Jane Campion | The Power of the Dog / 2021

removing obstacles

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jane Campion (screenplay, based on the novel by Thomas Savage, and director) The Power of the Dog / 2021

 

With nominations in 12 categories in yesterday’s announcement of the Academy Awards, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog finally wagged its tail at me, demanding that I see it. And I was sorely distressed by what I saw.

     After writing hundreds of essays in these past two years on queer cinema, it seemed to me that the US movie-going audiences still did not at all comprehend what it meant to be a homosexual. Somehow this film got caught up in a warp of various other concerns, some of them vaguely feminist, others having to do with the increasingly restrictive notions of male-female boundaries, and still others having their roots in gender differentiation and the general disgust of toxic masculinity. And even more importantly, this film, much like Brokeback Mountain is utterly unbelievable. I was fascinated to learn that the Thomas Savage novel upon which Campion’s film is based, was highly admired by E. Annie Proulx, whose fiction was the source of Ang Lee’s film. It certainly makes sense, even if, for me, neither of the movies do.

     As I wrote about Brokeback, it is not that I cannot imagine lonely cowboys having gay sex—indeed I might presume it is a fairly common event—but I find it nearly impossible to imagine that after years of heterosexual identification, particularly for a man like Heath Ledger’s character Ennis Del Mar, he would suddenly, after a single night in the sack with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist, to use the clichés in which the film trucks, “fall head-over-heals” and permanently in love. I can far better comprehend both their continuation of public heterosexual identification, but upon what their “endless love” is based escapes me. Their relationship seems to consist mostly of the standard cinematic representation of love, romping around in the wilds and alleyway kissing. Even the best of sex doesn’t so quickly transform individuals into long term lovers, and I say this as a man who has lived with another man since the day I first met him. But we both had long before come to terms with out sexualities, and even then “love” was a highly problematic situation that took years to unwrinkle. The love of the Brokeback Mountain boys seems to be something out of fairytales—and for once I’m not trying to be “punny.” 

     The unreality of Campion’s film emanates from many different aspects of the story. I can well believe, for starters, that the film’s Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) long ago fell in love with an older cowboy, Bronco Henry, and is still pining for him all these years later, particularly if their relationship developed, as it appears to have, over some time and was enveloped in the younger/older mentor-like role that Bronco Henry played in the 18-year-old’s life.  I guess I can even imagine why Phil has wanted ever since to keep that aspect of his life closeted from his current cowboy buddies. As is often the case with such deeply closeted beings, in order to cover and diffuse any possible suspicion of one’s own sexual leanings, such individuals often hide behind the homophobic blur of slurs and attacks common to their peers, sometimes even leading and encouraging such hateful behavior.  

     God knows, we’ve seen enough politicians and religious leaders do just that in the past few years to prove it. But I have difficulty in believing that ever since that youthful romance he seems to have lived basically a sexless life, spending most of his time creating a secret shrine to his long-ago lover and fetishizing the few items that remain. I suppose that even the burning of cowhides he annually enacts is a kind of ritual expression of those fervent memories. But surely such behavior does not fully satisfy a strapping man approaching middle-age surrounded by randy cowpokes and the whores they use to fulfill their desires. Surely he has not been waiting all these years just for the arrival of the “nancy boy” who has the talent of cutting pieces of paper into shapes that look like flowers, another 18 year-old, Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), son of his brother’s new bride Rose (Kirsten Dunst). It’s even harder to imagine tamping down the sexual fires while he sleeps each night in a bed with his brother by his side—unless we’re supposed to imagine that the brothers have been involved in something kinkier than the director can even hint at.    

     Now I know—a chorus of outraged voices have just risen to declare into my ear—the truth (a word for me that always denies its own existence) is that Bronco Henry has “raped” young Phil, and although he may mistake that for love, he has been so traumatized by that experience that he has never recovered, which suggests that he has possibly been unable to consummate a sexual act. In short, he is sexually conflicted, but he is inwardly conflicted with feelings toward Bronco Henry of love and hate.

      Let me explain something. Not all older/younger same-sex relationships can be described as rape. Young boys, particularly at age 18, often encourage, desire, and even enjoy such sexual activities. I was one such 18-year-old, and I can tell you with full openness that I sought out such a sexual relationship, enjoyed it, and went back for more. I was not in the slightest traumatized by the experience and, in fact, it only encouraged me to continue in my sexual explorations. And I know for a fact that a great many of my friends and acquaintances, a few of them even more innocent than I, had similar experiences. Regarding Campion's fiction there is utterly no indication that Phil feels, in any sense, that he was molested, abused, or raped, although I know that some will simply repeat that is often what trauma does to such individuals, makes them feel as if they were responsible. I am sure there must be such cases. Yet, I'd argue, young men of that age are and should be able to take on their responsibilities, which include sexual actions. And no matter how confused Phil remains about sexuality and his role in the society in which he has located himself—he was supposedly an honors student in the classics before being converted to the “cowboy life”—he, as a character, must be held responsible for his choices and acts, just as we all are and should be.

      This is particularly important if—as Campion evidently desires—we are to find him a despicable figure for his taunting of both Peter and his mother. And if Bronco Henry is responsible for the way Phil behaves, then Phil cannot be held truly responsible for his mockery of the boy or his open resentment of losing his brother to a female who has just intruded upon his life. Even if one somehow imagines that the old Bronco made Phil the exemplar of toxic masculinity that he is supposed to represent, if we’re going to go so far as to kill the man for his behavior, then we can’t blame Bronco.

      But before we even go in that direction, let us briefly examine just what it is that Phil does that makes him a force worthy of revenge. Perhaps his most serious crime is psychologically torturing his brother’s bride, Rose, who he describes to her face as a kind of fraud, a gold digger of sorts, which the audience is led to believe is not at the case. Basically, what he does is simply sulk around the house, carefully watch her, and on occasion mimic her, mocking her lack of piano-playing skills while demonstrating his own talents on the banjo. These acts send the poor dear into an absolute frenzy, putting her into an alcoholic daze for weeks at a time to simply escape the fact of his presence, behavior on Phil himself comments, as well as her husband and her son, the former of whom never once bothers to speak up to his brother.

     I’ll talk about her son’s response later.

     Most of us would not wish to live in the same house as Phil either, and would certainly be irritated by his obvious dislike and mockery. And it is obvious from the earlier scenes where she breaks down in tears over Phil’s and his cowboy friend’s taunting of Peter’s effeminate mannerisms that she is not a terribly strong figure who might speak up for herself or her son. Besides, she has just recently lost her husband to suicide. But let me share with you a similar situation.

     In 1952 Edna Ferber penned her third best-selling potboiler fiction Giant, a Texas-based work that as a movie in 1956, directed by George Stevens and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Mercedes McCambridge, and James Dean, bears a striking resemblance in several instances to Campion’s work. First of all, the giant mansion isolated in the flatlands surrounding it is notably similar. (Although there are no mountains in the background of Giant, the mountains in the New Zealand hills in the background of Jane Campion’s film are not those of the Montana Rocky Mountains either.) And when Jordan Benedict Jr. (Hudson) brings home his bride, Leslie (Taylor) she also finds an enemy in the house in the form of Jordan’s sister Luz (McCambridge), who like Phil intrudes upon her relationship with her husband, mock’s the newcomer’s ability to deal with ranch life, and even rides the bride’s beloved horse to death. Luz also dies, but not through the agent of any family member, but from a heart attack, brought on in part by Leslie’s taking over many of the household duties. Yet Leslie attempts to make friends with Luz, and even names their first born daughter after her. Taylor’s character, an early feminist, not only changes the ranch routine, but attempts to alter her family’s attitudes with regard to sex, race, and social institutions.

       Rose is simply a weaker creature, unable to take over any of the responsibilities of the house, even though she previously successfully ran an eating establishment that served up home-cooked foods to whole armies of cowboys, including Phil and his tobacco-chewing chums. What has happened, we have to ask, that lies behind her complete incompetence in her new estate? We are never given a plausible answer.

       In a more predictable plot situation, her behavior might be explained simply by the fact that Rose finds Phil more attractive than her proper, gentle, and slightly effeminate husband, George (Jesse Plemons), and that hidden desire renders her inactive and defenseless, as if she has swooned into an inexplicable coma. And at first we even suspect that a bit like Tennessee Williams’ Blanche DuBois she is terrified of Phil because he reeks of male sexuality, about which she has no one with whom she might speak, including the servants who gossip about old wives' tales of the buried dead and, in particular, her sexually immature son when he finally returns from college. Furthermore, she has no way of knowing that Phil does not pose a sexual threat. But Campion provides us with no real indication of any such feelings. Rather, Rose becomes as languid and inactive as if she has been bitten by a vampire, drained of blood simply by Phil’s constant sneer and, perhaps, George’s parents’ discomfort about her son’s choice of a wife.

       I hate to find myself agreeing in any way with commentary published in the National Review, but I do have to agree with Armond White writing about this film, who suggests that for Campion the fact that neither Rose nor Peter can truly function as regular human beings is not really the issue. In Campion’s unstated point of view, it appears that: “Masculine means distant, cruel, and domineering, like secretive Phil and ineffectual George. Feminine means weak and oppressed, like Rose and Peter.”  

     Before we move any further in exploring this film’s series of events, we need also to ponder what Phil has done precisely to Peter which first sets off Rose’s hate for him. In the early scenes of the film we see the boy, whose mother has placed his decorative paper flowers on the table, being mocked by Phil and the other cowboys for his “nancy boy” ways, and even called at one point a “fag.” The mockery of his supposed sexuality continues when the thin, frail looking kid returns home from college, wearing a starched white shirt, tailored black pants, and a child-like white cowboy hat. He truly looks out of place, and most certainly "odd" if not precisely "queer."

       Other than what Phil later does to his mother, this seems to be Phil’s central crime, the one that set her to crying, resulted in her being comforted by George, and led to the two eventually marrying. In response to the teasing, Peter leaves the house and, quite astoundingly, does not return to the film. except for a quick flash, until the last third of the movie.

     Such homophobic comments are certainly most disturbing, and any child who encounters such attacks truly does suffer. I did as a high school boy, trying to comprehend what such words really meant in terms of my life. I even was plagued by some early childhood beatings by my peers, which fortunately do not occur in this story. But I should quickly interject, these are the kinds of taunts thousands of school boys and girls receive daily, and not just on account of their sexual unsurety. Although one would love to imagine a world without such bullying, it is seemingly universal if the numerous films I have described throughout these pages are correct; and I believe them to be. This is something most young people learn to bear with and move on; although we do know it has tragic consequences for some, even ending in suicide. Phil is definitely not a likeable figure for such behavior, no matter how we might attempt to explain it away.

       But what if instead of Peter running away from such abuse or trying to simply avoid it, he returned with a gun and shot Phil dead? Would we feel that such an action were justifiable? Campion apparently believes he deserves even worse, a slow torture by the person the abuser might least expect, and at a time when he seems to even have reformed.

       If we have first perceived Peter as a frightened being, however, we gradually come to realize that he is cruel anatomist determined to remove—as his medical father used to describe the activities of his profession—any obstacles that stand in his way. Indeed, Peter later tells Phil, his father saw him as not being tender enough with the world around him. The boy who returns to George and Phil's ranch is now a young man who, trapping a rabbit at first seems intent on keeping it as a loving pet, but instead slices it open to lay out and sketch its body parts. He is a man who carefully notices the world about him. Unlike Phil’s cohorts, he sees what Phil and Bronco Henry have observed in the surrounding mountains: “a barking dog.”    

     Carefully checking out the new territory, Peter comes across Phil’s secret getaway and shrine to his ancient lover, discovering in the small crawlspace beside the secret pond in which Phil bathes—far more regularly than the other cowboys, removing the smell of his body about which his brother pointlessly complains—a box of male physique magazines, obviously Phil's or perhaps Bronco’s magazines used for the purpose of visual enjoyment and masturbation.

     In the scene moments before we have watched Phil bathing with a handkerchief that he keeps tucked into his pants just above his cock, running the piece of cloth over his body, taking in its smell—surely now only his own—in ecstatic pleasure. The initials on the cloth make the situation clear: BH. And when Phil spots the boy voyeuristically observing him, he now knows that Peter may have solved his lifetime secret.

     It is from then on that he begins to befriend Peter instead of mocking him, braiding him a rope, teaching him to ride, offering up bits of ranch-hand knowledge, what others might call grooming him in the manner that perhaps Bronco Henry had done with him.       

     But the new 18 year-old is also quite willing, and, in fact, it is he who is actually enacting a seduction. By the time they are ready to have their first man-to-man conversation, Peter leads him into a discussion of his and Bronco’s relationship, soon after offering up a hand when Phil breaks down from having discovered that Rose has given away the hides that he has planned for the burnt offering to his dead god. It appears that the hand is not only grasped but that, in fact, Peter offers up his own body, before providing Phil another “hide,” a skin he has cut away from a dead cow that has clearly died of anthrax. Peter has worn gloves to protect himself.

       His gift to his new found “buddy” apparently was not so carefully handled, and by the next morning Phil is ill, soon after suffering severe convulsions, a symptom of anthrax infection, before he dies.

    Peter has removed the obstacle between the world and his mother and, in the director’s vision, exacted his righteous revenge. But for what?

       Critic Armond White continues in his restatement of what I too fear is Campion’s logic:

 

“...Campion seems most suspicious of Phil’s leering yet covert homosexuality, which she contrasts with young Peter’s ladylike timidity, despite implied sexual impropriety between the two. She also contrasts Phil’s lechery with Peter’s meekness, the latter somehow privileged by Campion as simply misunderstood. Her story shifts from female victimhood to gay male victimhood and then declares gay male hatred and violence as inevitable and justified.”

 

      The most perverse aspect of this film, perhaps, is that we cannot even be sure that Peter is a young homosexual. To define him as such, given the empty evidence provided by the film—his seemingly gentle and affected mannerisms—would itself represent another instance of homophobia. Many young heterosexual men might have such mannerisms, including Phil’s brother, George. And except for the possibility of a sexual encounter with Phil, we have utterly no clue as to the boy’s sexual proclivities. He tells his mother that he has made a friend of another boy at school, but only adds that they call each other by the names of their intended professions: doctor and professor. To me it doesn't sound like they're boyfriends.

       If he is in fact meant to be represented as gay, which would be based entirely on stereotypes, it would stand as yet another example of Campion’s covert homophobia. Not only is the “good” gay more evil that the older more obviously “masculine” one,* but just being gay is obviously something that needs correction.

       That critics and audiences have so embraced this pernicious representation of gay life is terribly troubling. I know there many intelligent people within the Academy, but if this what they believe represents the alternatives—as if there were only two—in gay life, I am frightened. We obviously have a great deal more showing and telling to do.

 

*Campion’s two categories of gay behavior, in fact, seem eerily reminiscent of the two expressions of the coming out films, those of the early 1940s as opposed to those of the late 1990s, the A and B versions that I have described throughout these pages of My Queer Cinema. In the earlier version the central gay figure was standardly presented as reclining, in the process of having a dream or a kind of nightmare where first female figures were introduced to him and rejected and then a series of male types—sailors, soldiers, dancers, gymnasts, etc.—appeared, beings whom the dreamer desired to join but in doing was led into a series of bizarre events in terrifying places demanding herculean efforts to reach the desired figures, all of which ended often in death, although generally with the possibility of resurrection.

      In the later form, young people coming of age simply first have to come to terms with their own sexualities, which they generally do with the help of a reluctant or unfriendly other, resulting in some internal suffering, but ending nearly always in his or her ability to announce that transformation to the entire community.

       Phil’s story is like those in the first version, a frightful tale through which the dreamer suffers before the closure of his life. Like so many people of his time, his is a solitary tale for there is no “one” to come out to, and no “out” into which one might come.

       All Peter has to do, even in Campion's 1925-located fiction, is to declare to the world what it already supposedly knows. But, of course, that would have been just as impossible in 1925 as Phil declaring to his cowboy friends that he and Bronco Henry were lovers.

 

Los Angeles, February 10, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2022).