Couldn’t disagree more about Straw Dogs celebrating violence with a smile. After the embrace of the stylized violence of The Wild Bunch, it seems that Peckinpah went out of his way to make this one more disturbing. We’re trained to want to relate to Hoffman’s character in a film like this, but he’s such a cold and possibly cruel (did he kill the cat?) piece of work that we’re not even allowed the release of a standard revenge movie. Its also difficult to get around the very problematic rape scene.
I see the violence in “Straw Dogs” just as stylized as “The Wild Bunch”. Literally speaking, in cinematic terms. Yes, this is a disturbing film. Particularly the way that Hoffman becomes increasingly violent and controlling of his wife.
How do we read the final smile that ends this film? And what is it about the rape scene that’s problematic?
Wouldn’t defend “Straw Dogs” but along with “Bonnie and Clyde”, “The Wild Bunch” was seminal. Graphic choreographed violence was found to be very marketable.
That said, the more important statement in some of his work is the cause of the destruction of the American west, capitalism.
Its not about the blood or gore as much as who we’re relating to. We can root for the wild bunch fairly guilt free, but we’re almost forced unwillingly to root for Hoffman in that, as unlikable as character as he is, the townies are much worse. His smile is disturbing because in being forced to become violent, he’s embraced that way of life and possibly will become the kind of man he despised.
As for the rape, it is clearly presented as rape and not seduction, but there are sequences where Susan George is shown “enjoying it.” A very dangerous message to send out about rape.
It can’t possibly be that this is the first Peckinpah thread.
" Just recently I watched “Straw Dogs” for the first time. It seemed to me a rather pointless exploration of violence that sort of celebrates it with a smile."
Bobby, this is a jaw-droppingly bizarre statement to me from someone who just days earlier was defending Kill Bill (and Tarantino’s work in general). Ditto (times 10!) the fact that you call Peckinpah derivative. Yeah, there’s a very large debate about Straw Dogs. Pauline Kael called it a fascist work of art. I disagree with her as well. Does the film embrace the actions of its protagonist? That seems to be your (and her) assumption. I think there’s far deeper ambivalence in the film than that.
As for Peckinpah’s place in the larger landscape of modern era Hollywood, though his influence might be argued to be bad (Woo’s ballet of bullets, Tarantino, ultra stylized and symphonic violence), he was singular, and far more attuned to poetic quiet (like the director’s cut of the Wild Bunch which when released in the 90s was slapped with an NC-17 even though the added scenes were non-violent ones) than given credit for.
“but we’re almost forced unwillingly to root for Hoffman in that, as unlikable as character as he is, the townies are much worse. His smile is disturbing because in being forced to become violent, he’s embraced that way of life and possibly will become the kind of man he despised.”
Yes, and this is why I think if you want to make a genealogy of what Peckinpah was doing thematically in Straw Dogs, you need to connect it to Funny Games in the present (or some of Haneke’s other films).
For me “The Wild Bunch” is the key film. “Straw Dogs” is superficially “provocative” and consequently weak, IMO. There’s a lot less than meets the eye — and ear. By contrast "The Wild Bunch’ confronts the dark heart of suicidal self-destruction in the form of an incredibly visceral and absorbing adventure-cum-character study.
Other Peckinpah works of note: “Ride the High Country,” “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” and “Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia.”
Let’s not forget Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (at least the restored version), a somber and rich “end of the West” eulogy
Agree David, The Wild Bunch is great, and the only Pekinpah film i’d recommend to newcomers.
on the fence about Straw Dogs. the more you watch it, the better it seems imo. Hoffman is great in it, and there are some genuinely shocking moments, even to this day. Susan George’s acting lets it down a little though imo.
I think his non-Westerns are quite good as well: Cross of Iron and the Getaway. Hell, I even enjoy Convoy and Junior Bonner (but not The Killer Elite and the Osterman Weekend, the only two duds in his career as far as I’m concerned). I think Straw Dogs came out around the same time as Clockwork Orange so it’s not so much that the film was deliberately and intentionally “provocative” but it was just the timing of its release and the high profile of Peckinpah and Hoffman at the time (and subsequently a backlash). Compared to Last House on the Left (released a year later), the film is quite tame.
“confronts the dark heart of suicidal self-destruction in the form of an incredibly visceral and absorbing adventure-cum-character study.”
This is a beautiful way of describing the Peckinpah thematic appeal. Of course, that’s his own biography as well.
-His smile is disturbing because in being forced to become violent, he’s embraced that way of life and possibly will become the kind of man he despised.”-
Yeah, but to Peckinpah, I think he’s actually becoming the person he always was, just with the veneer of pacifist/civility/intellectualism/liberalism stripped away.
" I think he’s actually becoming the person he always was"
I’m not sure I agree with this. Conventionally, many people feel Straw Dogs embraces a violent view of human nature in which Peckinpah ostensibly strips off the thin layer of civility that covers our animality. But he could also be showing how anyone under certain circumstances can become such a person. Or how a particular kind of person can end up resorting to violence and enjoy it. It’s not just his thin veneer of pacifism/liberalism/intellecutalism that is stripped away but his own passive-aggressive repression and timidity.
Both the protagonist and the antagonists are linked sides of the same coin. If you portray thing in a gray area, then people are going to make their own conclusions, particularly in blurring the lines between the motivation of the characters and the director or writer. The historical context of the film puts things in a different context for me. With pacifists demonstrating against Vietnam, they often became violent like the 1968 Democratic convention.
The rape scene for me is not really defensible. I can’t handle it.
-his own passive-aggressive repression.-
OK, maybe that’s a better way of phrasing it—the films does seem to cry out for a specifically Freudian reading, doesn’t it? To me the mechanism of David’s repression is sublimation into his academic work and the generally reserved and withdrawing character of his personality at the beginning of the film. Amy’s repression is obviously supposed to parallel David’s, but in her case it seems almost exclusively limited to sexuality.
I never thought Hoffman was an unlikeable character in the film. A little bit weak-willed, maybe. But not a disagreeable character. We actually feel for him because it seems he is so clearly overmatched socially and physically by everybody around him.
Regarding the rape, she’s not shown “enjoying” it but rather “embracing” it or accepting it, alternately of course. She surely doesn’t accept the second guy that rapes her. What’s very problematic is her behavior before that point. The scene when she pulls up in her car, lifts her skirt up very high and spreads her legs, then acts surprised when she sees the workers looking at her. Also the scene where she walks around without a shirt on, then exposes herself in front of the window, knowing that the workers are there and can see in. What is Peckinpah saying in these scenes? Is he trying to create a character that is “asking for it”? Her behavior is very ambivalent and I read it as her actually being very flirtatious.
As far as me defending Tarantino, I’ll defend Peckinpah’s right to show violence also (and his right to appropriate). I was just giving my immediate, impressionistic reactions to the film. I don’t want to pass judgment on him. If I was a little harsher with him it’s because I didn’t necessarily enjoy the film a great deal, and not because of the amount of violence in it. Is this a fascist film? I wouldn’t want to be so extreme in labeling it. But that smile at the end was so giddy and joyful. I could only read it as a support of violence. “Oh man, it felt good to cut loose!” That’s how it looked. It embraces his actions. I didn’t detect much critical opposition or ambivalence.
I don’t believe Hoffman is becoming the person he always was. He just really enjoyed tasting the dark side for once in his life and wouldn’t mind more. The film almost turns into a black comedy by the point when we see that smile.
Peckinpah said in an interview at the time regarding the film “I think it’s wrong – and dangerous – to refuse to acknowledge the animal nature of man…. [The film] is about a guy who finds out a few nasty secrets about himself."
-But that smile at the end was so giddy and joyful. I could only read it as a support of violence. “Oh man, it felt good to cut loose!” That’s how it looked. It embraces his actions. I didn’t detect much critical opposition or ambivalence.-
So, how would that be different from Tarantino’s treatment of violence? . . . other than that perhaps Tarantino’s violence invokes a certain amount of sheltering irony?
Moderated
“My chief objection to “Straw Dogs” is that the situation is so baldly stated: “What if they raped your wife?” "
But unless I’m misremembering the film, David doesn’t find out that his wife was raped…
“But his life has been changed utterly and he won’t be smiling though it all for very long.”
Yeah, the final exchange in the film (“I don’t know the way home”/“neither do I”) nicely drives that home (perhaps too obviously?).
“Peckinpah said in an interview at the time regarding the film “I think it’s wrong – and dangerous – to refuse to acknowledge the animal nature of man…. [The film] is about a guy who finds out a few nasty secrets about himself.”"
Yeah, Robert Ardrey unfortunately way too much influence on many intelligent writers and artists (Kubrick too) but, whatever Peckinpah says, I don’t see Straw Dogs as a straightforward depiction of Ardrey’s ideas.
As for David “getting off” on the violence, I think the problem is that viewers then take what they know about Peckinpah and assume a) that he’s getting off on the violence and b) he expects viewers to as well. I don’t care if a) is true or not but I think b) is clearly disputable. If he portrayed the violence, as it would generally be portrayed in most films, as unfortunate but necessary (not a smiling David but a traumatized and horrified one), we’d still feel good about the character and empathize with the “necessity” of what he had to do. The smile turns that narrative entirely on its head. In doing so, it completely subverts the reactionary aspects of that kind of narrative.
-Pekinpah’s films are as serious as a heart attack.-
Yeah, what I’m wondering, is if we’ve gotten to a point where an audience is so conditioned by cartoonish violence depictions of violence with serious intent seem odd.
Wikipedia, referencing material in Garner Simmons’ Peckinpah, A Portrait in Montage:
“Director Peckinpah defended Straw Dogs as an exploration, not an endorsement, of violence, that was purging him of obsessions with violence resulting from human inability to communicate; that David is the story’s true villain — deliberately, yet subconsciously, provoking the violence, his concluding homicidal rampage is his true self.”
Well you see that’s where the film is weak. A situation arises of a sort that the protagonist has never faced before and he “rises to the occasion.” Why should his actions in this instance be taken as his “true self”?
Note: Yes he doesn’t find out about the rape, but WE do. The entire film is posed as a problem thrust directly at us in the audience. “What would you do?” hangs over everything in the film in a way that it doesn’t in “The Wild Bunch.”
Well, I think Straw Dogs is Peckinpah’s most plainly essentialist film, so I’m guessing in this context, everybody’s “true self” would be essentially the same—that what’s really happening is that David reverts, so to speak, to the default setting.
I don’t necessarily want to compare Peckinpah to Tarantino because even though there may be a lineage, they’re working in different modes for different reasons. And needless to say, I don’t want this to turn into a Tarantino discussion.
It doesn’t seem to me that the major film situation is “What if they raped your wife?” I think that’s an almost incidental event in the story. The major situation is, how do you react to and confront violence? With more violence? Where the film stops short is the consequences.
Is it subversive that Hoffman smiles instead of cries at the end? Maybe. Does that mean we should read the film as progressive rather than reactionary? Does it make his character more likeable or less likeable?
I think maybe I am too conditioned by violence in movies. This seemed tame and almost pointless. My question is, was it really so provocative and groundbreaking even in 1971, after “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Wild Bunch”?
^ Maybe it was slightly provocative since the protagonist was closer to the audience than a bunch of cowboys or criminals living in the depression. I think it was not nearly as effective as his other films, but this is one of those films where the ideas did not pan out in execution (no pun intended).
The film makes a hell of a lot more sense if you assume that it’s David who kills the cat (and while ambiguous, I do believe it’s a legitimate reading.) Assuming he kills the cat, we can both see a precedent for his violence at the end and realize that we like this character at our own risk (I’m convinced Peckinpah does not want us to like him.)
>>was it really so provocative and groundbreaking even in 1971, after “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Wild Bunch”?<<
Out of context, no. As much blood was spilt in the earlier films. But they didn’t put their audience in such a morally difficult position as to how we feel about that violence. In that way, Straw Dogs is more akin to A Clockwork Orange.
I don’t know. I didn’t detect such moral turpitude in the film. Surely not on the level of “A Clockwork Orange”. “Straw Dogs” feels cut and dry for the most part. I’m not provoked towards any ambivalence with regards to the killing of the cat, the killing of the drunkard’s daughter, or the various killings in the climactic bloodbath. Not even the killing of the duck. The ambivalence is in the rape scene. But its an external ambivalence, not internal. Ditto for the smile. We’re wondering how the characters feel, not how we feel.
Why is it a legitimate reading to assume that David killed the cat? There’s a tiny element of probable cause but again, I don’t feel that his character was set up to be very unlikeable.
Well, he is often very annoyed and seems aggressive toward the cat. And I can’t recall the exact scene, but doesn’t the wife hint that she suspects him? If you don’t find David unlikeable, it’s not a conclusion one would buy into (and even if you do, I admit it’s ambiguous.) If I viewed David sympathetically, I wouldn’t like the film either and might even buy into Kael’s critique of it as fascist.
He’s “closer to the audience” if you assume the audience (and/or its “ideal”) is a bourgeois academic.
As for “A Clockworkk Orange” there was an enormous amount of critical compare/contrast over these films, particularly in England, at the time of their release. Many saw themselves as “for” one and ’against" the other.
Peckinpah was all about exploring the nature of violence and codes of masculinity. He was one fucked up dude who made some really great films.
There was a big discussion on imdb a while ago how Hoffman’s character gets himself into trouble by being a cowardly, condescending asshole, and that ultimately his passive aggressive behaviour is responsible for the chaos that unfolds around him.
What i do find interesing about this film is, that, if understood as making a ‘statement’ of sorts about masculinity, is how his wife seems to resent him for not taking a stand, but when he finally does, she is completely horrified.
Bobby Wise
I don’t see any forum thread on Peckinpah so I thought to start a discussion on him. I know very little about his work. Just recently I watched “Straw Dogs” for the first time. It seemed to me a rather pointless exploration of violence that sort of celebrates it with a smile. Also, a very derivative film. The house under siege comes from “Night of the Living Dead” by way of “The Birds”. The elliptical editing comes from “Easy Rider” by way of “Contempt”.
Anyone care to defend this film’s historical importance, or talk about Peckinpah’s place in the larger landscape of modern era Hollywood?