Close to dog­li­ness: the Chris­t­ian under­tones of canines in Hollywood

From Greyfri­ars Bob­by to Isle of Dogs via Lassie Come Home, the rela­tion­ship between man and canine has delight­ed cin­ema­go­ers since the very birth of the medi­um, and a recur­ring theme in Hol­ly­wood con­cerns dogs func­tion­ing as a means of bring­ing fam­i­lies togeth­er – specif­i­cal­ly through mak­ing dis­tract­ed fathers care about their chil­dren more. Many of the plot sum­maries of fam­i­ly dog movies men­tion some vari­a­tion or oth­er of ​‘heal­ing the bro­ken fam­i­ly’, but what, beyond imagery of cute dogs frol­ick­ing about, might be the wider sig­nif­i­cance of this not-insub­stan­tial subgenre?

In the first Beethoven film, it takes a con­trived plot involv­ing the tit­u­lar St. Bernard foil­ing an attempt­ed ani­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion plan at the hands of Dr. Her­man Var­nick (Dean Jones) for worka­holic father George’s (Charles Grodin) jeal­ousy of Beethoven to morph into grudg­ing respect, and for his worka­holism to dis­si­pate some­what in favour of being an actu­al father. The sub­se­quent sev­en Beethoven movies (of which the last six were straight to video) see the prodi­gious dog pro­vid­ing var­i­ous forms of canine assis­tance to whichev­er fam­i­ly he has been shipped off to.

Mean­while, in the wild­ly suc­cess­ful Mar­ley and Me, unsuc­cess­ful writer John Gro­gan (Owen Wil­son), is jeal­ous of his wife Jenny’s (Jen­nifer Anis­ton) jour­nal­is­tic prowess and, fol­low­ing the advice of a friend, gets a pup­py. Through this, Jen­ny will be inspired to have chil­dren though expe­ri­enc­ing hav­ing ​‘some­thing to care for oth­er than [John].’ The bad­ly behaved pup­py becomes an inte­gral part of the quick­ly unfurl­ing fam­i­ly, pro­vid­ing John with com­pan­ion­ship and empa­thy – who could under­stand the tur­moil of male sex­u­al unful­fill­ment bet­ter than a dog who is about to have his balls cut off? Mean­while, Jen­ny bat­tles with feel­ings of inad­e­qua­cy in her con­cur­rent jobs of suc­cess­ful writer and moth­er, decid­ing to aban­don her career in favour of look­ing after the chil­dren, while John is final­ly allowed to be the bril­liant writer that he should’ve been all along.

Marley’s pro­cliv­i­ties for rip­ping up fur­ni­ture, steal­ing food, hump­ing human legs, and shit­ting in the sea with gay aban­don while John looks on in a state of fond exas­per­a­tion sit­u­ate him, in Freudi­an pop psy­chol­o­gy terms, as an exter­nal man­i­fes­ta­tion of John’s id, which the walk­ing ego that is John inef­fec­tive­ly attempts to keep a lid on. John starts the film by whin­ing and ends with every­thing he want­ed, mak­ing zero com­pro­mis­es and using Mar­ley as a means of negat­ing per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty along the way. Mar­ley acts as a cat­a­lyst to force the fam­i­ly unit into exis­tence and ensure that nuclear fam­i­ly val­ues are upheld.

The weird­est and most extreme exam­ple of dogs bring­ing fam­i­lies togeth­er comes in the form of 2017’s The Stray. The film fol­lows a mys­te­ri­ous col­lie dubbed Plu­to the Won­der­dog, who, as Wikipedia tells it, ​“man­ages to save a tod­dler, bring com­fort and com­pan­ion­ship to a hurt­ing 9‑year-old boy, help restore a mar­riage, and repair a bro­ken father-son rela­tion­ship.” Big respon­si­bil­i­ty to be put on such small fur­ry shoul­ders. What Wikipedia fails to men­tion is that, in his posi­tion as sav­iour of the fam­i­ly, one of the ways in which Plu­to enacts his duties is to be struck by light­ning and killed on an ill-advised camp­ing trip. The father, in this case Mitch (Michael Cas­sidy) car­ries Pluto’s body stretched across his shoul­ders, invok­ing some of the most bla­tant Jesus-and-cross imagery to be found out­side of an actu­al stained glass win­dow. Plu­to has died for Mitch’s sins, and he can final­ly be a good father and a genius writer (yes, Mitch is a writer too).

Despite the temp­ta­tion after watch­ing The Stray, it’s prob­a­bly a stretch to con­tend that dogs in feel-good fam­i­ly films are struc­tural­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of deities – though, it is per­haps worth tak­ing into account that the real Mitch Davis who wrote and direct­ed The Stray is a ded­i­cat­ed mem­ber of the Mor­mon church. What these Chris­t­ian under­tones sug­gest, though, is that there exists a ​‘mild­ly help­ful’ to ​‘actu­al Jesus’ scale for these canines, indica­tive of how much respon­si­bil­i­ty the inhab­i­tants of what­ev­er typ­i­cal Amer­i­can house­hold will project onto the fam­i­ly dog. Beloved pet pooches in these films seem­ing­ly exist to fill in emo­tion­al holes that can­not or will not be filled by humans.

The vary­ing require­ments of the hum­ble fam­i­ly dog are explored in A Dog’s Pur­pose, direct­ed by Lasse Hall­ström (who knows a thing or two about canine empa­thy, hav­ing been nom­i­nat­ed for the Best Direc­tor Oscar in 1985 for My Life as a Dog). The film fol­lows one dog, Bai­ley, on a jour­ney through time from the 1960s to the present in var­i­ous rein­car­nat­ed forms. He is found near the begin­ning by a child named Ethan and quick­ly set­tles into the stan­dard help­ing-nuclear-fam­i­ly set up, although the father’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the Cold War leads him into an infu­ri­at­ing­ly stereo­typ­i­cal down­ward spi­ral of alco­holism and abuse that even Bai­ley can­not save him from. From this point, Bai­ley inhab­its many dif­fer­ent breeds, names, and gen­ders, help­ing a sad police­man on his law enforce­ment mis­sions and a reclu­sive young woman find love, before ulti­mate­ly end­ing up back with Ethan in the present day (who he helps get togeth­er with the love of his life).

Through­out this process, Bai­ley endures a Christ-like amount of suf­fer­ing, but remains a pure soul left time and again to pick up the pieces of humanity’s failed endeav­ours. He spends the dura­tion of the film try­ing to dis­cov­er what his rea­son for being is, con­clud­ing that a dog’s pur­pose is to:

1. Have fun.
2. When­ev­er pos­si­ble, find some­one to save and save them.
3. Lick the ones you love.
4. Don’t get all sad-faced about what hap­pened and all scrunchy-faced about what could.
5. Be here now. Be. Here. Now.

You can choose to inter­pret this in a nice way (that the film encour­ages its child audi­ence to express love, enjoy life, and live in the present) or more cyn­i­cal­ly: that the film’s meta-com­men­tary about the role of dogs in Hol­ly­wood legit­imis­es nega­tion of human respon­si­bil­i­ty and uphold­ing of oppres­sive Amer­i­can fam­i­ly val­ues. The huge suc­cess of Mar­ley and Me, A Dog’s Pur­pose, and Beethoven indi­cates that per­haps it ben­e­fits late-stage cap­i­tal­ism for chil­dren to be encour­aged to con­sume regres­sive con­ser­v­a­tive-cod­ed media – so long as it’s sug­ar-coat­ed with the inclu­sion of a love­ly dog.