Literary and Cinematic Examples

A Cinematic Example Nicole Kidman plays Grace in Lars von Trier’s Dogville (2003)

Dogville Written and directed by: Lars von Trier, USA, 2003 Character: Grace, played by Nicole Kidman

The story unfolds in the 1930s in a small American town called Dogville. The set is a theatrical stage, minimalistic, with white lines drawn on the ground to indicate the boundaries of houses and the town. Beyond these lines, there’s nothing. It’s as if the town has no concrete location, a fictitious village existing in isolation from an unknown external world. Life is confined within a strict, claustrophobic space, as if all the residents were part of one big family, and the town itself were a single household. Everything happens right here, within this constrained area.

The first character to enter the scene is Tom Edison (Paul Bettany), a young man full of projects, a would-be writer who can’t seem to bring his plans to fruition. He is dependent on his father’s authority and his mother’s protection. According to Tom, the inhabitants of Dogville have a difficulty receiving and accepting help and being open. He is determined to get them together to address this issue, even though the villagers are seemingly doing fine as they are. In Tom’s view, a gift would have to fall from the sky for their problems to get resolved.

At that very moment, Grace, a beautiful fugitive pursued by gangsters, arrives in Dogville. Grace symbolizes the ideal woman, with her beauty, femininity, tenderness, generosity, and kindness. She finds no fault in anyone and always has a smile on her face. Upon her arrival, when nobody is watching, she steals a bone from the only dog living in the village out of hunger. Tom catches her in the act and offers her a piece of bread. She says she was raised to be arrogant and must be punished for stealing, so she cannot accept it.

Tom convinces the villagers to hide Grace in town for two weeks and devises a plan to get them to accept her. She’ll work for them in return. Grace hasn’t worked a day in her life; it’s evident from her expensive clothes, healthy-looking skin, and manicured hands. She’s clearly a wealthy woman who has never experienced hardship. Nonetheless, she’s determined not to be cast out or betrayed, and she’s willing to pay a high price for this sanctuary.

Her first objective is to win everyone over. To accomplish this, she will demonstrate her worth by offering the villagers what she imagines they might need, all with the help of Tom. Tom, on the other hand, hiding behind his “good intentions,” is pursuing his goal of finding an escape from the repetitive and closed world of Dogville. Consequently, he will exploit Grace without the slightest consideration.

Although the inhabitants of Dogville initially claim they don’t want anything, Grace starts taking on chores that they didn’t even realize they needed until she made herself indispensable to each and every one of them. She cleans for some, listens to the problems of others, reads to a blind man and describes to him what he cannot see, picks apples and helps in the fields, takes care of an elderly lady, and looks after children. She tirelessly moves from house to house, completing all these tasks without a single complaint. In no

time, she adopts a new persona: efficient at work and modest in her attire – an image that conforms to what the townspeople expect from her.

Seemingly happy to help everyone, she endures abuse and exploitation to be protected and considered a “good person.” She even perceives the absurd tests she’s subjected to as acts of recognition. She adapts, like Tom, to a world where recognition or love are contingent upon obedience, good behavior, and respect for the rules. Feelings, emotions, and instincts are part of the “evil” that might threaten this illusory tranquility, this false order, and are, therefore, punished.

Grace allies herself with these “image” values to the point of defending them against the inhabitants when they themselves criticize them. She needs to create a comforting narrative to shield herself from the cruelty of her circumstances. The narrator of the story describes her as a woman who always knows what others need and has a lot of practice in controlling her emotions. She adapts to any situation, including becoming the object of desire for the men in town.

When the hunt for her intensifies and the police arrive in the village to post “wanted” posters, the people of Dogville, overcome with the typical fear of American society, believe they’re entitled to demand even greater compensation for the risk they’re taking to hide her. Tom, as the intermediary between the townsfolk and Grace, draws up a new plan whereby she’ll work even longer hours. She accepts with good grace, and they go so far as to mistreat and punish her to unbearable limits in the eyes of the viewer.

Tom, although obviously in love with her, is an accomplice to this cruelty, because he shares the same fear of not being right, and not being accepted. He manipulates Grace by promising her protection, and she complies and conforms. She believes him because she feels a masculine presence by her side.

Grace even tolerates abuse and rape, constantly forgiving her aggressors by rationalizing their actions and excusing their behavior as a consequence of being powerless against their instincts. She’s capable of putting up with anything so that they don’t turn her in or throw her out. These are the constant threats she faces. The important thing for Grace is the illusory sense of protection that the people can offer her against her persecutors. On one hand, we can speculate that whoever is threatening her is so dangerous that it’s better to accept this false security. On the other, we can sense that Grace is well-accustomed to adapting and being mistreated or overlooked as a person.

When she is finally sexually abused and raped, she retreats into a state of detachment. This is what the Sexual 3 does: disconnects from the abuse, going so far as to ally themselves with the abuser. The explanation given to her by a man from the village who wants to abuse her is all too clarifying: “If you love me you have to satisfy me; if you don’t

satisfy me, you don’t truly love me.” Grace finds it nearly impossible to make decisions and struggles to express anger or rebellion. She only knows how to be an accomplice to her exploiters.

She ends up becoming the town whore, though she doesn’t get paid for it. She doesn’t even seem to have made that choice; she simply lets herself be used and forgives one rapist after another. Her disconnection helps her deceive herself and maintain that image of kindness, purity, generosity, and false modesty, closely tied to vanity, or, as we will hear from her father’s lips in the final scene, arrogance.

But prior to the climax, we witness a scene where Grace finally expresses her pain. The women of the village go to punish her at her house for having seen her with one of their husbands. She had been collecting clay figurines that she’d bought with the tips they gave her. The narrator tells us that these figurines are, for her, symbols of the children born in the village between the meetings that determined whether she would stay or leave. They serve, therefore, as proof that her suffering produced something meaningful.

One of the women picks up two figurines and promises not to break any more if Grace can stop crying. The narrator says that this is the first time she has cried since she was a child and that for her, they’re like human beings disintegrating. The villager destroys, one by one, all the clay figurines as Grace weeps inconsolably, as if they were killing her family or herself. Finally, she connects with the horrors she’s endured and decides to escape.

But she doesn’t make it. The man who had promised to help her flee by hiding her in his truck, having already collected the money, rapes her and then drives her back to the town. When she returns, she is chained and forced to live as a slave. The director uses this external prison to reflect what she has unwittingly created—a product of her vanity, based on false perfection, control, and detachment. This leaves the audience in deep frustration, with the desire to articulate what she can’t or won’t.

After another meeting with the people, Tom, who had supposedly become her boyfriend, can no longer navigate the internal conflict between defending her and protecting his own position. He turns her in to the gangsters who are after her, calling them on the phone. When they arrive, they are led by… Grace’s own father. We then learn that she came to Dogville after a fight with her father, where she had the audacity to voice her grievances and chose to escape from her previous life.

Now, in the ensuing reunion, it is her father who voices his grievances. She called him arrogant for believing he had the right to take her rapists’ lives, robbing them of what God had bestowed upon them. She had justified them, contending that they were not at fault for obeying their nature. Her father replies that she is the arrogant one for calling her rapists victims and blaming the circumstances. He accuses her of having the preconceived notion

that nobody can possibly reach her “high ethical standards,” and that’s why she exonerates them, which is the height of arrogance. The father explains to her that they must be given the opportunity to take responsibility for their actions—an opportunity she does not give them. He asks her to return home with him and offers to hand over power to her in return.

These words give Grace pause for thought, and she decides to take her father’s power and make the world a better place by killing everyone in Dogville. Faced with the woman who broke her figurines, she orders them to do the same to her children. The accumulated suffering now drives her to annihilate her aggressors. It’s the price she pays for not having set boundaries and also the sign that she’s finally taking off her sweet and pristine mask to reveal her shadow: the rage, vengeance, and the desire to exact revenge on those who stole her life. Her father is also presenting her with an opportunity—an opportunity to act on her most deeply hidden instincts, including anger and rivalry towards himself. We, as viewers, know that she will never be the same.

The film evokes pity for this woman and, concurrently, frustration with her inability to stand up for herself. Lars von Trier said, in an interview, that he doesn’t feel sorry for his protagonist. From the perspective of the arrogance that the filmmaker wants to portray, with her putting herself above her aggressors with that deceptive veneer of perfection, it’s true that she becomes less pitiful. Yet, if we look at her abusers through the same lens that she does – as men who have been lonely for a long time, in great need of physical contact, poor “imperfect” guys due to fear – we begin to fall into her own trap. It’s true that it is fear that leads them to do what they do, a fear perpetuated by those in authority, which causes Americans to create societies like the one in Dogville.

Finally, let’s examine how Grace is seen by her father, who accuses her of not giving the perpetrators a chance to take responsibility for their actions. The Sexual 3 takes on the responsibility for the wrongdoing of others in order to preserve their image. They are even capable of romanticizing murderers. However, they do not take responsibility for their own wrongdoings, which they hide behind a seductive sweetness. If they expose the wrongdoings of others, they bring darkness to light—and with it, their own ugliness.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is a classic study of the narcissistic personality, even though it is a fictional account. Like Narcissus, Dorian Gray was an exceedingly beautiful young man. Moreover, the beauty of his appearance coincided with an equally beautiful temperament. He was kind, considerate, and concerned. Inevitably, Dorian’s good looks attracted the interest of a well-known artist, who undertook to paint his portrait. They

also attracted the interest of Lord Henry, a dilettante, who sought to teach him the ways of the sophisticated world.

With appropriate flattery, Lord Henry seduced Dorian Gray into thinking he was special because of his exceptional physical beauty. Lord Henry convinced the young man that it was his duty to preserve his good looks. One way to do that was by ensuring that no strong emotions disturbed the placidity of his mind or marked the surface of his body. But how could one prevent the ravages of time? Dorian became preoccupied with, and worried about, his appearance. What a shame, he thought, that the picture should always show him as a happy, radiant, and beautiful young man, while he himself aged and deteriorated. Would that it were the reverse, he prayed—and so it came to be.

Dorian Gray passed the years without showing any sign of aging or trouble in his face or body. At fifty, he looked as he had at twenty. No lines or wrinkles, no signs of the cares and concerns of living, marred his visage. His secret was the picture, which aged and showed the ugliness of a life lived without feeling. But Dorian hid the picture and never looked at it.

In the absence of feeling, Dorian Gray spent his life seeking sensation. He seduced women (which was very easy to do with his charm and good looks), then abandoned them. He introduced young men who admired him to vices and drugs, which ruined their lives. Early in his career, he caused the suicide of a lovely young actress, who fell in love with him but whom he rejected when her acting failed to measure up to the star performances that initially attracted him. Throughout all this, Dorian felt no remorse. He never looked at the picture and never confronted the reality of his life.

Besides Dorian Gray, no one knew about the picture except the painter and Lord Henry. When the painter demanded to see the picture, Dorian killed him. To hide his crime, he blackmailed a former admirer into disposing of the body. This person then committed suicide.

Finally, however, Dorian could no longer restrain his curiosity about the picture, nor could he still the growing inner torment. Venturing into the hiding place, he removed the covering from the picture. The twisted, tortured look on the aged face struck him with such horror that he took a knife and slashed the picture. The next morning, a servant discovered an old man with a twisted, tortured face lying in front of the picture, a knife in his heart. It was Dorian.