Int J Psychoanal 2004;85:151926

FILM REVIEW

Dogville: A parable on perversion

Director: Lars Von Trier

Reviewed by Adela Abella,2 217 rte dAnnecy, CH-1257 La Croix-de-Rozon, Switzerland adela.abella@sezenove.ch Nathalie Zilkha, ch Malombr 5, CH-1206 Genve, Switzerland nathalie.zilkha@bluewin.ch (Final version accepted 6 July 2004) The authors approach Lars Von Triers lm Dogville in the light of contemporary psychoanalytic concepts on perversion. The perverse functioning appears at three levels in the lm. First of all in the content of the story: a seemingly masochistic victim stirs up the sadism of the people around her before the scenario turns full circle. As for the formal aspects, the producer subtly hides some data with the result that our perception of reality is distorted. Finally, the viewer is led rst to identify with a moral position before becoming, through identication, an accomplice of the sadistic triumph of the so-called victim. Keywords: perversion, reality, sexuality, destructivity, sadism, masochism

It is possible psychoanalytically to approach Dogville, the latest lm by Lars Von Trier, from several viewpoints. It can, for instance, open up a reection on the psychology of groups, narcissism, the processes of idealisation, the relation to reality, instinctual fusion and de-fusion, and so on. Another possibility is to try and situate it within Von Triers work as a whole, and to evoke the problem of psychosis and the defences against psychotic breakdown. But an equally interesting perspective, it seems to us, which also includes, at least in part, all those just mentioned, is to envisage Dogville as a parable on perversion. This lm illustrates particularly well two essential aspects of the problem of perversion: relations with reality and object relations. The model of fetishism proposed by Freud (1927) remains the major reference when characterising the typical relations to reality found in perversion. The emphasis is placed on the simultaneous and non-conictual presence in the subjects psychic reality of two incompatible versions of reality, maintained side by side through the splitting of the ego. The paradigm for this is the perception and denial of the reality of the absence of a penis in women. Within this line of thought, later authors have developed the diverse modalities and levels of the distortion of reality, that is, the denial of the difference between the sexes and generations (McDougall, 1978; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1991); the denial of separation between the self and the object with a view to avoiding the experience of loss; and also the denial of the nitude of life and its limits with the aim of maintaining idealisation. We thus have the perverse triptych: narcissistic
1 2

Translated by Andrew Weller. Corresponding author.

2004 Institute of Psychoanalysis

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perversion, sexual perversion and romantic perversion (Racamier, 1987; Steiner, 1993). At each of these three levels, the motor of the perverse defence is recognised as being the rejection of frustration and mourning, and the desperate attempt to maintain narcissistic omnipotence. As far as perverse object relations are concerned, there has been a sharp evolution since the time of Freuds rst descriptions. This evolution is so important that it may be qualied as a rupture (Caper, 1999). Freud (1905) presents perversion as the persistence in the adult, through xation or regression, of a sexual activity considered as normal during childhood. From this point of view, the problem may be said to reside in the non-integration of a partial instinct under the primacy of genitality. It should be noted that in this conception we remain in the eld of sexuality. The position adopted by later authors is quite different however (Meltzer, 1973; Stoller, 1986). The accent has now shifted from sexuality to destructivity, with the latter nding expression in perversion under the cover of what seem to be libidinal forms of behaviour. In the last analysis, perversion is seen, then, as being anti-sexual in nature. Furthermore, it is assumed that the pathological fusion of the drives gives rise to a state in which the supply of libido, far from neutralising the aggressive drives, has the effect of making them even more dangerous (Rosenfeld, 1971). It is not so much fetishism as sado-masochism which provides the paradigm here (Freud, 1919, 1924; Rosenberg, 1991). Likewise, the manifestations of perversion should not be looked for only, or even primarily, in strictly sexual behaviour or fantasies, but in the subjects relations with his objects, including the analytic relationship. While referring to these basic theoretical positions which we have outlined briey, we will develop the idea that Dogville provides a paradigmatic illustration of the problem of perversion on three levels: rst, at the level of the content of the story which we are told; second, at the level of formal composition, that is, the manner in which the story is told; and third, in a subtle but extremely effective way, in what Von Trier makes the viewer feel. To put it in another way, we are faced with multiple metaphors of perverse fantasies, perverse psychic functioning (dominated by splitting and denial) and perverse object relations marked by destructivity. We propose, then, to focus on certain elements of the lm with each of these three levels in mind. As far as its content is concerned, it seems that the lm can easily be summed in a few words; and, in the context of our paper, this inevitably evokes for us the simplicity and repetition of perversion. On the face of it, a young woman is saved before being trapped and subjected to sadistic treatment in a repetitive and extremely cruel manner by a group of individuals whose initial self-sufciency and hypocrisy mask a level of depravity that has no limits. The entire lm unfolds between two poles: idealisation forms the counterpart to destructivity, sado-masochism and deception, and even underlies them. Idealisation may be found now in the traits of the young woman (even in her forename, Grace), now in the initially idyllic image which we are given of the village where this quasi in camera takes place. Similarly, and complementarily, destructivity appears to be incarnated rst by the community, and then by the apparently innocent victim. At the formal level, the lm proposes two contradictory readings which are juxtaposed but do not converge, especially as

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the viewer could easily remain unaware of one of them until the last scene of the lm. Lighting effects used to transform the scene and present it from a completely different angle might be seen as representing the splitting of the ego and the object. This effect is sharpened by the skill with which the producer manipulates information, distilling certain important elements, skilfully hiding essential data, forcing what is not said. Moreover, Von Trier even goes as far as to exaggerate a character trait in each one of his characters, thereby pushing them towards perversion. One recalls, for instance, the retired and hypochondriac doctor whose relationship to knowledge, the body and illness is perverted. It is tempting to think that the viewer is deliberately misled and deceived; the extremely pared aspect of the production where, one believes, everything is shown (we will return to this point later) contributes to the confusion, since it creates an illusion of transparency and clarity. In fact, the lifting of the veil of misrecognition at the end of the lm has a powerfully dramatic effect on the viewer. Throughout his lm, the producer skilfully arouses and plays on the viewers affects even if, at several points in the story, stoicism is idealised and loss of control over the emotions, and even affectation, is punished. Let us look at the scenario in more detail. The story takes place in Dogville, a hamlet at the heart of the Rocky Mountains which is depicted as being poor but also idyllically peaceful. This is enough to awaken a movement of nostalgia in the viewer, encouraging him to let go of his defences! What could possibly happen in such a simple and reassuring setting reminiscent of one of our cultural myths on origins, namely that of the noble savage, and the existence of ideally harmonious primordial relations between man and nature before they were corrupted by the sins of culture? Tom Edison is the rst inhabitant we are introduced to: is Edison an over-determined allusion to the inventor of the light bulb and thus to mans quest to domesticate and control light? Though he hopes to become a writer, he has so far only written the words small and big, words that seem to describe the poverty of his psychic functioning.3 Tom hides his mediocrity behind the pretensions of a moralist, thereby preserving his illusion of grandeur. He has the opportunity of escaping from his boredom when, after hearing gunshots, he meets Grace, a beautiful and sophisticated stranger. It seems that gangsters are pursuing the young woman. The only solution for her is to be received, adopted by the community. It is a perfect opportunity for Tom to realise his dreams of mastery and manipulation, and to satisfy his ideals of purity by testing the moral qualities of his neighbours. Ideology reigns. Moreover, in the village, there is no one who represents the law. The reference to authority is evoked by distant noise of the construction of a penitentiary; but in Dogville there is no pastor, no mayor, and people lie to the policeman. Even time progressively loses its referential value, becoming subject to the good will of the inhabitants; half an hour becomes the equivalent of an hour. After a long debate in the church, the inhabitants give Grace two weeks to prove herself. The young woman tries initially to make herself indispensable. Though
We are thinking of a psychic functioning which is unable to organise itself around the difference of the sexes linked to the question of the difference of generations.
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everyone clearly has a handicap, a difculty, limits, no one claims to be in need of anything. The omnipotence of narcissistic autarchy prevails. Grace then offers to satisfy their small desires, the frivolous, futile desires which are likely to provide extra pleasure: a project of seduction, one might say. Grace intends to carry out this project while nonetheless respecting their openly displayed autarchy and stubborn pride. The lack and limits of each one are masked by denial and Grace participates in this game of denial. Through this subtle complicity, the oodgates to a limitless greed, and an envy that is no less destructive, seem to have been opened; nothing sufces, everyone wants more; the most abject exploitation, rape, slavery and torture reign. Everyone ends up acting out the darkest aspects of his being, such as unimaginable treachery or a total absence of humanity towards Grace, while preserving their mask of respectability. Even Tom slides imperceptibly but inexorably towards the most abject exploitation of the woman with whom he nonetheless claims to be in love. Grace does not try to defend herself. One supposes that she fears she will be thrown out of the village and turned over to the gangsters. At once simple and a martyr, what is disturbing in this young woman is her submissive attitude which seems to last eternally and cannot fail to irritate or appal the viewer. A vicious circle is set up: the more the innocent victim submits masochistically, the more her torturers feel encouraged and driven to go beyond all conceivable limits. We are almost at the end of the lm. So far, the viewer has the impression he is witnessing a melodrama whose only aimthough it is hardly an original one, and it would be uncharacteristic of Lars Von Trier!is to offer yet another moralising reading of reality. For example, in view of the current socio-political context, it might be seen as a new condemnation of a certain North American ideology depicted as falsely puritan, desperately simplistic, and ultimately terribly destructive.4 At another level, the scenario could refer to instinctual dualism and the wild beast, always ready to spring to life, which is dormant in each one of usor almost. In fact, up to this point it is possible for the viewer to have followed the lm and still feel unscathed, having found refuge in identication with an idealised victim and in the conviction of being on the right side. He thus maintains the illusion of having an objective personal vision that is sufciently distant, impartial and just. To exaggerate somewhat, the viewer could still say to himself: There is a dormant beast in everyone but not in me, or at least certainly not at this moment! One feels innitely grateful to Lars Von Trier. His formal choices as a scriptwriter and producer allow oneone still believesto see things as precisely and sharply as an entomologist. He offers us a cold, disembodied production, more reminiscent of the theatre than of the cinema and the reality that the latter usually presents us with. The various elements of the dcor are merely suggested: the different spaces (village roads, houses) are circumscribed by traces on the ground. There are no walls; the furniture is reduced to the essential. Von Trier seems to opt for an effect of transparency. The viewer can see simultaneously what is happening in another space, for instance, the neighbours house. (However, correlatively, there
4

What we nd here again is a triad (falseness, simplicity and destructivity) which is very characteristic of perversion.

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are no limits, no separation, and there is little differentiation between the different spaces.) Everything is clear, limpid. The bare, pared-down aspect of the production contributes to the conviction we have of seeing clearly, truly. Reinforcing this feeling, moreover, is a voice-off telling us the history of Dogville. The account is embellished with commentaries whose irony one much appreciates since it indicates the right way. We come to the end of the work. Everyone has gone too far. For the inhabitants of Dogville, the only way of avoiding guilt, of denying it, is to get rid of Grace. Tom denounces his ance to the gangsters. The latter are a long time in coming; the cruelties towards Grace abate somewhat: the torturers feel appeased by the certitude of the ultimate and imminent sacrice. One is certain the worst is going to befall the young woman; the propitiatory victim has to be treated gently, even spoiled, as in primitive rites. But, then, there is a dramatic turn of events! The much-feared gangster turns out to be the young womans father and, whats more, a loving father. It seems, in fact, that the village has been Graces victim, has been taken hostage by her after a conict between her and her father, more precisely after what seems to have been a healthy reaction of revolt against an unworthy father, a gangster. But, in fact, we learn that it was a question of pride: Grace could not bear hearing her father reproach her arrogance. For this clever gangster, his daughters quest for justice, her belief that she was able to understand everything, and always forgive everything, is simply one of the particularly subtle forms of inordinate pride. The father proposes to share power with Grace. Grace refuses and persists in nding justications for the behaviour of the inhabitants of Dogville. But the frightened appeal of Tom, who seemingly recognises his error, whereas in reality he is just trying to save his skin, is accompanied by a new change in the lighting; the clouds disperse and the moon allows Grace to perceive the village without complacency or, more precisely, without false complacency. She sees the evil there and nally yields to her father, joins forces with him and, assuming her power with disconcerting ease, she orders the village to be set on re and the inhabitants to be massacred in the name of the same ideology proclaimed from the outset, namely, that of making the world a better place! It is the same thing in a different guise, namely, to make the world a better place rst through masochistic submission and then through openly sadistic and destructive control. The ethical quest is, in fact, just a pretext for crude instinctual expression, which is evocative of so many tragic episodes of the past and present history of humanity. The cruelty that Grace employs, or has others employ, parallels that which she has suffered. Notably she forces a mother of a family to witness the killing of her children with the illusion that the massacre will stop if she controls her emotions, a weapon that the woman had used against Grace by breaking some of her vulgar but cherished gurines (yet another trait purporting to be navely spontaneous, but which represents admirably the absence of creativity and generativity in Grace). Tom is the only one Grace herself kills and she does this with the same cold determination that she had demonstrated before in playing the victim. The only survivor from this massacre is the dog. One wonders why. Is it because, in this Dogville (Town of dogs), it is the only one that barked in time, without entering into false and perverse compromises? Is this

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another surreptitious return of the same myth of origins, this time in the guise of another familiar formulation: animals are the only ones that are good because they are not corrupted by culture? Ones point of view is suddenly transformed and is even the direct opposite of that which one had before. Grace was not, after all, forced to endure her sufferings; she invited them. She had the choice. We discover subtly that behind her kindness lay arrogance, the proud disdain of others whom she even deprives of the right to self-responsibility by excusing them for everything. Narcissistic afrmation and the logic of an ideal ego took precedence over a real interest for others. Grace used the village to conrm her fantasy of narcissistic omnipotence. Worse still, her kindness only served to arouse, to excite the nastiness in others. The consequence, and probably the aim, of her masochism, was to induce the sadism of others in order to sully them. The gratications of sadism, masochism and controlling others are in effect protean, changing. But that is not all. We are in the register of perversion not only where the content of the story is concernedreversal of the instinctual movement of masochism into sadismbut also with regard to the way in which this story has been related to us. We have been taken in; we are victims of the deliberate obscuring of elements that are essential for our comprehension as well as victims of our own ego splitting, making it difcult for us to integrate the two juxtaposed realities which were nonetheless presented to us. The rst version of a young woman caught in a position of victim at grips with her own masochism and the sadism of a depraved population stands in contrast with an inverted version in which the inhabitants are the victims of Graces narcissistic and perverse5 seduction. The two versions are juxtaposed but do not link up. There seems no possibility of any nuance or negotiation. Nor does it seem possible for any of the areas of conict in the lm to open up in a way that can lead to a neurotic compromise. The only outcome seems to be that of total destruction, unless the director is counting on our own psychic functioning to transform this material. It is true that at this moment in the lm considerable demands are made on our own psychic functioning. Having got to this point, the viewer can no longer emerge unscathed; one is caught up in the situation. Our respectable objectivity, our self-complacency is in pieces: the distance we thought we could maintain, the balance of judgement which the bare form of Von Triers production seemed to permit, even the subtle feeling of intellectual and moral superiority which preserved us during the lm and which is so reminiscent of the initial, inane self-complacency of the inhabitants of Dogville, is undermined. Intellectually, we had allowed ourselves the arrogant pleasure of despising messages that we considered too simplistic. At the moral level, we had positioned ourselves on the side of those who condemn iniquity. Like the inhabitants of the village where Grace was received-sequestered-but-in-fact-not-at-all, we are moved by our own duplicity and Von Trier makes us aware of this: if, during much
5

We are alluding to the notion of narcissistic perversion proposed by Racamier (1987), namely, the use of the other as a part object or a narcissistic object with the aim of avoiding ones own psychic conicts, notably difculties related to loss. The narcissistic pervert transforms others into utensils, his pleasure being linked up with triumphing over the object.

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of the lm, the sado-masochistic violence to which we have been subjected by the director seems unbearable, it has to be conceded thatlike Grace!we are free. We have chosen to watch the lm until the end. It is up to us to question ourselves about the nature of what pushed us to do so: narcissistic pleasure, voyeuristic pleasure, sado-masochistic pleasure? Worse still, owing to the unbearable nature of what we have had to endure while watching the lm, we are caught up like Grace in participating emotionally in the nal vengeance, experiencingconsciously, unconsciously, openly or covertlya feeling of relief at the violent destruction of the village which allows us to evade the necessity of thinking. We collude in Graces perverse destructivity. The beast is lurking in us, too. Lars Von Trier has awakened it.
Translations of summary
Dogville, eine Parabel ber Perversion. Regie: Lars von Trier. Die Autorinnen betrachten Lars von Triers Film Dogville im Lichte zeitgenssischer psychoanalytischer Perversionskonzepte. Das perverse Funktionieren manifestiert sich im Film auf drei Ebenen. Erstens im Inhalt der Story: ein scheinbar masochistisches Opfer stimuliert den Sadismus seiner Umwelt, bevor sich der Kreis schliet. Was die formalen Aspekte betrifft, so verbirgt der Regisseur subtil bestimmte Angaben, was zu einer Verzerrung unserer Realittswahrnehmung fhrt. Schlielich wird der Zuschauer veranlasst, sich zuerst mit einer moralischen Position zu identizieren, bevor er, erneut durch Identizierung, zum Komplizen des sadistischen Triumphs des so genannten Opfers wird. Dogville, una parbola sobre la perversin. Las autoras proponen una reexin sobre la pelcula Dogville, de Lars Von Trier, a la luz de las concepciones psicoanalticas actuales sobre la perversin. En la pelcula el funcionamiento perverso aparece en tres niveles. En primer lugar en el contenido de la historia: una vctima aparentemente masoquista suscita el sadismo de la gente que la rodea, antes de que el escenario cambie en 180 grados. En cuanto a los aspectos formales, el director oculta sutilmente algunos datos, lo que distorsiona nuestra percepcin de la realidad. Por ltimo, se induce al espectador, al principio, a identicarse con una posicin moralista antes de transformarse, mediante la identicacin, en cmplice del triunfo sdico de la mencionada vctima. Dogville, une parabole sur la perversion. Les auteurs proposent une approche du lm de Lars Von Trier, Dogville, la lumire des conceptions psychanalytiques actuelles sur la perversion. Le fonctionnement pervers apparat dans ce lm trois niveaux. Tout dabord, dans le contenu de lhistoire, o une victime apparemment masochiste excite le sadisme de ses interlocuteurs dans un scnario qui se transforme nalement en son contraire ; en deuxime lieu, de par ses aspects formels, le metteur en scne occultant habilement certains informations avec comme consquence un travestissement de notre perception de la ralit ; nalement, dans ce que le spectateur est amen vivre : le passage dune identication une position de respectabilit moralisatrice une identication complice avec le sadisme de la prtendue victime. Dogville, parabola sulla perversione. Per il lm Dogville di Lars von Trier le autrici propongono un approccio basato sulle attuali concezioni psicoanalitiche della perversione. Nel lm il funzionamento perverso compare a tre livelli. Innanzitutto nel contenuto della storia, dove una vittima apparentemente masochista suscita il sadismo dei suoi interlocutori in uno scenario che, alla ne, si capovolge. Quanto agli aspetti formali, il regista occulta abilmente alcune informazioni con il risultato di distorcere la nostra percezione della realt. Inne, lo spettatore dapprima indotto a identicarsi con una posizione di rispettabilit morale per poi trasformarsi, attraverso lidenticazione, in complice del trionfo sadico della cosiddetta vittima.

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