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A Boy and His Dog Message Board


Kostas posts a message on 9/5/2012 1:01:19 PM All of you who are judging the movie for the way it portrays women cant see the forest. you only see the tree. most of the things that happen in the movie would happen in a post apocalyptic world. men would rape and hunt down women as in the film. this can also happen in an anarhcy environment. men do that. why ? cause society teaches that to men. humanity has lost all ethical values and has no interest in love. people are brought up to persue money and sex. isnt a bit puzzling to you why this films only irritates women ? (or mostly women) . go on and ask your male kid. is he irritrated by this movie . i bet you that he isnt. and if he is he isnt irritated by the portayal of women. only female are. thats my whole point. boys are brought up to be sex/money predators and girls are brought up to be sex objects that survive by selling their boy. its a fact whether you like it or not. all people(95%) fall victims to that rule. parents dont educate their kids as they should. telling them to be good and not do bad doesnt meen anything. you must teach them how NO TO WANT to do bad.the only way to do that is JESUS. mankind on its own cant achieve anything great.
Lawrence M. Backer posts a message on 12/14/2010 6:08:43 PM You really should read the Ellison short story. Different enough to be worth reading, but fills in gaps in the movie. Both have plenty of subtlety. This story is about a dark age, like the period after the collapse of the Roman Empire, or the 30 years war later on. Vic is a knight errant with blood a trusty squire. Real chivalry idealized romantic love, but often satisfied it's needs by raping a peasant wench or two. Knights stole or killed peasants to get what they wanted. The Boy and has His Dog people above ground behaved like Barbarian hordes. The down unders had the genteel cruelty of the Borgias or the inquisition. A movie that portrayed a similar situation, in the 30 years war, was "The Last Valley", with Omar Sharif. Ellison and LQ Jones do a good job in Boy and His Dog of portraying what happens when the business and manufacturing support is removed from a society, and the "Little people" are left to fend for themselves. Might makes right! Either the brutal violence of a Felini or the Institutional extermination by an empowered committee. You don't have to look far to see it in recent history, or about us today. Even the screamers don't go as far as the religious halucinations of some of the "saints" who lived during the dark ages. A little bit too close to reallity for comfort.
Lindsey Friesz posts on 12/2/2010 1:39:27 PM I cant say that I cared for this movie all that much. I found it extremely odd, and obtrusive. I thought that the way that women were portrayed was very garish and unjustified. I also found it quite confusing. It seemed all to boring during the first part of the movie, while Blood and Vick were above ground. However, during the underground part it became so weird and disordered that I had no idea what was going on. I also felt like this movies didn’t explain itself well, and that I think is part of what makes it so confusing, beside is being so unusual. For example, what was the Screamer, does anybody know? Or why do the people underground paint their faces white? I also would have liked more explanation to the city council group, what was going on there? Or the consistent intercom? Maybe these things were explained in some odd way, or perhaps I was just supposed to figure them out. Either way I did not catch it or get the hints. This might sound silly but I hated the personality of Blood, it was very similar in demeanor to that of Vick. I can expect such cruelness and vulgar attitudes by humans, but I would never expect them from a dog. And did I catch that right at the end, did they roast the girl and eat her? Usually in these post apocalyptic books, movies, etc, in the most horrible of times, in the midst of human survival, usually a human still can show some humanity, some sympathy. Here there was none.



Anonymous posts on 11/29/2010 12:22:37 PM Regarding the discussion on women in the movie, I think the most important thing to remember is that sci-fi movies aren't about other worlds: They tend to be about our own. So the question isn't "Was Vic's attitude toward women justified", but rather "Is our own attitude toward women justified?" One needn't look far to see objectification of women (in the movie itself, designed for our world, there are many many breasts but few penises, despite the overabundance of men). Women are rarely seen in charge, and when they are they are seen as masculine. The very idea of "feminine" is very closely associated with "weak". The fact that the imposed weakness of women is taken to the extreme of routine raping and killing only highlights the imposed weakness of women in our own world: Be weak and subordinate, or don't be a woman. Regarding the rest of the film, I felt that the symbolism of "Down Under" was spectacular. Here was a place with a functioning society in a world where functioning societies are unheard of, but the entire thing is a charade, a mask, a mockery of itself. The society is no less brutal than the society of the overworld, using just as much heartless destruction and forced control as any other group (this facade is symbolized by the clown makeup).
Brett Mathews posts on 11/19/2010 1:40:27 PM I agree with Jessica below. I think it was a bold move depicting women in this way, but that was just part of the story. I read a little about the movie and found that the women were scarce because when all of the men were off at war when their homes back in America all got bombed. Mostly women stayed back so that’s why they were mostly gone. Also it seems like the women that did remain all got raped and killed off. At the end Vic and Blood decide to eat Quilla and joke about it. That is just part of their life. People when they are hungry can do some unthinkable things. Remember Quilla was more than just a pretty face; she lured Vic to the underworld and got him in a bad situation down there, just to better herself. I’m sure Vic took that into consideration when he was hungry. I probably would have eaten her too. I really liked this movie overall, it kept my attention the whole time and had a twisted ending, which I like.
Jessica Montgomery posts on 11/4/2010 10:27:23 PM I think a point to make about women in this movie is that the time and place where this is taking place is in fact a very different world from what we have now. Vic's main goal was to survive and satisfy his needs he had no concept of what was morally right or wrong because that is not the world that he lived in. He was following the only way of life he has known, so you can't blame him for that. Yes women are objectified but they are in our society too, they are also objectified in the world 'down below' just in a different way. I didn't really find this offensive, it's a story, a movie, and it completed its goal by showing what this world would have been like, I think that is really successful and overall makes for a good scifi story.
C posts on 10/28/2010 11:39:30 AM I think you're neglecting the fact that women are, indeed, sex objects.
Alison Engelhardt (UMD) posts on 10/24/2010 5:10:29 PM I also found this movie to be disturbing in its portrayal of women. I would have preferred to see a strong woman character rather than the portrayal of women as only sex objects. The one question I had was: Why were women so hard to find up above in the desert? Was it because they had all been killed in the war? Or had they all moved underground? I did however like the bond between Vic and Blood. I felt it was very sweet, and showed brotherhood in a different form.
Vanessa Garcia UMD posts on 9/21/2010 2:01:37 AM I really thought that the movie was weird and I did not enjoy it at all. I did not like it for several reasons. One I really hate clowns and the movie of the people were had their faces painted just like clowns. The second reason I disliked the movie was the objectivity of women. It was very offensive. In the beginning, the goal of the main character was to find a girl to have sex with, even if it was rape. It was disturbing. The movie made women to look like they were objects to be used or unpleasant beings. I thought the end of the movie would end with the girl growing some sense and eventually the boy and girl would grow to love one another and make a life together with Blood. Instead the ending consisted of the boy and dog killing her for food. It was so gross and disturbing! I do have to say that for a science fiction movie, a person could tell that a man had created it. It showed that after such a devastating war, life could be very different from what we know now. I noticed also that that where the boy and dog were there was a need for women, whereas for underground there was a need for women. It was an interesting observation. But overall, I found the movie really weird.
Anonymous posts on 9/15/2010 6:11:51 PM I think it is obvious the misogynistic nature that this film has, women are objects which can be used and can literally be discarded. I actually found the movie to be extremely offensive down to the very last joke made by blood about Quilla I think it is interesting no one has comment on how this movie makes men look. I would have thought that someone would be upset that this movie implies that if you strip the male gender of its intellect they will become pillaging idiots willing to murder rape and steal to satisfy their primal urges. The movie implies that Men could easily be manipulated by women to do anything if it comes with the promise of sex. Is this not upsetting to anyone else?
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