How Straw Dogs exposed the hypocrisy of the New… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

How Straw Dogs exposed the hypocrisy of the New Man

05 Jun 2017

Words by Elena Lazic

Two people in embrace, man comforting woman with downcast expressions.
Two people in embrace, man comforting woman with downcast expressions.
Despite accu­sa­tions of misog­y­ny, Sam Peckinpah’s domes­tic thriller is a fem­i­nist film in disguise.

If the late 60s and ear­ly 70s in Amer­i­ca were defined by unrest, per­haps no actor embod­ied it on screen as vivid­ly as Dustin Hoff­man. From The Grad­u­ate to Kramer vs Kramer via Mid­night Cow­boy and All the President’s Men, Hoff­man spe­cialised in deliv­er­ing neu­rot­ic, agi­tat­ed per­for­mances. The under­cur­rent of emo­tions flow­ing through his char­ac­ters almost always burst out in bouts of sud­den vio­lence. His body alone, short yet mus­cu­lar, his feet firm­ly plant­ed on the ground but nev­er still for long, cre­ates a ten­sion with­in the frame that sev­er­al direc­tors have exploit­ed to beau­ti­ful effect.

As the worka­holic father forced to look after his son for the first time, Hoff­man brings to his char­ac­ter in Kramer vs Kramer a vio­lent impa­tience that pro­pels the nar­ra­tive. While see­ing the actor aggres­sive­ly strug­gle to pre­pare French toast is a spec­ta­cle in itself, the con­stant fear that Kramer may inad­ver­tent­ly hurt his child simul­ta­ne­ous­ly cre­ates ten­sion and fur­thers the sto­ry. Whether this man could ever be a good father is the cen­tral ques­tion and real heart of the film.

Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs sim­i­lar­ly plays with Hoffman’s per­sona and strengths, cast­ing him against type as a qui­et and reserved math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor. Mov­ing with his young British wife Amy (Susan George) to her natal Cor­nish coun­try­side, David Sum­n­er is seek­ing peace and qui­et to pur­sue his writer­ly ambi­tions. Yet from the very start, the cou­ple are con­front­ed with the bare­ly con­cealed hos­til­i­ty of the locals, child­hood friends of Amy, who do not approve of the Amer­i­can outsider.

Yet in the face of increased bul­ly­ing, David receives no sup­port from Amy. Far from offer­ing to talk to her friends and calm them down, she demand that David fight back. Instead of uphold­ing rea­son and grown-up con­ver­sa­tion, she wants her hus­band to play these men’s game and use the same back­wards, pet­ty vio­lence that they utilise to harass the couple.

Yet Amy is por­trayed as a way more com­plex char­ac­ter than this atti­tude may sug­gest. Far from adher­ing to con­ven­tion­al gen­der roles in which the man must phys­i­cal­ly pro­tect his woman, she in fact proves the most pro­gres­sive of all the char­ac­ters. When the local men in town stare at her bra-less breasts pok­ing under her shirt in the film’s open­ing sequence, Amy shows no sign of shame at all. David, how­ev­er, is vis­i­bly uncom­fort­able. Rather than telling the men to cor­rect their behav­iour, he sug­gests Amy wear a bra to stop attract­ing the attention.’

Scared of the locals and almost embar­rassed by his wife, David would rather put the blame on her than go and talk to the real wrong­do­ers. It is this cow­ard­ly misog­y­ny that push­es Amy to pro­voke him with increas­ing feroc­i­ty through­out the film. Bit­ter and resent­ful, she walks naked around her home on pur­pose, very much aware that the locals appoint­ed to fix the house can see her through the win­dows. Lat­er, she vol­un­tar­i­ly annoys David while he is work­ing. Yet despite all her attempts, he nev­er under­stands her anger and nev­er reacts, cast­ing her out as a child­ish and naïve lit­tle girl instead.

This con­sid­er­a­tion of Amy as a fem­i­nist char­ac­ter with­in a fem­i­nist film makes the accu­sa­tions of misog­y­ny against the infa­mous rape scene less straight­for­ward and obvi­ous. Treat­ed like a worth­less piece of meat both by her hus­band and by the locals, exhaust­ed by her fruit­less effort to per­suade David to defend her, Amy feels alone and hope­less. That the infa­mous attack at the film’s mid-point is enact­ed by her for­mer boyfriend Char­lie (Del Hen­ney), then, is a ter­ri­ble con­tra­dic­tion. Sym­bol­i­cal­ly con­firm­ing the idea that no one will defend her, this man she once loved also gives her a per­verse sense of atten­tion and com­fort she can not find in the arms of her husband.

Susan George’s facial expres­sions, the way she fights back then doesn’t dur­ing this ago­nis­ing­ly pro­longed sequence, per­fect­ly high­lights the con­flict­ing feel­ings of pain and sur­ren­der with­in Amy. The dual­i­ty of this first attack is made even clear­er when anoth­er one of the locals, his rifle point­ed at Char­lie, then forces him to hold Amy down so he can take advan­tage of her him­self. When Amy under­stands what is hap­pen­ing, her shy smile of sat­is­fac­tion turns into a scream: Char­lie too, like David, is turn­ing a blind eye to her suf­fer­ing. She tru­ly is alone, after all.

This sequence is won­der­ful in itself, for the way it treads such a dan­ger­ous line so respect­ful­ly, giv­ing its main char­ac­ter real depth and restor­ing to the attack its true hor­ror. Even more impres­sive is the fact that it is nev­er turned into a plot point. The attack is not what even­tu­al­ly trig­gers David into final­ly revolt­ing against these local men. Amy’s suf­fer­ing is not the fuel that advances David’s story.

Instead, David’s burst of vio­lence in the film’s final sequences is based on a much more old-fash­ioned, self­ish instinct. When Hen­ry Niles (David Warn­er), a men­tal­ly defi­cient man hat­ed by the entire town, is accused of hav­ing kid­napped a young girl, the local men chase him down and threat­en to kill him. Sud­den­ly becom­ing a man of prin­ci­ples, David shel­ters Hen­ry and does not hes­i­tate to use force to keep the aggres­sors out of his house.

In the film’s pro­found­ly sad irony, David does not only finds him­self defend­ing a real mur­der­er. He also proud­ly tells Amy that he will not allow vio­lence against this house’ long after she her­self has been attacked in their own liv­ing room. What is to his eyes a wor­thy and noble speech – and a clas­sic Oscar moment for Hoff­man – is here deeply mis­guid­ed and pathet­ic, almost infu­ri­at­ing. David sees him­self as the hero in his own sto­ry, but the real heart of the film is Amy.

Released at a time when sec­ond-wave fem­i­nism was chal­leng­ing gen­der inequal­i­ty both at work and in the home, Straw Dogs deserves to be re-exam­ined as a fem­i­nist film in dis­guise. Despite Peckinpah’s famous­ly restric­tive and misog­y­nis­tic views on his own film and on the char­ac­ter of Amy, Susan George’s per­for­mance tran­scends insult­ing and sim­plis­tic char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion. Inad­ver­tent­ly or not, the film brings to light the hypocrisy of many men who at the time pur­port­ed to adopt the New Man’ atti­tude, stripped of vio­lent affir­ma­tions of mas­culin­i­ty but still fail­ing to care about the women around them. Shock­ing­ly mod­ern and reward­ing, the film fea­tures one of Hoffman’s most nuanced and unsym­pa­thet­ic per­for­mances as a man at the cen­tre of the sto­ry yet with­out a clue.

Straw Dogs is screen­ing as part of the BFI’s Dustin Hoff­man sea­son. Fore more info vis­it what​son​.bfi​.org​.uk

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