Opening the other week were not one but two films by foreigners
seeking to explain America’s “culture of violence.” One, A
History of Violence by David Cronenberg, a Canadian, has a
serious though, I believe,
mistaken point of view. Altogether more frivolous is Dear
Wendy, by Thomas Vinterberg (director) and Lars von Trier
(writer), who are Danes. Their idea is that it is guns themselves
whose erotic charge draws us to them and makes us, willy-nilly,
commit violent acts. This seems to me to be self-evident nonsense,
but up until the film’s violent climax when it becomes obvious as
the film-makers’ guiding principle, we can enjoy it for virtues
that have nothing to do with its doubtful social psychology. Though
in most ways it is an almost indescribably silly movie, it is also
rather fun.
Partly this is because of the strong performance of the young
British actor, Jamie Bell (Billy Elliot) in the central
role. He plays Dick Dandelion, the son of a coal miner in the
run-down Electric Park section of the coal-mining town of
Estherslope. Meant to be generic America, this town is so strange
that it is impossible for any American to take it seriously. Von
Trier, who wrote the script, has famously never been to America —
which hasn’t prevented him in such earlier films as Dancer in
the Dark and Dogtown from savagely criticizing
America — and Vinterberg’s transatlantic visits have been few and
brief. Their film was made in Denmark and Germany, but it looks as
if it has been set on one of the remoter moons of Saturn.
Dick’s mother is gone, and he is estranged from his father. His
only friend is the black housekeeper, Clarabelle (Novella Nelson),
who one day urges him to go to a birthday party for her grandson,
Sebastian (Danso Gordon). Dick buys Sebastian what he takes to be a
toy gun as a present, but this he finds it difficult to square with
his “pacifist” conscience. Unable to take the gun back, he drops it
in a box. Years later, as he is cleaning out the house after his
father dies, Dick finds the gun and shows it to Stevie (Mark
Webber), a fellow-employee of the supermarket where he works
stocking shelves. Stevie turns out to be immensely knowledgeable
about firearms. He tells Dick that the gun is not a toy but a 6.6
mm. double action revolver. He also shows him his own weapon, an
Italian made 7.63 mm. pistol brought home as a souvenir from the
battle of El Alamein by an uncle.
Stevie calls his gun “Bad Steel” and suggests to Dick that he
should name his too. Because it is considered to be a woman’s gun
on account of its smallness, Dick names it Wendy. Most of the film
consists of Dick’s letters, given in voiceover, to Wendy, whom he
treats as a lover. He and Stevie both consider themselves
pacifists, but both like the feeling of power and confidence that
comes from carrying concealed weapons. They begin to practice
shooting them in an abandoned mine shaft. Soon they invite other
kids from the town who are considered misfits and outsiders to join
them, and to bring their own guns. They call themselves “the
Dandies,” electing Dick to be their leader, and adopt a whole set
of rituals about their guns, which they all name, as well as a
private vocabulary and a set of fantastical costumes. These are
meant to be reminiscent of the dandies of Regency England — though
there are also elements of Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh in the
mix.
The one thing all agree on is that their guns are never to be
used outside “the Temple” or club meeting place in the mineshaft.
“The most important thing for a Dandy is never to show off his
partner for any reason….It may be carried but not
brandished.”
“Knowing about it but not doing it makes you stronger and
better,” theorizes Dick.
What is good about the film is this take on the attempts of a
bunch of moony youths who feel excluded from the larger society
around them to invent their own social context. Their world becomes
compelling to us partly because we are forced to inhabit it
ourselves. Almost the only representatives of the world apart from
the Dandies are Clarabelle and the dubiously human Sheriff Krugsby
(Bill Pullman). I think it is on one level a flaw in the film that
the Dandies are in fact the only young people we see in the movie.
They are supposedly losers and misfits, though it is hard to see
them as such when we see not so much as a single winner or socially
successful person. On another level, however, this is a flaw only
if the film were to be taken seriously. As this is not possible for
other reasons, the absence of other kids from Electric Park is a
dramatic advantage as it makes us believe in them as otherwise we
could hardly do.
But it also means that, because we never see what they are
misfitting with, it’s hard to keep them in focus as misfits — or
anything other than Dandies. As a result, the film’s claims to
social significance are vitiated. Vinterberg has tried to tie the
film in with the Columbine school shootings, but its remoteness
from reality, which is what makes it enjoyable, is also what makes
it worthless as social commentary. Whatever else may be said about
Columbine, it didn’t happen in the same world inhabited by this
movie. Vinterberg has also been quoted as saying that “Pacifists
with weapons is what most of the Western world consider
themselves.” This is telling because though not remotely true of
“most of the Western world” it is true of the intellectual
classes of progressive countries like Denmark and is becoming more
true of the same classes in America all the time.
In other words, what the film is describing for us is an
argument among progressives between those who are true believing
pacifists — and so, of course, have nothing to do with guns — and
those who only have pacifist sympathies but are not sufficiently
other-worldly to disavow guns and “violence” altogether. It is the
latter that is probably the larger faction, but it is riven with
self-doubt and perhaps guilt for the impurity of its views. That, I
take it, is what makes America so attractive as a target for the
likes of Von Trier and Vinterberg. Because we are on the whole less
guilty about our willingness to defend ourselves, we invite them to
attack us as the world’s premiere example of what they, in their
own fancy, are not. The climactic shootout-ballet between the
Dandies and an army of police led by Sheriff Krugsby has its funny
moments, as surrealism generally does, but its allusions to the
spaghetti-Westerns of Sergio Leone or Butch Cassidy and the
Sundance Kid are a kind of film-maker’s shorthand for what has
long since become the hackneyed view that it is American culture
which produces the violent ending. I can’t see anyone’s being
persuaded of this who doesn’t already believe it.
James Bowman is a resident scholar at the Ethics and
Public Policy Center, media essayist for the New
Criterion, and The American Spectator’s movie
critic.
