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Straw Dogs: Violence
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Straw Dogs, for its part, is plagued by a simple-minded script, unrealistic characters and situations... wallowing in gray mediocrity. Worse yet, lesser films on violence are almost invariably dull. Straw Dogs proves the rule. In fact, its own self-importance is what makes Straw Dogs far less enjoyable than, say, Last House on the Left or Night of the Living Dead. The former is so silly and unpretentious that its images and violence lodge in the viewers’ mind — such as the infamous fellatio-biting scene — while the latter is simply relentless pedal to the metal violence that is inexplicable.
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The Board has carefully reconsidered the recently submitted video version of Straw Dogs in the light of the legal tests. It has over the years in this context expressed concern about images which bring sex and violence together. The BBFC Guidelines for Classifying Films and Videos (recently republished in the Board’s Annual Report for 1998) identify sexually violent material as potentially harmful. The Guidelines explain that the Board is stricter with scenes of sexual violence on video than film, because of their potential to be played over and over at home. Sexual violence may only be shown providing the scenes do not offer sexual thrills.
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It is impossible to view Straw Dogs without reference to its historical time frame: the Vietnam War, and the civil rights violence. It is ... nearly impossible without reference to the various forms of abuse and violence in the film itself: psychological, and physical, rape, and murder. This has always been a controversial film, repeatedly labeled as horror, fascist, exploitation, seen as a glorification of violence, of machismo triumphing through brutality, or as a carrier of misogynist attitudes, taking the objectification of women to new lows.
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The premise of Fear Itself is similar to Straw Dogs, focusing on a married couple confronted by a random act of violence. They flee from New York to rural Maine, but they discover that they cannot outrun the threat of violence. In Los Angeles, co-producer Hawk Koch told Variety: "In some ways the message is more pertinent today, that people sometimes need to stand their ground instead of looking for a place to run away when trouble comes".
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Straw Dogs isn't some meaningless binge of gratuitous violence. Its simple premise provokes some searching questions about just where the line is drawn between civilisation and chaos, and just how much it would take to turn any one of us into the kind of person we flinch from watching on the big screen.
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