The concept of feminism and animal studies can be connected to each other fairly well when researching how animals are represented in film, because there are claims that some forms of feminism are ‘domesticated’ and that some forms are ‘feral’, which are features that can also be found in animal studies and thus in the dogs in White God and White Dog (Struthers Montford & Taylor 5). Through this link it is important to look at representation in general from which feminist representation makes a good case when researching animal representation, because it is also focussed on minorities like postcolonial theories.
The theoretical framework starts with literature about how and why we look at animals which derives from for instance Steven Best, John Berger and Steve Baker. Literature about the concepts of representation and postcolonialism are discussed through the ideas of Rosemarie Buikema, Iris van der Tuin, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and others of which the idea about the postcolonial animal comes fore mostly from Philip Armstrong. This theory focusses on the suffering of the non-human animal as a sort of ‘slave’ of the humans and will be a helpful concept to look at when researching how the dogs are represented in our
contemporary society (Armstrong 2002). The idea of feral feminism and how there are different categories of animals living in our society is mainly explained by Kelly Struthers Montford and Chloë Taylor which then leads to ideas about animal-human/child relationships which derive from for instance Erica Fudge, Annabelle Sjaloff and George Lakoff. One other piece of literature that was read and considered for these paragraphs is the book The Animated Bestiary: Animals,
Cartoons, and Culture from Paul Wells (Wells, 2008), which had some interesting
ideas on anthropomorphism, but was too focused on animation. The last pieces of literature that are used can be found in the narratological and cinematographic parts of the analyses which are mostly based on the ideas of Peter Verstraten who also mentions David Bordwell.
The main question that will be asked throughout the thesis is the following: what insights do the analyses of White God and White Dog provide concerning a more ecocentric view on the world? Other questions that will be used when trying to answer this in the analyses and conclusion are the following: how to define an animal perspective1 in White God and White Dog; how is the agency of the animal
and human characters constructed cinematically and throughout the narrative? Are the characters being objectified in any way and how is this connected to postcolonialism and the ‘Other’? And: in what ways are the animal characters anthropomorphized and does this exercise control over them or does it reinforce them in any way?
2. Animals and Film
1 An animal perspective means that a creator tried to create an image/feeling (film) from the point of view of in animal visually and mentally. This does not mean that there are no instances of a human perspective; both can be present.
2.1 Animal Studies
Animal studies has been growing rapidly since the last three decades and has moved throughout the humanities, social sciences and the fine arts, crossing many fields like anthropology, political science, philosophy, feminism, queer theory and also media/film studies (Best 9-10). It is first of all important to look at the term animal studies, which does not imply that this field looks at non-human animals in isolation from human animals, but it rather looks at the similarities and differences between them. When researching animal studies we thus especially look at the dualism between human and non-human, like for example the dualism in
feminism between men and women. To then show how animal studies is a logical step from other scientific fields, especially other dichotomies like feminism, is by the following quote of Steven Best:
“How the Western world fractures the evolutionary continuity of
human/nonhuman existence by reducing animals to (irrational, unthinking) “Others” who stand apart from (rational, thinking) human subjects. Animal studies can show, moreover, that the same discourses used to devalue other sentient beings as “animals” – mindless, “savage,” disorderly “beasts” to whom humans have no moral obligations and treat as they see fit – are used to exploit and massacre human groups (e.g., Jews, women, and people of colour) once they are dehumanized and reduced to “animals” themselves. Thus, the connections between human oppression of other animals and of themselves are deep and profound (Ibidem 16).”
Taking the perspective from an animal point of view or ‘the animal standpoint’ is thus getting more popular, which not only happens because people want to create more awareness for animals and ecological subjects without humanizing it all too much, but also because this may help us reflect on human behaviour better as we can see in Best’s quote in the above. This does not mean that we should ‘abuse’ the animal point of view for this reason by creating again an anthropocentric worldview, but it can also help with other dichotomies in life, like for example humans and plants and other species of nature on earth. This also relates back to feminism and racism as is shown in the above, and how oppression in general works in the world, like with postcolonialism for example. The animal point of
view should therefore be seen from a co-evolutionary standpoint in which animals and humans are both dynamic agents in their own right (Best 17).
When integrating animal studies into film studies we can make a
comparison with overall looking at film and at animals. Film is historically tied to issues of power and identification which can be connected to some of the most important theories that were used when analysing film in history, like Laura Mulvey’s feminist film theory, Christiaan Metz’s psychoanalysis or Jean-Louis Baudry’s apparatus theory (Pick 2015). It can be stated that looking at animals in film is also about power and identification, which brings us to the work of John Berger and his book Why Look at Animals? (Berger 2009). He claims that animal imaginary compensates for our lack of engagement with animals and that we acerbate power and our ‘higher’ position through images of animals. In modern culture though, we no longer need to look at imagery of animals to feel more powerful. We now look at animal images that reflect ourselves back to us. We thus use the animal image to look at ourselves (Popova).
Something that John Berger does not discuss is how we are looking at animals; how for example cinema techniques or other technologies are used to portray animals in certain ways and in comparison to humans or other subjects. How are the technologies used to show us these relationships and how are they used for the creation of awareness for the dogs in White God for example. Do close-ups create a sense of intimacy with animals which cannot be created without film? And how does this affect our feelings towards our relationship with animals 2?
2.2 Canines and Cinema
2 An interesting theory, but not one that is sustainable, is one of Akira Mizuta Lippit, who argues that film is a site for the mourning of animals. With this he means that watching film makes us think about the animal’s and human’s relation to mortality (Wolfe 81). This is interesting, because film can be seen as something immortal. A living thing caught on film will always stay alive on that film even though they have been long gone. This can also be reversed though, because a living thing on a piece of technology can be considered dead even when the person is still alive. This theory will be interesting even though it is very suggestive, because comparisons between human deaths and animal deaths is a recurring topic in both films.
Before researching these questions it is interesting to look at how dogs specifically have been portrayed on screen until now. Rudd Weatherwax, who is the original trainer of Lassie in The Story of Lassie from 1994 (Petrie 1994) claims that there are four eras of dogs in cinema. In the first era in the early 1920’s, dogs were used as comical effects. The dog-actors were reading books, smoking cigars and
pranking the human characters by making them trip; ‘wonderdogs’ is also how they were called (Fudge 78). In the era after that, around the mid and late 1920’s, the brave German Shepherds came into play like the famous Rin Tin Tin from the series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (Walker & Beaudine 1954-1959). In this series the dog was a rescuer and did not smoke or read books. Instead of being a sub-human with comical potential, the Shepherd became ‘man’s best friend’ which influenced the narrative in a more dramatic way (Fudge 79). For the next era to come, Weatherwax stated that smaller dogs came into the picture, and that they were not the main character in film anymore, because the genuine dog story stories were over. Dogs were just used to help their owners or just follow them around. The fourth era of Weatherwax, which mainly consisted out of the Lassie films, showed that the dog can become a main character again. And in 2002, when Erica Fudge’s book Animal (Fudge 2002) was released, four years post Lassie, there was still annually much money spend on their canine actors (78).
The dogs in these different eras of film went from being a comical effect to a rescuing best friend, and from being a helper to being the protagonist of the film. They have been respected, but also used as a sidekick, and there was almost no genuine awareness created for them. The dog in White Dog for example is used as metaphor for racism and belonged to the era of just being a helper.
Nowadays there are not many hit series or films with dogs or other animals in the lead. Many animated films are about animals though, like Finding Nemo (Stanton 2003), Zootopia (Howard & Moore 2016) or the Shrek series (Adamson et al. 2001, 2004, 2007, 2007, 2010)). It is therefore interesting to look at dogs in non-animated fiction films from the twenty-first century like White God that claims to create awareness for dogs.
3. The Animal Standpoint
3.1 Representation
Before researching postcolonialism it is important to look at representation, because theory about representation forms the beginning of postcolonial theory and the foundation of film theory. The theory that will be discussed will have a feminist approach, because it revolves around a difference between the superiority of men and inferiority of women which can be related to the superiority of human over animal. The chapter about feral feminism also shows how animal studies and feminism are connected to each other and how a feminist approach to representation suits when looking at animals. In both films then, the leading characters who own the dogs are both women who both struggle with their place in society. A more feminist approach is therefore chosen, because the agencies of these women and how they are portrayed next to the dogs is
important when researching how the dogs are portrayed.
Some theorists believe that the image always has the last say when questioning the ethics of representation, and not the maker of the image. So even when the makers try to convey certain meanings into their images, the viewer can always see this differently and see them in a way that is not intended. These theorists give the viewer a lot of influence, because this basically claims that context does not matter if it is not portrayed in the imagery (further critique on this idea will come back in the paragraph Film Narratology). A more logical way of understanding representation is formed by the feministic semiotics, which follows the postconstructionalist view on language. This basically claims that images and texts go before the people and things they are about. Not in a causal way, but in a way that a girl knows she is a girl before she is one, because she is named and seen as a girl before her own knowledge for example. Our language thus contains certain connotations that are already there before we are born. (Buikema & van der Tuin 89) This is the same with images, texts or films about or of animals, but animals cannot think about this themselves; about how they are represented and in what ways that influences their lives. It is therefore the responsibility of humans to reflect on the portrayal of animals with a postconstructionalistic view on imagery and texts that keeps the connotations that are attached in mind. This will
then create different images and thoughts about these connotations that will show animals as causal beings who influence the environment and humans (Ibidem 90).
3.2 Postcolonialism
A connection between how animals are represented in images and colonialism, is how the animal is often exploited on the image just like the colonialized slaves were back in the day. Postcolonialism then reflects on the current representation of animals in which they cannot influence how we depict them which means that we can appropriate their image/bodies. But before bringing animals into this it is necessary to explain how postcolonialism works in general when it concerns humans.
In the postcolonial debate it is important that the person in question can tell his or her side of the story, because else there are only Western
representations of the ‘Other’. This is important for the construction of the identity of the ones being post-colonized (Buikema & van der Tuin 96). The common denominator of postcolonial critique is that it gives an instrument to open up the still working legacies and discursive effects of the colonial drifts of former empires; to study and problematize this. Postcolonialism looks at the perspective that is left out by colonization. It for example problematizes the concept of Western culture, a culture that had the need to have power over others, to control, extort and silence other cultures (Ibidem 98).
In historical aspect, postcolonialism refers to a period in which colonized countries became independent, but it is not certain if the postcolonial historical awareness arose before or after the independency of the colonies. This and the question if the colonial hangover will ever subside is also questionable in the postcolonial debate. Something that is a certainty in this debate though, is that this awareness always arrives somewhere where a first awareness of the oppression and the necessity to resist against the colonial hegemony develops, which is something that still exists in this day and age (Ibidem 98).
What lacks in this theory is that the debate is noticeably genderblind and it has kept masculine ideas about nationalism and resistance standing (Ibidem 99).
The same can be said about how it does not concern anything about animals (and nature) either even though animals have played major roles in the history of colonization. The studies in which slaves were compared to animals like in the case of Sarah Baartman for example, who they believed was a closer relative to the orangutan than to the human race. She was depicted similarly and equally being used and abused which is an interesting thing to keep in mind when researching postcolonialism these days (Ibidem 83-84).
Circling back again to the ‘Other’, Gayatri Spivak, a well-known feminist, argues that the category of ‘third world women’ is a discursive effect instead of an existing, identifiable reality. To find out if the different women in different colonial histories opposed to their oppressors in any way is not really possible, because there are no records of it. Spivak’s conclusion is therefore that the ‘Subaltern’ cannot speak for themselves (1988: 308). With the term subaltern she means the population which is politically, socially and geographically outside of the
hegemonic power structure of the colony and of the colonial homeland. But she especially focusses on women, because they are in almost all cases also repressed by the men in their own population. The reason why they cannot speak is because the subaltern’s voice and agency is first of all imbedded in their patriarchal conventions of religious and moralistic behaviour and second of all because their voice and agency is imbedded in the British colonial representations in which the subaltern are victims of their barbaric culture. The subjectivity of the subaltern disappears simply at the moment when they become the object of the conflict between tradition and emancipation. Hence they can only be represented by others; which always leads to deformation (Buikema & van der Tuin 101-102).
Spivak, who is inspired by Karl Marx and ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte’ (Marx 1852), has analysed to which extent the suppressed can
be represented as the subject of knowledge:
“they cannot represent themselves, but have to be represented by others (Spivak 1994: 71).”
With this she aims at the double meaning of representation as it becomes visible in the two German terms for this word. The first one is ‘Vertreten’ which refers to ‘to speak in the name of’ in politics (the power of politics; one dog that speaks for all) and the second one is ‘Darstellen’ which means ‘depicting’ in the
forms of art or philosophy (symbolical value; what a dog can represent) (70). These two meanings of representation, that refer to the forming of the state and the law on the one hand and to the poststructuralistic theory of the subject on the other, are connected to each other but can never collide with each other. This is because the two connected meanings refer to the relations between nations states (geopolitical domination) and global capitalism (economic extortion) (70) (Buikema & van der Tuin 102). Theorists cannot afford to overlook this double meaning, because it is important to keep the fact in mind that the representation of the world hides the choice for and need of ‘heroes’, fatherly representatives and power resources (Spivak 1994: 74) (Buikema & van der Tuin 102).
Unless Western intellectuals, and thus also Western feminists, focus their interest on the aesthetic dimension of political representation like in for example fictional film, the voice of the subaltern will stay silenced. What Spivak ultimately wants is to keep postcolonial feminists from seeing the Other and subaltern as an object of knowledge. She mentions the following:
“The subaltern is not able to speak. It has no point to put ‘women’ on the global to do list as a holy item. The problems of representation are not swept of the table by doing this. The female intellectual as such has a well-defined task which she cannot remise easily (Spivak 1988: 308).”
Spivak problematizes the validity of Western representations of third world women and she pleas for Western feminists to engage critically to expose the position of the marginalized (Buikema & van der Tuin 102).
One of Spivak’s most ethical gestures is that she keeps referring to the way that people are not listening to the stories of the women themselves. We always try to give meaning to certain happenings, for example to suicides. We should not always try to give our meaning to them, but we could try to only tell exactly what happened. If we give our meaning to their stories, we could be silencing them again (Ibidem 103). With animals this is more difficult of course, but they do also have a voice and a language of sorts. According to Spivak we should therefore probably try to understand their way of communicating and thus their behaviour (sounds, body movement and actions), and try to register them objectively without anthropomorphizing them into our organized societies too much.
Have the dogs in White God and White Dog stopped being important as dogs, because they keep representing other things, like rights for humans for example, dependent from the interests of those representing them? Is there a collision present of representation (Vertretung) in the political sense and
representation (Darstellung) in the sense of the portrayal of subject construction? Can the one eliminate the other? Even though the director’s intentions might be meant well, we can still question if his representation of the dogs does not colonize them again. There is for example a risk that this representation forms a paradigm of victimization. It can make the dogs into victims instead of strong animals with agency. Their whole development in the films can then solely be accounted on the harm which was done to them and not on the development they made on their own (Buikema & van der Tuin 104-105).
A last concept which is important in all chapters and paragraphs of this thesis and postcolonial theory is objectification. This is the foundation of sexism and the foundation in the lack of animal awareness. It is then also a foundation in the critique towards postcolonial theory in a similar manner. When women are for example only portrayed as love interests, just characters who are there to watch but who do not contribute anything real to the film, shows that they are being objectified. Portraying animals solely as a person’s sidekick or as a means to an end is taking advantage of them; objectifying them. But is objectifying animals that bad if they do not even know it is happening? This is not a relevant question though, because this thesis is about creating awareness about ecological subjects for people so they can change their view on how we treat animals and on how we treat the world, which might help the ecological crisis. It is therefore wrong to objectify animals even if they do not know they are being objectified
3.3 The Postcolonial Animal
Philip Armstrong wrote a short article about the postcolonial animal, which he claims is an animal that can be related to the postcolonial human. We are for example protecting animals more and more since we gave them animal rights in the Western world, but we are still colonializing them in many other ways. The dogs in White God and White Dog for example can be seen as postcolonial animals who have certain animal rights, but are still dominated, abused and used as
workers in other ways. Armstrong does point out some differences between the postcolonial animal and human, because he does not want to insult anyone. One objection for pursuing the postcolonial animal for example, might be that it insults colonized humans, because it trivializes their slave trade history. But on the other hand, is there an absolute distinction between humans and animals? People believe in the evolutionary theory for example, but do not act differently towards animals necessarily. Still, probably no colonized peoples will like being compared to animals, so how can we respectfully talk about the postcolonial animal (Armstrong 413-414)?
A smart way to go about it according to Armstrong, is to find similarities in the colonizers and how they treat the ones being colonized; looking at the humans who centred their rational ego or self, trying to ‘civilize’ savage cultures and savage nature (414). When researching the agency of the dogs in White God then, maybe we should not forget to look at the agency of the majority of the humans, or as would Armstrong call them, the colonizers in the film. Armstrong states though that we still come back to the fact that postcolonial humans and animals have been looked at in this certain way, like slaves, by the colonizers. But on the other hand, they are different in one being a human animal and the other a non-human animal. We should thus not only research the comparisons between the
postcolonial human and animal, but in particular the differences, because they will show even more new theory and history about both the human and animal. The human protagonist and her dog in White God and White Dog should therefore be analysed in the differences between their agencies. This will then show us the agency of the dogs in the film in comparison to the other human actors.
The last important notion that Armstrong points out in his article is that animals were established through Darwin in his evolutionary theory, but they disrupt the smooth Enlightenment ideology, because they are not passive objects that lay still so Western experts can map and analyse them. Animals do have agency though according to Armstrong, because they affect the environment and history (415). They should therefore also be seen as such.
When researching the word agency in the Oxford dictionary the following is to be found that concerns the concept of agency for this case study:
‘canals carved by the agency of running water’
1. 2.1[count noun] A thing or person that acts to produce a particular result:
‘the movies could be an agency moulding the values of the public’ (Oxford)
When referring to animal agency this will be the basis idea of that concept. When an animal causes a change in the narration of the film it will be animal agency. The same goes for when an animal influences the mise-en-scène and cinematography. Important though is to keep in mind that animal agency is always qualified by the lack of power that animals have in comparison to humans. Agency should
therefore be seen in human-animal relations in the films, because it outlines the impact that animals have on humans and the other way around. Agency is not a static thing which an organism always possesses, but it should be seen in a relational sense in which it emerges as an effect performed and generated in configurations of different materials. This means that anything can have the power to act; humans, animals and non-animals/humans (Burt 86).
Lastly, agency can also be strengthened by focalisation. When Hagen from
White God for example manages to escape, he is put in the middle of the screen
with a light shining only on him. The shot shows that everything at that moment in the film is about him and his escape, which thus empowers Hagen’s agency even more3. Focalisation, music, colours and other cinematic techniques and effects
thus lay in the extension of agency.
3.5 Feral Feminism
When analysing the agency in the films between the characters it is important to look at how these characters are categorized. The concept of feral feminism shows an interesting idea about how the treatment of animals and women can be related to each other, but also that there are different categories of animals that are living in our society. This first idea can be seen when we look at how the heterosexist patriarchy has been described as a process of domestication in which the targeted involved are tamed and broken down. The radical feminist theorists and queer theorists who have argued this have also theorized about feralization or
3 Hagen is put in this situation and image by the director which limits his agency because of the medium, but it can be appropriated by Hagen as is seen in the stills that are used in the analyses.
rewildings to attain a less sexist society. This is interesting, because ‘feral’ is an adjective which normally refers to non-human animals or to small human children who have escaped from their domestication or captivity and have been left to fend for themselves (Struthers Montford & Taylor 5).
In another topic concerning feral feminism it is visible that most humans tend to put animals in two categories, either wild/non-domesticated or
domesticated. It is stated by Kelly Struthers Montford and Chloë Taylor though that there is another category called liminal animals. These are non-domesticated animals that live in urban and suburban spaces and are ought to be living
somewhere where there are no humans present. They are seen as trespassers and we often try to exterminate them out of our houses, such as mice and squirrels (Struthers Montford & Taylor 6). A parallel between these liminal animals and the society we live in can then be seen in for example how vegans stand in a carnist society or feminists in a misogynist society. Another parallel can be made between liminal animals and anticolonializers that lived in colonial states. The most
important similarity in these cases is that the minorities4 and the dominators are
drawn to the feral, because it represents the prospect of escaping the relation of control or domination. Postcolonialism is therefore connected to this, even though it is a bit more subtle in the exertion of control. The agency these domesticated animals, liminal animals and wild animals have or do not have will be interesting to research in the analyses of the films, because it can reflect on how we see them in our society and thus our particular view on society. This might be one of the key subjects to a more ecocentric view of the world.
A last important connection which can be made concerning the concept of feral feminism stems from the feminist theorists Gayle Rubin and Marilyn Frye who claim that sexual oppression can be the domestication of the human female. Breaking and training an animal can be compared to the sex/gender system according to them, and going feral is like undoing gender according to Judith Butler (Butler 2004) (Struthers Montford & Taylor 6-7).
3.6 Animal Human Relationships
Three types of animals have been described and related to each other in the last chapter, but how is the relationship between those animals and humans subjects?
4 As is stated in the introduction, the word minorities describes a group that most of the time has an inferior status in the society. It does not describe a group of lesser subjects than the majority.
In Erica Fudge’s book Animal (Fudge 2002) she presents an argument to rethink our relationships with animals, because of all the inherent contradictions that ask us to answer to them. One juxtaposition for example, which has already been mentioned in the introduction, is that we as humans in Western society have animals as pets and close friends in our homes, but on the other hand we consume them for our dinners. A similar juxtaposition is the one of our
anthropomorphic representation of animals in children books and films in which they show moral guidelines, while we at the same time vivisect those same animals in school. This asserts the absolute difference to those moral guidelines. These contradictions are constantly in play with each other in our relationships, but are mostly forgotten because we do not think the same of a cow and a cat (Ibidem 9-10). This is interesting when looking at White God, because the dogs are on the one hand our pet friends, but they are also used to earn money in
dogfights as if they were commodities. There is thus an extra aspect to Fudge’s juxtaposition in that they are used to earn money with by hurting them.
Something which is important according to Fudge is that the focus should not only be on contemporary culture, but that our history also needs some revaluating5. She explains in an example about the out-lawing of dog-carts in the
nineteenth century that we did not mainly do this for the welfare of the dogs. Instead, the law was insisted on, because the people did not like to look at the visible animal abuse, and the dirt and disease that the animals created. The animals were also later killed after the reinforcement of this law, because they were too expensive to maintain now they did not earn money for their owners anymore (Fudge 10). We therefore always have to analyse situations in which humans claim to help animals, because of our unconscious anthropocentric view of the world.
Humans also tend to naturalize our relationships with animals, such as eating them, caging them, experimenting on them, hunting and wearing them, but is this truly natural (Fudge 11)? Morton would probably agree it is not, because we made this word up and it does not suffice to the actual meaning that nature conveys for us. Something that Fudge then wonders about, is what exactly is being
5 This is also one of the reasons why the 1982 film White Dog has been chosen as comparison and not another film from the twenty-first century.
naturalized6. She mentions anthropologist Annabelle Sjabloff’s book Reordering
the Natural World (Sjabloff 2001) in which Sjabloff supports the idea that we live by the concept of metaphors, which is something that was first claimed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnsen (Lakoff & Johnsen 2011). This is one of the most
important structures which we use to give our lives meaning with. The metaphor Sjabloff then writes about is the figure of speech where aspects of one thing are applied to the other (Fudge 11). When we for example compare a person to a pig, they are based on ‘likeness in difference’. They are both known for certain traits which are comparable to both creatures, like greediness or dirtiness. The metaphor works here because it brings the person and the pig together which is not necessarily a mixture or cross-breed, but a new way of looking at existing creatures (Ibidem 11).
Film is a very useful medium to create or show metaphors in, such as between humans and animals. We make them through our experience of the known when we try to understand animals or other things. We give animals character and meaning on its likeness and difference to ourselves. Representing animals is therefore a difficult thing to do, because we can only do this in metaphors according to Sjabloff. She claims that we are lacking when we try to represent animals as how they truly are: animals, which falls in line with what Spivak explains about third world women7. The radical otherness of other life
forms needs to be acknowledged in which their value is to be seen outside the human ethical domain (Fudge 12). Sjabloff then suggests another kind of metaphor called ‘practical poetry’, but Fudge and Spivak probably as well, does not think another metaphor will make us understand more. This is because if we create something new again, we will probably still not change the old relations about the natural world and just keep relocating them again and again. Instead we should analyse our behaviour towards animals and acknowledge the often cruel contradictions in the way we think about and live with animals. This will then hopefully change our lived relation to the animals (Fudge 12).
6 The naturalization of our relations with animals in Western countries can be connected to for example Christianity according to Fudge, because the bible claimed our domination over animals and teaches us an anthropocentric view of the world. We now do not need Christianity or any other religion any more though to treat animals this way, which shows us that this is a naturalized happening (Fudge 16).
7 The only thing Spivak would agree on with Sjabloff is that we are lacking. Spivak would not agree to create more metaphors. She would want a realistic and objective approach in which we would just look at what animals are doing; we should not create an alternative reality through the use of metaphors again.
3.7 Children and Animals in Media
An interesting observation in media made for children is that they especially feature a lot of animals in their books and films. A reason for this, according to Freud, can be the lack of arrogance children possess, which makes them unaware of the possible domination they can have over animals. It is therefore important to look at the anthropomorphism in these books and films, because they offer us an insight in the many different possibilities (Fudge 60).
Fudge explains that many animals in children books of the 20th century are
vehicles for moral teaching; a vehicle for conservative philosophy. There are often only animals in these books and feature no humans. As time grew there would also be stories in which humans would engage with animals like they were human. In this case it can be claimed that the animals are us, because we forget that the animals are animals (Ibidem 72). An interesting film which showcases a different world again is for example Charlotte’s Web (Winick 2006) in which the animals can understand each other and humans, but humans cannot understand them. A child is the intermediary here that helps the animals. She is the only one that can hear the conversations that go on in the barn. When she claims that the animals are speaking to each other, her father first blames it on her lively imagination, but he also says that maybe their ears are not as sharp as his daughter’s. This relates back to Freud in the sense that when we get older, our innocence gets lost which creates a distance between us and the natural world; when we get older we turn away from animals. Fudge explains that there are two kinds of anthropomorphism to be found in this film. In one, all are equal, animals and humans, but on the other hand this equality is only understood by the child. This makes us question if we would ever treat animals the way we do now if we could hear them speak (Fudge 73-74). Then again, it also parallels back to the loss of communication that happens when a child grows up; this melancholically feeling of loss we have when we realize we are not children anymore (Ibidem 74).
Relating this back to White God is interesting, because we see a girl who is struggling with adulthood and with understanding Hagen. She is also the only one who understands the dogs in the film the best out of everyone. She connects with them by playing the trumpet, but it goes beyond connecting. She is almost
communicating or talking with them in that sense, because they seem to understand her when she plays the trumpet.
Another kind of anthropomorphism that Fudge writes about is seen in the film Lassie Come Home (Wilcox 1943). In this film the dog cannot talk to any human and we only get a human interpretation of a canine situation. Because we can see the dog in its particular situations and from its point of view, it is sort of given a human thought process. Not that the dog can think in any human way, but because we know what it wants: it wants to go home to its master, so it wants to be mastered and loved (Fudge 75). This film shows us again a loss of
communication between the animals and the humans. One character even says the following to Lassie:
“ye understand a lot, don’t ye?’ ‘Nay, that’s the pity of it. Ye can understand some o’ man’s language, but man isn’t bright enough to understand thine. And yet it’s us that’s supposed to be most intelligent (Wilcox 1943)!”
In all three films, Lassie Come Home, White God and White Dog, the dogs are anthropomorphized first of all by the medium, but also because their behaviour is staged to support a human narrative. Without the use of anthropomorphism it is hard for humans to understand animals, and without understanding, it is hard to feel compassionate for them. We claim to know when animals are happy or sad and we give them these human traits when we want to understand them. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because without relating to them in this humanized way and feeling compassionate for their ‘feelings’, what would stop us from killing them all or treating them all even more badly than what we are already doing?
Anthropomorphising animals can thus be used to create awareness for animals, but it is not always beneficiary for this cause. It can for example create a anthropocentric view by showing the traits that the animals in the real world do not have, which can give the impression that real animals are lesser beings, because they do not act like the humanized animals in the film.
Anthropomorphising animals can then also be seen as a way of exercising control over animals and nature in general, which humans overall seek for. This control gives us the feeling that we understand these animals and forces of nature better, who are less relatable to us than other human beings. But this can also be seen the other way around. By giving these animals more power (by humanizing
them in a certain way), they are not always here for us as humans, but they are here to create awareness for themselves. Our dominion becomes undone, which is something that can be scary for humans who then feel less important. This feeling is something we can fore mostly relate back to the older days, because this is not that scary anymore because of the globalized and more intricate knowledge humans now have (Fudge 77).
4.1 Film Narratology
In Peter Verstraten’s 2006 book Filmnarratologie (in English: Film Narratology) (Verstraten 2006) he explains that it is important to write about narratology, because film has changed so much over the course of the years. Recent films do not always follow the basic narrative structure of the classical storyline which all old Hollywood films used to have. The narrative climax of the film Magnolia (Anderson 1999) for example does not have a logical cause and effect, but things just happen without a cause, making the film skip from one subject to the other without giving the viewer direct causal information.
A second reason why film narratology is important to Verstraten, is because of the new developments in the field of new media in which we can locate a filmic culture and the other way around. New media theorists are trying to create a language and grammar, but they have trouble with the narratological aspect (Verstraten 15). Film narratology can be helpful when localising narrative structures in new media, but film narratology itself is also a complicated and multi-layered kind of storytelling. Before analysing the films in this research it is important to determine how narratives are and can be constructed so this can be used for the methodology of the analyses.
Verstraten’s Filmnarratologie will be used predominantly instead of, for example, David Bordwell’s cognitive approach (Bordwell & Thompson 2004), because Bordwell swears by a cognitive narrative process without specific narrative authority. The reason why Bordwell’s approach is mentioned here is because his research tradition, which started in the 1980’s, was one of the first that rallied against the psychoanalytic paradigm that ruled film studies. It tried to take a different and more ‘scientific’ approach to film studies and with this made the field substantially more interdisciplinary. But Bordwell’s cognitive approach lacks certain substance, because the storytelling gets ‘beheaded’8 before it starts.
Bordwell swears by a cognitive storytelling without a specific narrator and claims that most stories have an ‘invisible’ narrator which concludes that the narrator is primarily a projection of the spectator. When following this rule, there is no defined narrator, because the story of the film is predominately taking place in the
mind of the spectator (Verstraten 15). Verstraten proposes a more
poststructionalistic visual narratology in which the filmic storyteller has a different identity than the literary storyteller. Music and image can portray different stories and therefore it is important to separate a storyteller on film and a storyteller on sound, which the filmic storyteller brings together. The identity of the filmic storyteller is thus layered (Ibidem 17). Different filmic storytellers can be seen in
White God like the external storyteller Kornél Mundruczó who is the director of
the film and the internal storytellers Hagen and Lili who are the two protagonists of the film. This is the same in White God wherein the director is the external storyteller and the protagonists are the internal storytellers.
Returning to the control of the viewer over the narrative, Verstraten explains that the role of the viewer is reserved for being the addressee. The narrative is based on the teamwork between the film and the viewer (Ibidem 17). A certain attitude is required of the viewer though to attain the similar narratives in analyses of viewers (Ibidem 29). He explains that the main principles of the narrative are the following; time, space and causality. When looking at the agency of the actors in the films, the causality needs to be analysed, because that shows what is driving the story a certain way. The content is the bare display of the plot and that it is a reduction to: what is it about? The story tactic contains the streamlining of the content. The form refers to decorating the content with the question: how and with which recourses is the content being showcased? These contain the array of choices from the whole spectrum of film techniques: camera position, colours, sound etc. Style is then a more specific term for the formal possibilities. According to Bordwell, style refers to a systematic use of film
techniques, but the difference between style and form is not very strict. Style and form thus flow into each other and do not have a hard line in between (Verstraten 29).
4.2 Model of Analysis
The upcoming analyses will look at how the animals in the films are portrayed; how they move, act and what they look like. This will come with the help of Peter Verstraten’s six narratological structures; (time)order, rhythm, frequency, space, characters and focalisation. The last two structures will be the main focus, because
these will contain the research of how the narrative develops itself throughout the film and what kind of roles the animals and other characters have in it: what are their needs and goals and how do they achieve their needs and goals? A need or a goal is confirmed when a character is actively pursuing something, but to be clear; a goal is a human thing to have and therefore does not apply on the animals, because that would be anthropomorphising them. In general, it is assumed that animals only have needs and the human characters can have needs and goals. Another important thing to look at is how the agency of the animals is contrasted by the agency of the humans in the films. As is stated before; meaning is to be found in the differences. After studying this, the focus will be on the mise-en-scène and cinematography, and to what extend they support the narratological functions. With the mise-en-scène we will look at the choice of the actors, the acting method, how the characters are positioned, their clothing, attributes, location, setting, lighting and colours. With the cinematography then, we will look at the colour of the film itself, the film material, framing, depth and acridity and camerawork (Verstraten 2006). And lastly, the concepts that have been discussed in the theoretical framework will be inserted in the last paragraphs of each of the analyses.
5. Case Study Part One: White God (2014)
9How are Hagen, Lili and Dániel developing throughout the narrative; what are their needs and goals and how do they achieve them?
Hagen starts out as a happy and innocent dog who listens well to Lili and other humans. He does not have any apparent needs until he gets thrown out of the car by Lili’s father. Before this he did get some negative attention from Lili’s father when he made Hagen sleep apart from Lili and him, but when he started crying, Lili went over to Hagen and stayed with him. He clearly wants to continue being with Lili the whole time (or just not wanting to be alone), but this gets taken away from him and he is left to fend for his own. He is confused and he needs to get back to Lili until he finds some other dogs and becomes friends with them. At the market he again gets negative treatment from a human who is a butcher and who chases Hagen with a knife, but his newly made dog-friend helps him to get out of the situation. When Hagen is at the dump with a group of dogs he learns new kinds of friendships and he does not desire to get back to Lili because he is happy. When the dogcatchers come, Hagen acts nice towards them and does not notice they mean to harm him, his dog-friend helps him again, which teaches Hagen to run away from them. A homeless man saves Hagen after this, but then roughly puts a rope around his neck and sells him to a dogfighter. The dogfighter abuses Hagen horribly and also injects him with steroids and tranquilizer. His personality changes and he just feels rage which helps him win a fight between him and another dog. After the fight though we see Hagen looking confused at the hurt dog, he feels disgusted with himself and what he has become. After this moment of realization Hagen manages to escape and he needs something again: getting away from the bad people and getting back to his dog friends. He succeeds his needs now with a different look on society and especially humans. After his dog-friends and he himself get caught again by the dog patrol and when he sees how his friends are getting killed off by the woman of the shelter, he gets even more disgusted by humans and now he has a new mission and need; revenge. He succeeds in taking revenge on several characters who have hurt him, but in the end he stops when Lili plays the trumpet. He and his rebellious group are done and he does not want to avenge anyone anymore. Hagen thus succeeds, but we learn that after the film ends he will get killed probably.
Lili looks like a happy kid in the beginning of the film which changes when she has to go with her father. We then see Lili as a rebelling teenager who has to obey her parents. She does not have a real goal or need here, except for that she wants to live with her mother. After Hagen gets kicked out of the car by her father she gains a goal though; getting Hagen back. She comes across as unhappy and misunderstood now, rebelling against her father and music teacher but not achieving anything. Also when she likes the older guy in her music class, he leaves her alone in a club for another girl. She feels abandoned and alone, but after her father breaks down she reconciles with him. This was not one of her goals, but she finds out that it is an important change, because now she feels understood again by a person she did not expect would understand her. Her specific goals are not met at this point, but her subconscious need (being with somebody who
understands her, which were her mother and Hagen first, then wanting it to be the older boy from music class, but now is her father) is accomplished. She did not actively make this to happen though. After this Lili stops with the active search of Hagen until the dogs are attacking the orchestra performance she had been training for. She then starts looking for Hagen and gets an apology from the older boy she liked of how he treated her. This makes her feel understood again. When she goes on with her search for Hagen and reaches her father’s apartment, she sees that Hagen is looking for revenge on her father. She starts worrying about her father and chooses him over Hagen when she goes to find him instead of Hagen. When she finds her father though, Hagen is there with his rebellious group taking revenge on Lili’s father and her. Lili accomplishes her goal here and calms Hagen down in the end. But the goal of being with Hagen will never continue, because he will probably be killed when the police arrive. Finally being understood by her father though and getting an apology from the boy she liked are goals that she succeeded in.
Lili’s father, Dániel, is first happy to see his daughter until he notices that she is not that happy to come and live with him for a while. He clearly loves his daughter but in the first half of the film after his first scene he is angry and sad that his daughter has been growing up that fast and that she is distant towards him. She does not want to connect with him, but after he breaks down at the police station she finally opens up to him. The needs that Dániel has throughout the film is to protect his daughter and to connect with her, and as is written in the
above, he succeeds to connect with her when he finally lets his guard down. He also tries to protect her, but in the end Lili protects herself mostly and Dániel does not really play a significant part in keeping Lili safe. In the end Dániel manages to let go of his childlike image of his daughter, which is something that they both needed.
When do Hagen, Lili and Dániel have agency and how do they attain it?
The first scene of the film belongs to the end of the narrative and will be revisited in the last part of the film, but the agency seems different in the first scene of this moment. The dogs seem to chase Lili and have complete control of the situation. Lili does not seem to have any agency here and the dogs do, also because there are no other humans in sight anywhere in the city. The dogs are now in control of the city. The film then goes back in time and we see a happy Hagen and Lili.
Lili has no control over the fact that she has to stay with her father and she is upset about it. Dániel is also not completely happy with the situation, because his ex-wife has now stepped up the ladder by dating a professor and because she is leaving Hagen in his care. Lili’s mother is making this situation happen, because she has decided to leave with her boyfriend to Australia.
Dániel is telling Lili a few times what to do, like for example when she has to eat his food and not give it to Hagen. He corrects her, but she is not really doing what he says. The act of throwing Hagen outside the room by Dániel, because he cannot sleep in Lili her bed, creates negative consequences later in the film. He grabs Hagen and gives him negative attention which will later fuel Hagen’s
revenge. This negative attention adds to Hagen’s attitude towards humans later in the film. Lili however visits Hagen in the bathroom later in the night, because he cannot stop howling. She defies her father who does not want her to go to him. She plays a song on her trumpet and Hagen lies and calms down. Lili and her trumpet have a certain impact on Hagen, it can be defined as control over Hagen, but also as a way of consoling Hagen.
Hagen storms out of the closet during music class when Lili starts to play her part on the trumpet. He is excited to hear it, but they are send out of the class because of it. Lili and he again get rejected and this time they have to leave
together again, like in the bedroom at her father’s apartment. This adds to Lili’s dissatisfaction of her situation at this point. Angry Dániel finds the two in the street and kicks Hagen out of the car. He does this because he already got threatened by the lady in his apartment building, the dog patrol and because Lili does not want Hagen to be send to the dog pound. Again an adult human has control over what happens.
After this, Hagen has to fend for himself and he finds out that taking his own decisions is strange at first. He is pushed into becoming independent and is first confused until he finds the other dogs. They seem to have agency, but when the dogcatchers come the viewer is reminded of the control and power that humans have over dogs in general.
When Hagen gets caught by the homeless person he even has less agency than in the beginning of the film when Lili was his owner. He is now owned by a dogfighter and used as an object for money. His personality gets broken down and he is trained to be aggressive, wanting to fight other people and dogs. Therefore when Hagen wins the dogfight he does not have any agency, because he is made into doing it. He then suddenly has a realization of what he is doing (hurting another dog only because he was mistreated by a human) which makes him remember his other dog friends and he runs away. This shows a certain kind of awareness that is unusual for a dog and it is the first time the viewer notices that Hagen is getting more conscious about his societal situation. He claims control back over his life and returns to his dog friends, not Lili, which is maybe because he does not want to be owned again and especially not by people who threw him out like trash.
Lili is in her father’s care in the meantime and lies to the orchestra leader, because her father wants her to. She has the feeling that no one understands her and she is angry, but cannot do anything about it. When she badmouths the orchestra leader she gets punished, again unable to go against the adult humans. Also when she is searching for Hagen she has no luck. The adult make rude comments about mix breeds and even Lili’s bike gets stolen. Confused and angry Lili then comes across the guy she likes who takes her and leaves her alone in a club. She is not really in control and ends up at the police station. She reconciles with her father which she has control over; she finally allows him to get close with
her which changes the narrative. They are now friendly and she is not an angry kid anymore. Her father initiated the reconciliation though, because he finally opened up to her.
When Hagen gets caught again and traumatised by seeing how one of his new friends got killed by the dog pound owner, he is done with being friendly. He breaks himself and accidentally his dog friends out, and takes control. Not only over his own life, but also over the other dogs that start following him.
Lili gets interrupted during the performance by the dogs and then also decides to do something about it. She takes control of the situation by going to look for Hagen and no one is able to stop her from doing it. Back at the first scene of the film and we now see that the dogs were not chasing Lili. She falls off her bike when the dogs pass her by which shows that Hagen is now the main influencer of the narrative and what is happening around her even though she is in active pursuit of Hagen.
When Lili follows one of Hagen’s best dog friends, he gets killed by the police. She could not do anything about it, because the dog would not listen to her when she asked him/her to stop. Hagen in the meantime is unstoppable and merciless in his revenge. The other dogs are following him and the decisions and moves he makes are too intelligible for a dog, like for example misleading the police, controlling a big group of dogs in their actions and going after specific people who have given him negative attention in the past. He is in full control of every situation he comes in right until the end. Lili on the other hand loses her calm a few times when she for example sees a dead butcher and when Hagen’s dog friend died. She does regain her posture though and she has agency, because of her search for Hagen and her father which she continues even when
traumatised.
In the stand-off between Lili and Hagen, Dániel comes in with a torch, but does not have any real effect on anything. Only when Lili starts playing the trumpet, Hagen calms down like old times, which make the other dogs also lie down. This sound was always played to Hagen to console him or excite him, and it now calms him down. By playing the trumpet, Lili shows her agency and the power she always had throughout the film which she showed when she was defending Hagen against others.
It feels like the dogs are obeying her, but after Lili throws her trumpet away (the instrument that seems to make them obey her) and also lies down across from Hagen we see that the equality and peace between everybody has finally been made. He made the first physical step to make peace after Lili shows him her love, and Lili follows his lead. Hagen therefore also has agency and control in this ending. Even though the peace has been made now, the last sentence makes it clear to the viewer that there will never be equality between dogs and humans, but it is nice to believe in it. The dogs controlled the humans for a little while, but in the end the ‘natural’ order of things has to be restored.
How does the cinematography, mise-en-scène and music support the agency of the characters and other important character developments?
The overall camerawork lacks a certain form, which Mundruczó agrees with in the special features of the film, because it does not follow the rules of a certain style. It does have a distinctive feature throughout the film, namely the shakiness which adds to a more rough and less polished point of view. This helps create a less human point of view and maybe a more animal view. It also feels like the camera does not always know where to look, like a real human or animal would and not a knowledgeable camera team. It goes up and down from character to character as if it does not know who is going to talk or make a sound next, which gives the feeling that the camera is not favouring a particular character, human or non-human. Another reason why the camerawork feels this way is because we often see images which do not matter to the storyline, they feel a bit random.
Interesting is that the camera often shows Hagen and the other dogs communicating with each other, but not talking like humans. It shows us inter animal connections that we humans have no control over and which we also do not always get, but we do have to keep in mind that these scenes are staged for the film of course. A lot of the scenes which have a group of dogs in there are not that staged though. They just show dogs being dogs for a couple of minutes. This shows an appreciation towards the dogs and how they gave them that time on the screen even though humans do not really understand what the dogs are
communicating to each other.
