Dogs on Film

  

  Throughout the various films and clips of dog films we have watched in this class, I have seen a few themes or patterns pop up. Firstly, most dog films aren't actually about dogs. They're typically focused on humans and their relationships with dogs, a perception of how we think a dog should be, or a completely anthropomorphized "dog" character. For example, from what I've seen, the movie Marmaduke would be almost the same movie if Marmaduke were a human child instead of a dog. They gave the dog a human voice, a human personality, and made the movie about the troubles this "dog" causes his human family. Also, I found the movie Best in Show is a movie not about dogs, but involving dogs. The film centers entirely around the handlers of the dogs, and the dogs themselves are almost like movie props. I think this itself is a funny idea though, the dogs themselves are mostly calm and doglike the entire film, while the various handlers of dogs project on them. Such as the couple at the end of the movie who decided it was their "negative" dog they had been doting on that gave them relationship problems when in reality, the dog was just chilling most of the time. These kinds of films are an excellent way to display the way we as humans project onto our dogs traits and ideas that often aren't there. This isn't to say that these films are bad or immoral, just that they often don't depict the reality of what a dog is.

    Secondly, most dog films are either a sort of slapstick comedy, a feel-good movie, or a movie where the dog is killed. They serve to either make us laugh, warm our hearts, or make us cry. I think this is what made My Dog Tulip so special. I feel like it was the only dog movie I've seen where the dog was just a dog. It was a rather accurate portrayal of a relationship with a dog, without forcing the dog to take on human attributes or serve a purpose other than doing what dogs do.