Dogtooth script

Dogtooth was a challenge to put together and required a lot of reading and research. The comments section has been a mix of thoughtful words and people claiming that the fascism I discussed is not fascism. I literally used the dictionary definition and widely agreed-upon criteria. I guess that's not enough for folks! Oh well. Anyway, here is the script:

 AUDIO 1
 [1:22:15] Dogtooth is a 2009 film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. [1:21:18] A married couple, their adult son and their two adult daughters live in a fenced compound. The children have no knowledge of the world outside their home. [45:24]  They are purposefully mislead about the world, told words that correspond to unrelated objects and feelings and given the impossible goal of being able to leave only when they [1:25:50] lose their canine or “dog tooth” – but of course, as adults, they will not naturally lose any more teeth. The young man and two young women simply do not know that.
 [10:58] A woman, Christina, is paid by the father to have sex with the son. [35:28] Christina takes advantage of a daughter's ignorance, and in this action, creates even greater misunderstanding about sex. [20:15] The son and two daughters mistakenly believe they have an unseen brother on the other side of their home. [43:06] The father eventually lies and says the brother was brutally killed by a house cat. [1:09:13] The father discovers the older daughter has been watching VHS tapes and beats her with it, claiming she will be corrupted by outside influences.   
 AUDIO 2
 [1:25:30] The older daughter purposefully knocks out her canine, [1:27:30] hides in the trunk of her father's car and escapes the home. The film ends ambiguously as the daughter is still inside the trunk. [10:33] The imprisonment and forcibly misleading education is reminiscent of the [overlay] allegory of Plato's Cave. In the story, a few people are chained in a cave and forced into a position in which they can only see a wall. [overlay2] They were born there and have never left. All they have seen are shadows on the wall, but to them, the shadows are reality because our education shapes our perception. We are limited by what we are able to see of the universe.
 [overlay3] In the allegory, one prisoner escapes and sees the world, but upon returning, the other prisoners resist this information and fight off any attempt to leave the cave. [1:27:20] Using this story as a basis, what can we infer from the older daughter's escape? She might fail in her assimilation into the real world, but even if she adapts, [10:55] her brother and sister may not go with her should she return. The ending is not so much “happy” as it is enigmatic.   
 [TRANSITION]
 AUDIO 3
 [27:00] The adult children are frequently associated with dogs. [43:05] When one encounters a cat, ignorantly believing it a threat, he kills it with gardening shears. [44:35] When the father learns of this, he gives the children the impression that the cat is their natural enemy and teaches them to bark in self defense. [28:00] When the father goes to an actual dog trainer to retrieve his pet, the trainer says that the dog is not ready yet. The trainer asks the father “Do we want an animal or a friend?” [Salo] This may be a reference to Salo or 120 Days of Sodom, a film adaptation of the book by the Marquis de Sade. In the film, corrupt fascists kidnap eighteen teenagers and subject them to four months of sadism. The victims, among other things, are forced to act like dogs.   

The film's anti-fascist sentiments are overt and unambiguous. [1:24:19] This relationship between the fascists and their victims is assumed in the relationship between the father and his children. [55:00] Territoriality, domination. Dogtooth is many things, and while interpretations of the film have run the spectrum from personal to political, [1:25:00] I want to focus on how the domination of the father so closely resembles fascism and how the psychology of the film can give us insight into why we behave the way that we do – [1:26:00] even if this was not authorial intention. Based on interviews, the director has a simpler view of his film – the idea that families might change in the future, he says -- but [1:27:00] I do not think he is giving himself enough credit.

AUDIO 4

Fascism is held together through the control of information, the spread of misinformation and the forcible ignorance of the citizenry. In the film, right away we learn that the father is misleading his son and two daughters. They are purposefully taught the wrong definitions of words. Any important information – anything that could lead to enlightenment or rebellion – is removed or obfuscated. They are confined within the father's borders, and they are treated as animals, as a lesser class – second-class citizens. The father is, in political terms, what is called a Strong Man.    

A strongman is a political leader who rules by force. The term is often used interchangeably with “dictator” but a strongman is not necessarily always the official head of state and may sometimes be a military leader but not leader of the government. In Dogtooth, the father fills the role of strongman, someone who exercises complete control of who he believes are his subordinates, manipulating the privacy of their sex lives, manipulating the flow of information and manipulating their personal freedom, in this case where they can and cannot go.
 AUDIO 5
 Dogtooth is a microcosm of a fascist state with a strongman leader. But what is fascism? Its broad definition is radical authoritarianism and nationalism, but to break it down, Dr. Lawrence Britt once characterized it through a list of criteria. One is Powerful and Continuing Nationalism, meaning patriotic songs and ceremonies to praise the state. In the film, the party and imposed dancing fits this criteria. Another is Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights. The son and two daughters are not allowed to leave the home until they meet an impossible goal.  Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats is another. The father falsely blames a cat as the enemy of their family, making himself up in fake blood and claiming that a cat killed their non-existent missing brother.
 Rampant Sexism is another. Fascist nations are male-dominated. The family is controlled by a single patriarchal ruler. The father pays a woman to have sex with his son but gives no such attention to his daughters. When the son no longer has that option, the father insists that the son have sex with the daughters. Controlled Mass Media. The father controls the flow of information. The use of media to learn is severely limited. Obsession with National Security. Fear as a motivational tool by the government over the masses. The father teaches his children to fear the outside world. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts. The father is horrified that his daughter watched movies that he did not authorize.
 AUDIO 6
 Obsession with Crime and Punishment. Because she watched a movie, the father beats her mercilessly. There are more, but you get the idea. The father's home is a miniature fascist state because it meets most of the criteria as laid out by Dr. Britt. He once said “What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people ... to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand...”

Historians and political scientists would say that fascism swept Europe due to the fallout from World War I. Returning soldiers came home to face unemployment, strikes and riots. The communist revolution in Russia and the spread of the notion of workers' rights panicked the established corporate order, particularly business interests who felt that their social, economic, and political positions were threatened. And in a broad sense, that might be true, but the psychological desire for fascism is sometimes not explained and sometimes not even explored.

[TRANSITION]

AUDIO 7

Dogtooth explores the cycle of fear, control, fear of losing that control, thereby creating a desire for more control, ad infinitum. The father desires order – control over his life – and in his mind, by necessity, he must control as those around him. He clearly is uncomfortable with his loss of control when he is outside his home, lying to someone at work about the health of his wife. He lies to himself, telling himself that control of his family is actually for their benefit, much in the way strongmen claim that only they have the power to reintroduce law and order.

He dehumanizes his children, a tactic among fascist strongmen, in this case by making them behave as dogs. He controls every aspect of their lives in the name of their own well-being, but like all strongmen, whether he realizes it or not, he is doing so because of an innate insecurity, a fear that he is not good enough, not strong enough, not in control enough, and compensates by strictly imposing his will on others as proof of his own worth. Author Marilyn French once said “A religion of power is a religion of fear, and those who worship power are the most terrified creatures on the Earth.”

AUDIO 8

Going deeper than that, fascism and its byproducts arise not because of a individual – a lone madman who has a bizarre psychology. Fascism exists because of what society has told us to value and what it has told us to devalue. Aggression is viewed positively. We call it “strength” – but that is coded language. Political leaders who espouse aggression towards its perceived enemies are seen as “strong” and political leaders who espouse restraint are labeled “weak” – because we have believed the lie that aggression is a positive and passiveness is a negative. Characteristics that are made the cultural norm are therefore appealing whereas characteristics that deviate from a decided-upon cultural norm are meant as insults. When one politician says another politician's behavior makes them “look weak” – bear in mind that in order for this self-defeating terminology to work, it must be accepted by the public and that it would not mean anything if said public were not conditioned to believe in these ideas.

We are culpable in the rise of monsters because we lift them up through valuing regressive attitudes and devaluing values that represent the better angels of our humanity. The perception that some might believe us “weak” influences our behavior. According to sociology writer Allan G. Johnson, the main use of any culture is to provide symbols and ideas out of which to construct a sense of what is real. A complex web of ideas define reality and what is considered good and desirable. Writer Elizabeth Janeway called this “cultural mythology” – a set of ideas that are not dictated by facts but instead are conjured into being, no matter how false, by force of repetition.   

AUDIO 9

[1:09:13] So, if aggression is strength, [44:36] then incredible aggression can falsely be seen as an incredible strength. [44:35] If we want to control our lives, the concept of someone proposing incredible control seems like a positive, even when this hypothetical person's incredible control will LIMIT personal and individual control and therefore the freedom of those who admire him. [1:22:20] It's difficult to explain or define complex systems, especially when they lead to nightmare situations like fascism, [1:24:19] but Dogtooth shows this happening on a small scale, in a way that is easily recognizable and allows for a more psychological explanation of how human nature can go wrong without allegorically referencing specific fascist dictators. [1:12:43] The director, when asked, said – “Of course, it is a political film” – BUT he resisted the idea that it was about someone specific or a particular country.

AUDIO 10

[45:15] When asked why the father's motivations are left ambiguous, the director said that it would make a completely different film if we knew the father's reasons. [54:36] It would be a film that was a lot about that – the origins – [56:07] and less about the results that the situation had on the children and on their minds. [57:39] He wondered, how much you can influence a person’s mind, how much you can direct a person when you can control him?  Of the political interpretations of the film, [overlay] he has said “Of course it is a political film . … So of course, on the next level, that can really be about media, or the information that leaders give their countries or whatever. Of course it’s about all these things; it depends on the people who watch it and what they make of it.”