Dogville - a structural analysis

Dogville is is the first of Lars Von Trier’s America trilogy. The story is written as an archplot with a closed ending and single protagonist, whose external conflict with the citizens of Dogville develops in a linear time, driven by a strong sense of causality.

The story is set in the Rocky Mountains near Georgetown, USA, during the Depression period. It’s a small fictional village around a fictional street, named Elm Str., despite the fact that no elm tree has ever grown in the near vicinity. The first scene grants the viewer a bird’s, or even better- God’s view on the small town, with streets, houses, doors quickly sketched with chalk, leaving present only crucial ‘functional’ pieces of furniture, like the Tom Edison Sr.’s medicine cabinet, Jack McKay’s closed curtains, Ma Ginger's shop vitrine, Tom Edison Jr.’s desk, the mission house bell, etc. This serves a dual purpose: from one hand to emphasize the poverty and misery of the time of Depression, and from the other, making the whole setting transparent helps dissect and strip it off its privacy, and thus, gradually display its hypocrisy, and moral decay. The latter is enhanced once again by the irony in the present throughout the whole movie narrator’s voice instructing character motivations and summarizing social conflicts. All am. settings help build a solid foundation by the principle of creative limitation. This is a one-way street, 15-citizens town setup, which creates quick familiarity, for the purpose of tricking the viewer into a higher level of intimacy and involvement, so that on a later stage, would be impossible for him to back off and stay emotionally detached. Initially, we can’t help but like these ‘good honest folks’ as the narrator puts it with a hint of irony which effect is immediately forgotten.

The author chooses to place the inciting incident in the 10th minute of the beginning, when Tom Edison Jr. hears shotguns (when a gun is introduced, someone gets killed), and two minutes later he hears the barking of Moses - the city dog, particularly, Chuck and Vera’s. The dog is the only living creature deprived of three dimensional form, instead, he’s drafted with chalk like just another abstract piece of furniture, but in fact this emphasizes its presence symbolically and makes it even more crucial. We can only hear his barking, a warning that someone uninvited is coming to town. In that particular case he is barking as if he’s standing ‘face to face with a threat to be taken seriously’. According to the Bible Moses is a prophet in the Abrahamic religions. Here, Moses is the first to come into contact with Grace. Just a moment ago he had represented the highest level of deprivation in this small society (he’s starved in order to function better), but not after Grace steals his bone, which hierarchically puts her one level under him. In a way she marks a new stage in his emancipation, which will unfold completely in the very end. This is the beginning of act 1.

Grace (the protagonist), is a graceful young woman, as the name suggests, dressed up in the latest fashion of her time, a never seen sight on the street of Dogville. Too beautiful to be trusted. The restless, always seeking enlightenment, idealistic soul of the young writer Tom Edison Jr. sees an opportunity in her presence. He’s charmed and fascinated, just like all the inhabitants of Dogville later on, by the humble, bright, and beautiful stranger. Her ‘alabaster hands’ give away her delicate nature, subject to a different type of life, unimaginable around here. Being the daughter of a powerful gangster, who couldn’t bear the cruelty and superficiality of her father’s world, she’s on a quest for simple, common life in an honest, humble society that could give her a feel of belonging and purpose. Her subconscious desire, however, is to prove her father wrong, namely: that human nature is only bad because of the circumstances and pain it has to overcome, and under certain light, all human deeds can be forgiven. Here we recognise the outlines of an old conflict: the one between the Old and the New Testament, in its relation to forgiveness. The Old Testament’s God is vengeful, vindictive, firm, and non compromising, whereas Christ comes as the saviour of humankind, as someone giving a promise of redemption for the carnal sin. What’s more interesting, because the trilogy is profoundly and particularly critical of the American society, there’s another religious allegory that might have been used. Grace, not as Christ himself, but as the Prodigal son. However, here, the Parable of The Prodigal Son’s values (as told originally by Christ himself) are turned on their head in order to show decay in society’s moral sensitivity. Here, the prodigal daughter leaves a cruel criminal father to start a new life of honesty and hard work, and no matter how difficult this endeavour turns out to be for her, she is not the one to give up and go back begging at her father’s doorstep, to whom she’s actually: dis-Grace. He’s the one chasing her with gunshots, trying to convert her back to being the daughter he wants her to be. Even then, it’s not due to inflicted by him pressure, that she abandons the all-forgiving principle, but due to her own rationalization later. At the end, shockingly, she turns out to be more cruel than him - the big mafia boss.

There is another character in the story, counterbalancing the biblical meaning. The name Chuck has a meaning of throwing something carelessly. When Grace guesses Chuck’s secret (that he’s also from the city, here having connotations of the garden of Eden, even though the value is turned upside down, and garden of Eden actually means Hell), he feels exposed. His involvement with the apple orchard also leads to concluding about his biblical origin. His cynical exposition reminds more the one of a fallen angel, came in search of salvation, and found just another hell on earth, the one amongst human beings. A society where values are turned upside down, where competitiveness and hatred for the downtrodden are encouraged. According to Von Trier, there’s only one society that fits that description completely- the American one.

Tom Edison Jr. (the antagonist) is a young wanna be writer, who hasn’t written much on paper, nevertheless, his ambition is to act as a moralist of the small community, which would have been acceptable, if it wasn’t for his subconscious desire for gaining political power (the same that Grace gives away voluntarily). He does everything to undermine the dogmas and traditions by throwing around protestant statements like: ‘...we can be spiritual without an organ, or reading from the Bible.’ He also tries to sense the opportunity in each and every ‘change of light’ over Dogville, all the time rehearsing strategical formulas in his mind. The characters of Tom and Grace are set on a collision course since the moment Tom takes the gangster’s card, which becomes yet another opportunity in his collection. It symbolizes betrayal, one can’t help but remember ‘the 30 pieces of silver’ that Judas eventually comes to receive. Contrary to what Tom tries to convince her, Grace knows the card is kept somewhere safe and will be used against her, the same way Christ always knew about Judas’ betrayal. Tom drags Grace into his political moves, including ‘Trojan horses’ and other war tactics to get the community ‘hooked’ on her services. He uses his knowledge, gathered by meticulous observation, to gain control as the mastermind behind series of social experiments on Dogville’s soil.

Dogville is seemingly a democratic town, with each citizen having the right to vote on each and every matter concerning the community. But look carefully, and you’ll find a well defined structure and hierarchy. There is a representative of almost each and every level of social structure: a doctor, a writer, a cleaner, a vicar, a freight driver, a vendor, a producer, a gardener, etc. The priest is absent, which adds to the feeling of ‘forgotten by God’. The prison is also in a process of building up, so for the time being, there’s no corrective mechanism whatsoever. It’s a town where, absurdly as it may sound, the children (and grown-ups alike) are begging to be spanked. A society where the disabled is bullied as dumb, and made face humiliating defeats daily until he ‘learns’ to be useful (Bill). Bill’s sin is that he’s not a ‘player’. In a society that praises the competitive spirit, this equals total failure. It’s not until later on, when Bill’s creativity would serve the community’s dark pursuits, that he would be accepted as a functional member. The old blind Jack McKay is ashamed of sharing the truth about his disability for the same reason: that would mean to admit his full dysfunctionality. The maid is a colored woman (no big surprises here). The freight driver, who has a soft corner for prostitutes is also considered dysfunctional (he’s prevented from speaking his mind each time he raises his voice in the mission house). The rest of the community consists of the Hensons - cheating with their cheap glass, and the exploiters Ma Ginger and Gloria with their seven figurines.

The seven Hummel figurines are, in a way, an equivalent of the 7 children of Vera and Chuck. But they bear other meanings too. The seven children’s names: Jason, Dahlia, Diana, Pandora, Athena, Olympia, and Achilles- all heroes or gods of war, have been given to the children by their parents not only for their competitive connotations, but also in a search of authenticity, art, and culture, which, according to Von Trier, American society apparently lacks itself, so turning to the Greek mythology helps make the identifications legit. Just the same way, Grace, lacking legitimacy, being an outsider, suddenly has the need to belong, and that need prevails over her aesthetic judgement, that would otherwise have made her ‘dismiss the figurines as tasteless’. Furthermore, just like giving birth is the art of the deprived from other talents common small city folk, the seven figurines, may represent their need for transcendence within the same habitat. Though they are small and tasteless, just like the town itself, it’s not what they look like that matters, but more what they come to symbolize. And they symbolize the small american dreams of a small american wage worker, never leaving town. Buying them one by one with her symbolic wage, Grace keeps her triumph at sight, this is her new, simple, well-earned reward and the price for escaping her father’s world.

The conflict between Grace and Tom, and the community, spreading in the course of nine chapters, similar to Dante’s walk in the 9 circles of Hell, display Grace walking down the hell of human sin along Elm str. It’s a dead end street literally, with no exit, just an entrance. We find the sin of greed (Ma Ginger’s exploitation prizes), the sin of pride (in the blind Jack McKay’s case), the sin of cheating (the Henson’s with their effort of making cheap glass look expensive), the sin of lust (Ben and his drinking and fornication habits). All this at display in front of Grace, but she herself, blinded by her own desires to belong, doesn’t seem to grasp it. Her optimism leads her to undertake, what’s actually Sisyphus labour - taking care of the wild gooseberry bushes (a task that no one definitely needs done, neither believes in doing), with the hope that ‘who knows, those bushes might one day bear fruit’. Grace is to become the fertilizer (later also an aphrodisiac) of this languished society. She will do the labour no one wants to do and certainly no one needs doing, until this turns into a wholesome sacrifice of the scapegoat, and redemption for human sin. By the end of chapter 3 Grace has seemingly converted the entire town into a bunch of friends. The chapter four is the time of peace, until, exactly on the midsummer day, at 5 o’clock, when the shadow of the spire points at the letter ‘O’ in the ‘OPEN’ sign on Ma Ginger’s shop (as if announcing that it’s time for shopping, as Jack McKay put it), law enforcers enter the town for the first time in Dogville’s history. That marks the turning point of the story, followed shortly by the new chapter: ironically called Fourth of July after all, denouncing the false superimposed american nationalism only too often serving for hiding the real problems. It’s time for sweet confessions, where the love between Tom and Grace almost flourishes. Meanwhile police comes again, changing the MISSING placard of Grace with a WANTED one, which raises the stake for everyone. It’s the time for the Quid pro quo solution to take place. The viewer who, by that time had brought himself to almost like the good honest folks of Dogville, feels confronted with the urgency of taking a moral stand. After the 4th of July distractions, the problems feels ever more tangible, with the shortening of daytime hours, and Grace, racing against time, trying to keep up with her increased duties that no one needs done. The pendulum had swung the other way, marking the peak in the arc of each character, except the protagonist’s one. Dogville ‘bares its teeth’. What follows is not less than a story of Sodom and Gomorrah. First Tom’s idealistic demeanor suddenly cracks open and what we see is his sexual drive gradually getting out of hand. Then - Jason - a product of this ‘democratic’ society’s middle class family of a hard working father and a wannabe intellectual mother, pervertly blackmails Grace to spank him. Then his father dishonors her in the midst of day in what feels like a brutal public assault due to the missing walls and the fact that other members of community remain blind and deaf, minding their routine chores. At that moment in the end of the summer squirrels are looking in vain for the never existing elm trees on Elm street, similar to the audience desperately looking for a solid moral value to hold on to. Vera turns against Grace, manipulated by her son’s made up accusations, Liz accuses her in seducing Tom, all this followed by a quick court lawsuit conducted by an impromptu jury (Liz, Martha, and Vera) enforcing a sentence upon Grace (breaking her 7 figurines), while she, being unable to stoically bear her symbols of belonging being smashed in front of her eyes, bursts into tears. The degradation falls down the scale even more when Olivia, the colored helper hits her, shouting about neglecting her chores. The full decadence is reached when Ben rapes her in the trunk of his truck. Shot from above, we are given the God-like privilege of seeing the evil act through the trunk cover, with apples scattered all around, almost like the seduction scene from the garden of Eden, only in reverse, and way much sinister, making us inevitably question what might have really happened behind the myth. Some scenes are meant to never leave our subconscious, once seen. At that moment the viewer untrained in Trier’s uncanny technique of ‘alienation’ (borrowed by Bertolt Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt -defamiliarization effect) feels personally betrayed. Lars Von Trier takes the Brecht’s idea that the audience should always stay alert throughout the play in order to be able to identify the social problems portrayed, to a level of cruelty. Unlike Brecht’s actors, who are deliberately detached from their characters, without the need of convincing the audience of their authenticity, Von Trier makes us genuinely feel for each and every one, by deliberately adding to them depth and human suffering, until that schizophrenic moment, when like a hologram, shifting in front of our eyes, a complete stranger takes over the action. ‘No, not Ben, for God’s sake!’ - screams our internal sense of integrity, it’s the only sense left after the emotional devastation we’ve been gradually subjected to in the course of the last few scenes. What follows is another betrayal: instead of driving her out of town, Ben takes her back to Dogville, where the final judgement takes place. She’s also accused of stealing Tom Edison Sr.’s money from the medicine cabinet, which Tom absurdly justifies later as another of his attempts to save her.

The collective crime is inflicted with full force upon Grace with the engineering of a sophisticated restriction device. Assembled by the dog’s collar, the gooseberry bushes’ chain, Ma Ginger’s shop doorbell, and the old mill’s wheel, the torture device, a creation of Bill’s improved engineering skills (Grace herself contributed for developing), has a purpose of preventing Grace from attempting another escape from the town. If in the beginning, Dogville had represented the promised land for her, now it has, no doubt, become her life imprisonment - a painfully familiar resolution, talking of life choices.

The punishment is applied with precision and all the needed detachment by the citizens of Dogville, who insist on persuading Grace it was only for the good of the community. Here Von Trier delivers another punch in the face of the American democracy often serving as a cloak disguising acts of crime and genocide.

What follows in chapter 8th is a wholesale disgust and disappointment in human nature, in other words: all hell brake loose. The town of Dogville, reinforced by the mutual agreement of being in their right, unleash their lowest, baseborn drives upon her with no remorse whatsoever. She is considered lower than a human being (a successful nazi tactics, helping to eliminate guilt), raping her - not a shameful act in its own, not more than a ‘Hill Billy having his way with a cow’. The mission house bell, once used to ‘save a human being’, is now being misused by the wicked children to announce each and every raping act that takes place. In this chapter we clearly see Tom’s political impotence as representative of the underdog (Grace), who witnesses all wrong deeds incapable of taking a stand, but nevertheless supporting her like a spider ‘entangled in his own web’. In a state of complete strategic futility Tom suggests as a last retreat the truth to be spoken in front of everyone, with no hate or reproving. In the mission house that evening, while Grace calmly lays her mishaps down in front of everyone, the snow starts falling, leaving the town covered with the whitest blanket imaginable, nevertheless, fallen way too early. While Grace is speaking, the narrator’s voice makes slight remarks on the juvenile nature of this community’s way of dealing with responsibility (Tom Edison Sr. reads Tom Sawyer). The unifying blanket of white snow outside drives the inevitable association with ‘white guilt’ as a vivid example of the lumbering processing capacity of the american society. Digging deeper into political allegories, telling-the-truth-as-it-is strategies have hardly worked in the american political history, with its unflattering small (16) number of impeachment procedures against federal officials carried out to the end. The arc of all characters’ development is closed with Jack McKay’s new speech concerning Grace. Contrary to the one from 4th of July, where he offers her all the freedom to stay as much as she wants, this time he pleads for her extradition from the town. By that time we have seen so much, that even Tom’s attempt to force himself sexually upon Grace, no different than all other folks, comes as no surprise. By gently unmasking his hidden motives, Grace threatens to destroy all Tom’s bombastic idealistic illusions of purity. This is the full climax of the movie, protagonist and antagonist face to face in a battle, disguised as a lovers’ scene. The reverse happens internally, the war is carried out in calm, loving words. It’s a battle between ideologies: sensibility against rationality (psychologically), stoicism against opportunism (humanistically), conservatism against liberalism (politically), etc.

The last betrayal marks the beginning of the plot’s resolution. The viewer’s anticipation for Tom to bring the card up his sleeve is finally satisfied. He symbolically hands over the ‘city’s keys’ to the gangsters, in a gesture of political venality. What follows is a typical representation of historical shift of power with all the consequences of this act. No matter how cruel the anticipated punishment for the town, we can’t help but feel relieved, on behalf of Grace and all suffering humanity. The long philosophical argument about human nature between father and daughter makes our anticipation only more eager. Even when Grace gives her clear orders, embracing political power as a tool for making the world ‘a better place’, the viewer, in his thirst for revenge, is still on her side. The reciprocity: 7 figurines broken for 7 real children shot has its immediate sobering effect, making us question our own moral choices, namely our private retreat into justification of human deeds ‘under certain circumstances’. It’s a contagious dilemma, that would resonate in the viewer’s mind long after leaving the movie theater, namely: to embrace the human nature and share the guilt, or to overthrow its burden and take the responsibility.

The structure of the disillusionment plot demands a pessimistic ending. Grace chooses to destroy the city in the name of humanity. But does she really have to be that cruel? Lars Von Trier would probably answer: Yes, because she’s an american, and America is the only country in the history of mankind who retreated to using atomic bombs in combat...

AMNESTY FOR THE UNDERDOG!

At the end barking is heard through the ruins of human flesh and burning timber. It’s Moses. He sounds angry and we all feel he has the right to be, after all, Grace once stole his bone. With the final narrator’s words spoken, Moses suddenly reclaims his three dimensional shape. It’s the last transformation in hiss metamorphosis, and a final saturation of ‘the miracle’ of political twists. The bittersweet love story of politics, the political flirting with law, the underdog coming to power with its ‘justified’ cruelty... it all suddenly takes solid shape in our mind, making us admit the recurring tendencies in human nature, regardless of social status or philosophical beliefs. The rest is just history as a flipping coin in the hands of a child, or the paws of a dog, it doesn’t really matter.