Abstract
The second film analysis, of Dogtooth, draws out how the depiction of childrearing in the film is allegorical of how we protect children from, and initiate children in to, the world. To further develop the affirmative account of upbringing, we focus on the very particular vision of language presented in the film, particularly, the specific teaching and learning of words and the world it constitutes that we see. We articulate this in relation to Stanley Cavell’s account of initiation as an expression of what we do when we ‘teach’ children about the world. We argue that the use of language in the film exposes something of our relationship to language and to our children that goes unnoticed in today’s predominant recasting of this relationship in terms of ‘parenting.’ The film asserts, albeit in a paradoxical way, the implications of the inevitability of the representativeness of the parent as a pedagogical figure.
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Notes
- 1.
To see a clip from Dogtooth, see, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An4MP0RAjuw.
- 2.
Angelos Koutsourakis’ own argument pertains to the actors’ bodies being that medium. We think his insightful argument also ‘applies’ to Lanthimos ’ use of language .
- 3.
Eugenie Brinkema (2012, p. 3) argues that ‘any person, any object, any relationship can mean absolutely anything else’ in Dogtooth, and that this is where its ‘logic of violence’ is located. But, as we try to say here, this only holds for someone viewing from outside, and able to see a distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘unusual’ uses of words. It does not hold for the children in this film .
- 4.
We can see an example of something very similar to this in the film . At a certain point in the film Christina asks The Oldest to lick her (sexually) in exchange for a headband she brought with her. The Oldest performs the licking in what can be called (that is: what appears to us to be) a mechanical way, devoid of sexual feeling. We see this licking being repeated later in the film when the Oldest is licking the shoulders, stomach, and thighs of the Youngest. The question we ask here is whether or not she knows what the word ‘lick’ ‘means’. What she does not seem to have learned (yet) are the physical and sexual connotations of that action. Hence subsequent licking is of shoulders, inner thighs, stomach. That these licks are something to be traded, and the why of the trading, are not part (yet) of how she sees it. Paraphrasing Cavell , ‘licks’—what we call ‘licks’—do not exist in her world yet.
- 5.
- 6.
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Hodgson, N., Ramaekers, S. (2019). Dogtooth: Initiating Children in Language and World. In: Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12540-0_4
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