A friend of mine recently introduced me to a trailer for a low budget children’s film1; it’s about a ruthless, convertible-driving businessman who dies in a car crash and is subsequently sent back to earth as a dog to right all of his wrongs. A fairly standard The Shaggy Dog2 sort of plot: with a low budget finish. The only person who can see the dog as a human is his former P.A. It’s a plot convention that allows for intermittent footage of a man behaving as a dog, under the control of another man. The film’s 'B' grade sheen, gives these shots an almost pornographic quality. Men wearing collars, men submitting to a controller, crouching on their hands and knees; it’s the type of imagery that one could easily dismiss as weird shit3.
It’s unsettling, and that’s why we feel the urge to dismiss it.
In his essay Is Humour Human?4, Continental Philosopher, Simon Critchley states: humour explores what it means to be human by moving back and forth across the frontier that separates humanity from animality, thereby making it unstable…5
This sort of humor seems to be a familiar trope in children’s films. It’s interesting that in his essay, Critchley speaks of Kafka’s short story Investigations of a Dog6. The story is told from a first person perspective, or a first dog perspective. The central character is a dog that throughout the story guides us through what it means to be a dog. There are inherent laws that one must obey in order to be a dog. Even if they are alien in size and shape7, dogs are all the same, they all have qualities with which the canine race alone is endowed8. This dog even talks of when it was still quite a puppy 9and the childhood events that shaped its view of what it means to be a dog.
Along with the aforementioned brand of humor (that explores what it means to be human), children’s films are full of all sorts of other tropes: Tales where morality triumphs and that sort of thing. These tales are no doubt intended to have some sort of conditioning effect.
Perhaps the sort of humour in question can have that affect too?
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1 Quigley. Dir. William Byron Hillman. Perf. Gary Busey. DVD. Quigley Productions, 2003.
2 The Shaggy Dog. Dir. Charles Barton. Perf. Fred MacMurray, Jean Hagen, Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello, Tim Considine. 1959. DVD. Walt Disney Home Entertainment, 2006.
3 Or something that belongs to a subculture; That you find it hard to relate to.
4 Critchley, Simon. Is Humour Human?.……
5 Critchley, 29.
6 Franz, Kafka. “Investigations of a Dog.” Metamorphosis
& other stories. Great Britain: Minerva,
1992. 83-126.
7 Kafka, 89.
8 Kafka, 88.
9 Kafka, 87.
I believe that it is popular antic used in children's films because of its inherent slapstick humour and ability to reduce ADULTS to animals. Children love being animals and often state that they have a strong affinity or form a rapport with animals because of their shared position below adults. Although i totally agree with you about the conditioning affect in respect to morality.
ReplyDeleteIt's a brilliant choice to choose Gary Busey, a once-successful once-famous (now notorious) actor, who has compleely destroyed his life through a use of drugs and opened it up in another way as an artist. He has made himself into something that looks more like a dog than a human being (I'm not sure if the pomeranian is correctly cast, tough) - and brilliantly recreates it in his touching rendition of Quigley. As he himself says "This is a story of going from darkness into light... and I've got news for you... Gary Busey has been through the same thing."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_BzHVq5qg4
Through his suffering we have access to a new interperentation of art as existence. And we can feel love for a very very strangely beautiful man-thing. Freaky-deeks need love too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1MwhrBtBhI