Release the Hounds! (With Reference to Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights)

 

Sayuri as Brandy the Pitbull in Quentin Tarantino's  

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

 

 

Those who have seen the Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will recall that the movie ends in an orgy of violence, at the centre of which is a ferocious pitbull, called Brandy, who attacks two members of the Manson Family on the command of her master, stuntman Cliff Booth [1]. 

 

Anyway, re-watching the above on TV the other night, made me think of the equally harrowing scenes involving savage dogs in Emily Brontë's queer-gothic masterpiece, Wuthering Heights ... [2]

 

Dogs appear throughout Wuthering Heights and, as critics have pointed out, they not only help us to better understand personality traits of the main human characters, but are also used to presage events about to unfold in the novel. And, of course, they add an extra element of violent horror (as if such were needed in a book which is, in some respects, far more shocking and transgressive than any of Tarantino's movies).  

 

Although poor Lockwood [3] isn't the only victim of a vicious dog attack, the first chapter scene in which he first visits his landlord Heathcliff is the one that immediately comes to mind. Sitting surrounded by snarling dogs with curled lips, including a huge, liver-coloured bitch pointer and a pair of grim-shaggy sheep-dogs, Lockwood attempts to remain calm. 

 

But when Heathcliff goes down into the cellar to fetch some wine and Lockwood is left alone with the dogs, his anxiety levels are significantly raised. Foolishly, he winks and makes faces at the animals and the bitch becomes so infuriated, that she leaps onto his knees. 

 

This, in turn, arouses the other flea-bitten curs lurking about the house and before he knows it, Lockwood is being attacked by half-a-dozen four-footed fiends, who bite at his heels and tear at his clothing. In fear for his life, he picks up a poker from the fireplace in order to try and fend them off. 

 

Brontë thus cleverly reveals that even in a domestic setting, danger and violence are never far from the surface. 

 

Despite the profoundly unsettling nature of his experience, Lockwood returns to Wuthering Heights on a snowy afternoon in chapter two, only to be attacked once more by two hairy monsters named Gnasher and Wolf, who leap at his throat and knock him to the ground when he attempts to leave the remote moorland farmhouse:

"Fortunately, the beasts seemed more bent on stretching their paws, and yawning, and flourishing their tails, than devouring me alive; but they would suffer no resurrection, and I was forced to lie till their malignant masters pleased to deliver me ..."

 

Later, in chapter six, it's a young Catherine Earnshaw who has the misfortune of being attacked by a dog; this time a bull-dog called Skulker. The devil latches onto her fair ankle, preventing her from fleeing and inflicting a nasty bite. 

 

Despite the pain, Cathy doesn't yell out and, fortunately, Heathcliff is with her. Picking up a large stone, the boy thrusts it between the dog's jaws and tries to shove it down its throat. Eventually, a servant arrives on the scene and he pulls Skulker away, half-throttling the animal whose huge purple tongue hangs out of a mouth that drools with a mixture of blood and saliva.   

Finally, it should be noted that not all dogs in the fictional world of Wuthering Heights - or, indeed, in real life - are aggressive: Isabella Linton's little dog, Fanny, is a harmless creature who tragically falls victim to human cruelty; the poor thing being hanged by her abusive husband, Heathcliff, in an attempt to reveal his true nature, stripped of all deceitful softness (see chapter fourteen).  

 

 

An lllustration by Fritz Eichenberg for the 1943 Random House edition 

of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

 

 

Notes

 

[1] So convincing was professionally-trained dog Sayuri in her role as Brandy, that she was the recipient of the Wamiz Palm Dog Award for Best Canine Performance. The award was accepted on her behalf by Tarantino, who said he was honoured to do so and described Sayuri as a great actress who gave a great performance. 

      The final fight scene from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), featuring Brad Pitt as Cliff Booth, Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton, and Sayuri as Brandy, can be watched on YouTube by clicking here. 

 

[2] Wuthering Heights was initially published under Brontë's pen name Ellis Bell in 1847. It is rightly considered to be one of the greatest novels written in English, even though early commentators were appalled by its depictions of mental and physical cruelty and its repeated transgression of Victorian morality. One reviewer writing for Graham's Lady Magazine wrote: "It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors."

      Lines quoted here from Wuthering Heights are from the Project Gutenberg eBook: click here.   

 

[3] Mr. Lockwood is initially the tale's narrator. He rents a property from Heathcliff - Thrushcross Grange - in order to retreat from society (although soon decides society is far preferable to a life on the North Yorkshire Moors). After chapter four, the main narrator, Nelly Dean - having worked as a servant to three generations of the Earnshaws and two of the Linton family - picks up the story. I'm not going to give further character notes here, assuming that most readers will be familiar with the novel. 

 

For a post on a vaguely similar theme to this one, please click here.  

 

 

On American XL Bully Dogs and Ancient Greek Hounds

An American XL bully and the Ancient Greek hell-hound Cerberus 

as imagined by William Blake (c.1824-27)

 

 

 I. 

 

There are a lot of stories in the news at the moment about American XL bullies and, apparently, the breed will be banned in the UK as of the end of this year under the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991). 

 

Clearly, that's a good thing, although, in my opinion, it doesn't go far enough and there should be no certificates of exemption issued to owners no matter how fit and proper they are deemed to be. 

 

You can't have ultra-aggressive mutts with stocky, muscular bodies and powerful jaws running rampage on the streets and in the parks, causing serious injury to people and other canines. Six of the ten fatal dogs attacks in the UK last year were due to these illegally bred beasts.       

 

However, if you think the XL bully living next door is a nightmare and genuine threat to the safety of your children, then probably best you don't read the next section of this post in which we discuss a three-headed hound of Hades ...

 

 

II. 

 

According to ancient Greek mythology, guarding the gates of the Underworld is a monstrous, raw flesh-devouring dog named Cerberus, whom you really don't want to mess with (i.e., if you're dead, it's probably best to accept the fact and not attempt to leave). 

 

Cerberus was the polycephalic offspring of Typhon and Echidna and described as having a serpent for a tail and snake-heads protruding from multiple parts of his body, ensuring that his bite was infinitely worse than his bark. 

 

Thanks to his superhuman strength - and a wooden club - Heracles was just about the only one who could handle him, but, even then, I wouldn't have granted a dog license to this demi-god, nor allowed him to arrogantly parade Cerberus on a chain leash through the streets of Greece.       

 

A ravenous animal like Cerberus belongs in Hades ensuring the dead don't come back to extract their revenge upon the living. Alternatively, let him guard over the gluttons who inhabit the Third Circle of Hell [1], giving them a few hard bites in order to encourage them to repent of their sins and eat less. 

 

 

III.      

Finally, just to end on a slightly happier, more dog-friendly note, let me remind readers of another mythological mutt from ancient Greece; one much-loved by Odysseus and called by the name Argos ... 

 

According to Homer [2], after fighting in the Trojan War and battling monsters for twenty-odd years, Odysseus finally made it home to Ithaca. But as he approached his palace, he noticed an old dog lying on heaps of mule and cattle dung piled up outside the front gates. The poor creature was in a terribly neglected state, infested with fleas and other parasites. 

 

Nevertheless, when Argos heard a familiar human voice, he raised his tired head and pricked up his ears. As soon as he was sure it was his master, he wagged his tail in excitement, but lacked the strength to get to his feet and greet Odysseus properly.  

 

Seeing this - and touched by the fact that his dog clearly still remembered him after such a long time - Odysseus wiped away a tear, although, in his heart, he was angry that Argos had not been properly cared for in his absence and had fallen on hard times.

 

Tragically, having witnessed his master's homecoming, the loyal dog passed into the darkness of death - but what a good boy he was!

 

 

Argos and his master Odysseus [3]

Print by Frederick Stacpoole after Briton Rivière (1885)

Notes

 

[1] The third circle of hell, as depicted in Dante's Inferno, is reserved for the punishent of those who have committed the sin of gluttony; a realm of freezing mud which, just to make matters worse, is also inhabited by the three-headed hound Cerberus, who torments the excessively greedy by tearing at their flesh.

 

[2] See Homer's Odyssey, Book 17, lines 290-327. My paraphrased account is based on various English translations and MLG's recollection of the tale, particularly with reference to Argos.

       

[3] Print by Frederick Stacpoole, after Briton Rivière (1885); held in the collection of the British Museum under the title Ulysses and Argus. Click here for more information.

 

 

For a follow-up post to this one on a related theme, please click here. 

Sometimes, Better a Dead Mountain Lion Than a Live Dog

Artist Heide Hatry & 

Luna the Mountain Lion (2023) [1]

 

 

I.

 

According to the author of Ecclesiastes, a living dog is better than a dead lion [9:4]. 

 

However, as the New York based German artist Heide Hatry knows, that's not always true; sometimes it is the deceased who have something vital to teach us, which is why her long fascination with corpses has often resulted in work of great insight.

 

Her latest muse (and family member) happens to be a stuffed puma [2], which interests because D. H. Lawrence also once drew inspiration from the long slim body and round face of a dead mountain lion, killed by two foolishly smiling hunters, in Lobo Canyon, New Mexico, on a cold winter's morning.    

 

He concludes his beautiful and misanthropic poem on the subject:

 

And I think in this empty world there was room for me and a mountain lion. 

And I think in the world beyond, how easily we might spare a million or two of humans 

And never miss them. 

Yet what a gap in the world, the missing white-frost face of that slim yellow mountain lion! [3]

 

Which is, of course, all-too-true ... 

 

 

II. 

 

According to the Nature Conservancy, there are only around 50,000 mountain lions left in the world; 30,000 in the United States and 20,000 in the rest of the Americas. Contrast this with the fact that the human population is believed to have reached 8 billion in November 2022. 

 

That's 1 mountain lion for every 160,000 people ...

 

And yet, 3000 of these magificent cats are still killed by the latter in the United States each year. Again, compare that with the fact that in the last 100 years there have been fewer than 130 officially documented cougar attacks on people, of which only 27 were fatal (which is less than the number of bee sting fatalities in the same period). 

 

It's very depressing: for whilst I still insist that even a dead puma is at least as fascinating as any of the 470 million mutts kept as pets around the world, it would be nice if there were a significantly higher number of live mountain lions - yes, even at the expense of one or two million human beings [4].

 

     

Notes

 

[1] This photo, taken from Hatry's newsletter, is also used as a profile picture to advertise her MFA Art Practice Lecture Series at the School of Visual Arts (NYC), where she is currently the artist in residence. Click here for further details. 

[2] Mountain lions are known for good reason as the cat of many names - in fact, they are listed in dictionaries under more names than any other animal in the world. Depending on the region and native language, common names for the American lion include cougar, panther, puma, and catamount. 

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Mountain Lion', in Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 351-352. The poem can easily be found in numerous places online; click here, for example. 

 

[4] Readers who agree, might like to support the work of the Mountain Lion Foundation (a non-profit organisation protecting mountain lions and their habitat): click here.       

Revenge of the Macaques

Image: Suresh Jadhav for News18

 

That man and monkey be redeemed from the spirit of revenge - 

that for me is the bridge to our highest hope ... [1]

 

 

Well, it's clear now from recent news reports coming out of India that our simian friends are not Christian and do not believe in turning the other cheek [1], nor leaving vengeance in the paws of their god [2] ...

After a pack of dogs killed an infant macaque, an enraged troop of rhesus monkeys have launched a merciless month-long campaign of revenge, grabbing around 250 puppies off the streets and then throwing them to their death from atop buildings and trees.  

According to some reports, when the troop can no longer find any young canines, they begin chasing terrified schoolchildren and one unfortunate eight-year-old had to be physically rescued from their clutches. Other villagers have apparently been injured attempting to protect their pooches.

 

Thankfully, such organised primate attacks on other species are rare, although not unknown. And it certainly isn't the case that they are the only animals other than man who seek revenge; camels, elephants, lions, crows, are all known to enjoy getting their own back. 

 

Indeed, even some fish have been known to engage in what Francis Bacon (disapprovingly) termed wild justice ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm paraphrasing Nietzsche writing in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, II. 7 - 'On the Tarantulas'.

 

[2] Matthew 5:38-39 - "Ye have heard that it hath been said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth'. But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

[3] Romans 12:19 - "Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay', saith the Lord."

Straw Dogs

Yulin Dog Meat Festival 

Image: Reuters / Kim Kyung-Hoon

I. Heaven and Earth are heartless / treating creatures like straw dogs.

Until recently, if you said the words straw dogs to me I would think initially of the violent and disturbing 1971 film directed by Sam Peckinpah, starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George; secondly, I would think of the single by Irish punk band Stiff Little Fingers, released in September 1979; and thirdly, of John Gray's critically acclaimed book of 2003, in which he attacks philosophical humanism. 

But having discovered that the origin of the phrase lies in the Tao Te Ching and refers to a ceremonial figure that is casually discarded after use, I tend to think firstly of the actual object and, secondly, of the Chinese indifference to the suffering of live animals, including the large number of dogs that are slaughtered for consumption each year at the Yulin Dog Meat Festival ...       

II. 玉林荔枝狗肉节 

The Yulin Dog Meat Festival is an annual celebration in which local residents and festival goers eat lychees and, more controversially, the flesh of thousands of unfortunate canines that are paraded in wooden crates and metal cages, before being skinned, cooked and eaten.

Whilst the practice of eating dog meat is an ancient one in China, the festival itself is a contemporary phenomenon, only beginning in 2009. Organisers insist that the animals are killed humanely and that eating dogs is no different to rearing other animals for food in terms of cruelty. Practitioners of traditional medicine, meanwhile, insist that chowing down on a pooch offers protection from the hot summer sun.   

Foreign animal rights activists are unconvinced by these arguments and each year they attempt to rescue as many dogs from the wok as possible. And, to be fair, millions of Chinese also support a total ban on the dog meat trade.

The Chinese government, however, whilst denying any official involvement in the festival, describes it as a local custom observed only by a very small number of citizens. They also point out that whilst westerners regard dogs as man's best friend, the Chinese legal system doesn't accord them specially protected status and they ask that their culinary preferences be respected.

No one ever said that cultural diversity was ever going to be easy to stomach ... 

Olfactophilia: Reflections on Canine Arse-Sniffing

Illustration from the Dog Decoder smartphone app by Lili Chin

I got a smelly rear / I got a dirty nose

I don't want no shoes / I don't want no clothes

I'm living like the king of the dogs 

Someone once told me that the reason that dogs like to conduct anal inspections of other dogs is because they are looking for a long-lost message hidden by the King of the Dogs, containing the secret of how to overcome their human masters and be free once more to live their own lives.  

Part of me would still very much like to believe this story to be true. Unfortunately, I'm also familiar with the scientific explanation for such behaviour and this more factual account in terms of glandular secretions released from the dog's anal sac makes me doubt the veracity of the above.  

However, even the American Chemical Society conclude that canine arse-sniffing is essentially an exchange of information. Only what's being communicated concerns sexual status and dietary habits, for example, rather than how to regain the freedom of revered lupine ancestors.    

Finally - since we're discussing this subject - it might be noted that dogs are not enjoying the smell of shit when they stick their noses into the behinds of other dogs.

Indeed, thanks to the presence of Jacobson's organ located inside their nasal cavities, dogs are able to pass subtle chemical information detected in the glandular secretions directly to the brain without being distracted by other more powerful odours. 

Musical bonus: Iggy Pop, King of the Dogs (Lil Armstrong / Iggy Pop), from the album Préliminaires (Astralwerks, 2009). 

Reflections on Cat Cognition and Feline Intelligence

Black cat looking out of window 
Stephen Alexander (2018)

I.

I don't have a cat: but I like cats. And I particularly like the friendly black cat who comes to visit - even after the Little Greek accidently trod on his paw.

Sometimes he sits in the garden; sometimes he prefers to stretch out on the back porch, sharpening his claws on the doormat. But he also likes to nose around the house and rub himself against the furniture. This morning, he jumped on the windowsill and stood staring out of the window.

I don't know what caught his attention and I don't really know what he thinks of things - or me for that matter. But, clearly, he's exercising an intelligence of some kind as he familiarises himself with a strange environment and interacts with new people, learning how to exploit and manipulate both.  

II.

Apparently, the brain of the average domestic moggie is just about large enough in size for cats to qualify as big brained animals - though of course, this doesn't necessarily mean they are intelligent; for whilst a correlation has been shown between these things, correlation does not mean causation.

However, thanks to behavioural observation, I think we can take it as a given that cats are smart - they dream, they scheme, they solve problems and they play. And even when told that dogs have twice as many neurons as cats, I refuse to accept that mutts are twice as intelligent. For whilst dogs can be vicious, only cats are sophisticated enough to derive pleasure from cruelty. Give a dog a bone and it's perfectly happy; but a cat only really gets excited at the thought of live prey.       

Apparently, cats also have excellent memories. Indeed, one of the reasons that stray cats adapt so well to extremely demanding urban environments is because they are able to retain and recall information and learn from past experience. They have also memorized their hunting and survival skills - unlike dogs, that have become almost completely dependent upon their human masters.

Ultimately, it's because cats have retained their indifference, mistrust, and contempt of man that they have also kept their savage beauty and seductive mystery across the millennia. They live alongside us, but have never really been domesticated; they have, as anthrozoologist Dr John Bradshaw says, three out of four paws still firmly planted in the wild and can easily revert within only a few generations back to the independent way of life enjoyed by their ancestors 10,000 years ago.


III.

Finally - and perhaps most interestingly of all - it's clear from extensive research that dogs pereceive us as different (superior) beings. They don't behave around us as they behave around other dogs and they know they live in our world. 

But cats, however, seem to regard people merely as bigger, clumsier versions of themselves and have thus not bothered to adapt their social behaviour; they act towards us in a manner that is indistinguishable from how they would act towards others of their kind.

Essentially, for cats there is only one world - and its theirs.

See: John Bradshaw, Cat Sense, (Basic Books, 2013). 

Of Man and Dog - A Guest Post by Catherine Brown

Penguin, 2012

I have recently read In Defence of Dogs by John Bradshaw, biologist and founder-director of the Anthrozoology Institute at the University of Bristol. The font is academically-small and intimidating. The book is good.

I will pass on its arguments as though they are true. For Bradshaw has done a great deal of research into canine behaviour and, though his findings and inferences are controversial, I have no independent reason to doubt them. In any case, whether they are true or not, they have prompted some interesting reflections in me about pooches and people.

I.

Bradshaw describes the generic mutt; for example, the village dog that one finds all over Africa. They all look roughly alike and share a common evolutionary history that made them perfectly fit for purpose. Selective breeding, however, at the hands of man over millennia, has necessarily produced dogs which are rather less fit. Unfortunately for them, dogs no longer get to choose their own sexual partners and the characteristics for which they're selected, such as utility or good looks, often don't have anything to do with ensuring their survival or improving their health.

It's little wonder therefore that veterinary science is now needed to bridge the fitness-gap that's been opened up and that animal trainers and psychologists are required to deal with dogs that are deemed suboptimal companions. Given that we don't breed certain types of dog primarily for fellowship, it's a bit rich when we complain of aggression or anxiety in our animals, as though these traits were not entirely of our own creation.

Fortunately, we humans, by contrast, resemble village dogs. Except in aristocracies, which have their own problems with fitness, we breed more or less at will, in order to be all-round, well-adapted men and women. Ease of long-distance travel has broadened our gene pools still further. Huxley's Brave New World gives us one vision as to what would happen were it otherwise. Dogs give us another. Were we to be bred by a scientific elite or an alien master race, it's perfectly feasible (and amusing to imagine) that we too might become subdivided into human equivalents of Schnauzers, Dobermans, Bichon Frises, Golden Retrievers, Boxers, Borzois and the rest.

So, in short, most dogs in the Western world are now more pedigree than mongrel; even what is called a mongrel is likely to have at least one pedigree parent or grandparent. By contrast we are for the most part comfortably and healthily mongrel. We don’t need annual vaccinations and monthly worming, as our dogs do, and we are all the better off for it.

II.

Dogs are wolves at arrested stages of development. Even the skull of a little Pekingese resembles that of the wolf foetus; it just doesn’t keep growing into the long, narrow skull of the wolf. Unlike wolves, however, dogs continue to play when they are adults, and are dependent on humans throughout their lives. They therefore never become psychologically mature and independent, as wolves do. Because of the consistency of food supply throughout the year, they are fertile all the year round, unlike wolves, which mate in winter in order to give birth in spring. But because the food that humans can spare for dogs is limited, they are smaller than wolves. They are less fussy about sexual partners than are wolves, which pair-bond, whereas dogs are promiscuous.

And so we, people, are more dog than wolf. We are smaller than earliest man because of our more herbivorous diet (we are only now re-approaching the size of early humans). We are fertile all the year round, and, although we pair-bond to a degree, we are more promiscuous than wolves are. We play, with our child toys or our adult toys, at our child games or our adult games, throughout our lives. Of course, this dogginess is unsurprising, given that we bred dogs in our own image.

Yet the wolves from which we created dogs are not today’s wolves. Since we have persecuted wolves almost to extinction, we have negatively selected those which are most distrustful of us to be the survivors. It is likely that dogs descended from wolves living around 20,000 years ago which had a mutation which enabled them to form relationships with more than one species - our own as well as their own. This mutation served them well; their numbers now dwarf those of wolves.

But, especially in the twentieth century, dog psychology has misleadingly tried to understand dogs with reference to a) modern wild wolves, which are a distrustful, persecuted minority, and b) captive wolves, which, not being able to form and dissolve their own packs, are far more agonistic and violently hierarchical than are the internally-peaceful nuclear family packs of the wild. These false reference points, combined with the false assumption that dogs are essentially wolves in dogs’ clothing, has led to the stress on dominance in dog training.

The assumptions are: every dog wants to be top dog; dogs treat humans as members of their pack; every attempt at dog dominance must be thwarted, and so on. In fact, dogs relate very differently to humans as compared to others of their own kind, and tend to be far more dependent on the former, even in households of multiple dogs. At our own best, we are dog-like in our sociability with all other members of our species, not just within our nuclear families. Where we become wolf-like, in our rivalry with and violent hostility towards other packs, is at the level of the nation. Best to keep dogs within our sights.

Finally, one of the things that makes us human (and dog-like) is our ability to interact with, and nurture, multiple species. This is apparent in the story of the evolution of dogs from wolves. The explanation that wolves were initially tolerated as scavengers in villages is not sufficient by way of explanation of the beginnings of domestication - why would wolves prefer human scraps to the far better and more plentiful food that they can hunt for themselves? Nor is the idea that humans consciously took wolves to train them for various useful purposes, such as those for which working dogs are used today, sufficient as an explanation.

The evidence is that hunter-gatherers, past and present, adopt a variety of baby animals to bring up alongside their own young, simply for the joy of the process, a delight in their cuteness, a delight in play, and, in some cases, the status that accrues from having pets. Amongst today’s Penan of Borneo, and the Huaorani of the Amazon rainforst, parrots, toucans, wild ducks, raccoons, small deer, rodents, opossums, and monkeys are all adopted. Indigenous Australians foster dingo puppies, which, when they become unmanageable adults, are simply driven away to reproduce in the wild. It is likely that the same happened with wolf puppies - and that, eventually, a few of the puppies became domesticated as well as tame, so that they consented to reproduce in a human environment, and thus were set on their course to become dogs.

This is one of the most charming things about humans that I know - that we care about the survival of species other than our own, for reasons other than utility. We delight in nurturing, cuteness, and play, will spend our limited resources on these things, and have done so for as long as we have been human.

Catherine Brown is an English literature academic who also blogs, tweets, and writes for the media. Her literary interests centre on novels and plays of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the wider cultural histories of England and Russia. Her tweets tend to be about D.H. Lawrence; her blog posts are mostly reviews of books, films, plays, and exhibitions, or reflections on politics and religion. 

Catherine appears here as part of the Torpedo the Ark Gastautoren Programm and I am very grateful for her kind permission to reproduce, revise and edit this text, which originally appeared on her own blog.