Dogtooth

Film poster

Dogtooth (2009) - Yorgos Lanthimos

Dogtooth is an award-winning Greek film that explores themes of the arbitrariness of language, the power of parental figures, and the totalizing effect of ideology on current society. It mostly takes place in an isolated home in rural Greece in which a husband and wife keep their three children isolated from the rest of society, allowing only minimal contact with the outside world. They often go to great lengths to maintain control over their children, who, despite being biologically adults, still act immaturely and naively. 

The film itself offers many scathing critiques of both contemporary society and those who wish to change it. One of the most crucial points posed is on the nature of rebellion itself: are we forever doomed to be constrained in our actions by the current ideological apparatus in society? Can we ever penetrate the vale that ideology constructs around us? 

Language as a tool of oppression

The film opens with a tape recorder teaching the kids the meanings of words like "sea," "carbine" and "motor-way." These ordinary, mundane words are given meanings that initially seem bizarre; a sea is a leather chair, a carbine is a bird, a motor-way is a strong wind. However, the meaning of this lesson soon becomes clear, as the parents redefine and reincorporate words that are objects or phenomena that exist outside the compound so the words instead describe things that exist within the house or garden. 

In this way, language itself is not something neutral or free from ideological consideration. The way issues are framed, discussed and conceived of operates completely within the current logic of the ideological power apparatus, so for the children, it is impossible for them to express themselves in a way separate from their imprisonment. For them, their prison is not just something physical, but it's something linguistic and universal experientially. They are so totally trapped that they not only know nothing but their prison, they could not even express their desire to be free if they wanted to. 

The implicit acceptance of the children in regards to their father's lessons is indicative of how much they view everything around them as normal. Reflecting a somewhat Lockean tabula rasa, they all accept the internal logic of the ideology that surrounds them: they are obedient to their parents, trusting their every word because they know no one else to look to as a teacher. Facts, laws of nature and even reality itself seems to be constructed around maintaining their prison, which can be seen in how their parents make them think that airplanes are just small toys because it would otherwise imply a world outside the fence or how they are taught that it is physically impossible to leave the premises unless they are in a car.

 Power and the father

Much like a stereotypical Stalinist dictator, the father of the household censors and revises everything the children are exposed to in order for him to remain in his position of absolute authority. As seen earlier with the manipulation of language, all aspects of house life are structured and regimented in a way in order to encourage obedience. For example, the children are often bored and forced to invent their own games because they are rarely given toys and never allowed to leave. This is done to make them more obedient, as they are rewarded for "performing well" and especially loyal kids get special privileges. 

Disobedient children, on the other hand, are violently beaten.

Additionally, for the first half of the film there is a "fourth child" who "lives outside the fence." This sibling does not actually exist, but instead serves as a way for the children to vent their frustrations or feel some sort of comfort, as they talk to their "brother" like he's just as real as anyone else, even though they cannot see him or know he is there. His existence is ended with the arrival of a stray cat, which, despite being harmless and ordinary, poses a massive threat to the ideological constructs created by the father, as it is something wholly alien and foreign to the inhabitants of the compound. 

"Your brother is dead"

The cat's arrival sends everyone into a panic and results in the father having to scramble to fit the event into the narrative he created for his offspring. He describes cats as dangerous monsters that are extremely deadly; in fact, their brother outside the fence was killed by the same cat they encountered. To protect themselves against cats, their father makes them bark on all fours like dogs, paralleling an earlier scene in which the father visits a dog-trainer in order to get a guard dog. The trainer gives a quote that accurately reflects much of the film itself: "Every dog is waiting for us to show it how to behave." This quote is so crucial because as the children become more and more obedient toward their father, they become more and more doglike. Conversely, freedom is only achieved by smashing one's dogtooth (canine). The motif of dog embodies the father's need for obedience and loyalty, but also comments on the nature of power; the slave-master is human while the slave is little more than an animal. 

Rebellion - Can one ever truly escape ideology?

One of the most terrifying aspects of Dogtooth is its political implications: if one cannot even think outside the ideological boundaries set in place by those in power, how can there even be any means of fighting against it? The answer is somewhat ambiguous. 

For the film, the first inklings of freedom come not from within, but from outside. Initially, the father brings in a woman named Christina to have sex with his son to satisfy his urges. The sex itself is awkward, stiff and filmed in a way to convey the overall level of discomfort experienced when intimacy is reduced to little more than a scheduled dictate. Regardless, Christina gives the eldest daughter two VHS tapes (one is Rocky IV and the other is Jaws), which she watches and gets her first real exposure to the outside world. This both shocks and inspires her, as she constantly quotes from the movies and wants everyone to call her "Bruce," signaling an intention to forge her own identity that is distinct from the one forced upon her by her parents. 

As a result of viewing this strictly forbidden and corrupting material, both the daughter and Christina are violently beaten by the father, who recognizes the danger of allowing his daughter to see the films. Despite this, she continues to quote from the films and says that she feels as if her "dogtooth is loosening" (the context for this is that the father teaches the children that for a person to be able to leave the compound, they need to loose their dogtooth). This coincides with her parents' wedding anniversary dinner, in which the children are supposed to perform a song and dance for their parents.

She dances normally, but soon her rebellious spirit takes over and she dances a frantic, albeit stiff, rendition of "Flashdance" until she exhausts herself. She then goes into the bathroom and smashes her dogtooth out, bleeding profusely and grimacing from the pain. She then walks though the garden and climbs into the trunk of her father's car, hiding there. This act is her violent, concrete rebellion against ideology, yet she still is fully confined within the rules and constraints of the ideology itself. Even though she is trying to leave the compound, she knows that she cannot leave without the car, almost as if it was a law of nature or a simple fact of reality to obvious to be questioned. 

This is how the movie fully relates to our own experience. We cannot hope to experience any sort of post-ideological revolution, but we can hope to break free of ideology and fight against it, even if we are still operating within our current modes of thought. Yes, our perspectives are limited by our own society's ideology, but by successfully fighting against it we can cause it to collapse in upon itself. 

Conclusion

The ultimate ideological perspective of the film reflects a sort of Foucauldian, post-structuralist conception of ideology as something that we are wholly immersed in and can only be challenged within its own internal logic. In a sense, we are all prisoners in our own compounds, some of which have the same authoritarian father as Dogtooth, yet for others the oppression has taken on a much more immaterial character. Regardless, the film seems to accurately reflect the contemporary climate from which it was born; Greece was (and still is) in a time of economic uncertainty and collapse, a period of turmoil and uncertainty. It seems as if the film is asking us a final, very ideological question: will we bark like a dog or will we smash the dogtooth?