Well, this was certainly an interesting one. I saw this one being mentioned in the “Criterion” sphere, and from how it was described, it seemed like a rather heavy drama. I must admit that it did not disappoint, as it tackles an old yet sadly all too relevant question: if racism is taught, can it be cured? While I wasn’t keen on all of its presentational choices, on the whole I found it to be a very solidly made film that got its point across very well. So, let’s take a look into the story of this titular white dog, and all that that title encompasses.
The film starts with a young actress named Julia running over a white shepherd dog in the L.A. hills. She takes him to a vet to heal and then sets about to try and find his owner. However, one night the dog saves her from a home-invading rapist, and so, she decides to formally adopt the dog (as no owner had come forward yet either). Things seem fine at first, until the dog chases a black rabbit in the front yard and ends up getting lost in town. While Julia is out looking for him, the dog ends up killing a black trucker while he’s driving, which sends his truck crashing into a department store. Julia and the dog eventually reunite, but when she takes the dog along on a commercial shoot the next day, he attacks her co-star who also happens to be black (hmm, a trend, perhaps?). Julia’s boyfriend implores her to have the dog killed, arguing that he’s clearly an attack dog and that they are too dangerous to be kept as pets, but Julia won’t go through with it, having seen firsthand what the pound does to dogs. She believes that he can be untrained, and so, takes him to a training facility that deals with wild animals. She meets one of the trainers, Carruthers, an older white man, who shares the same sentiment as her boyfriend and says it would be best to have him killed. In addition to this, after the dog attacks one of the black employees, they determine that he’s not just an attack dog, but a “white dog”, a dog that is specifically trained to attack black folks. One of the other trainers, Keys (also a black man) takes the dog in and tries to untrain him, not allowing Julia to feed him as he wants to give the dog no alternatives. He interacts with the dog every day, at first fully protected against the dog’s biting, but over time slowly being able to take more and more shielding off. They hit a snag at one point when the dog escapes its cage and kills another black man, which causes Julia to change her mind about keeping the dog alive. However, Keys is determined to prove his point that racism is curable, as it might prevent others from performing these sorts of racist upbringings. Is the retraining successful? Well, I won’t spoil the ending, but I will need to discuss the film’s message, so be forewarned that it might give you an idea of what happens.
The ultimate message of this film seems to be that racism is potentially “curable,” however the aggression that fuels it is another matter entirely. Keys was so focused on training the racism out of the dog that he never tried to go beyond that and get to the root of the problem, the fear and anger that causes distrust and hatred. But then, of course, we must ask if it’s really possible to get rid of that sort of viciousness in a person or animal. We all have deep-rooted instincts and a fear of the unknown or different that has been drilled into us on an almost genetic level, and these traits helped us survive for millennia, but they can also be a huge stumbling block in trying to interact in a civilized society. We should all try to treat our fellow people and animals with care and respect as much as we can, regardless of whatever differences there exist between us, but there can still be times when we feel that twinge of uncertainty when interacting with those we don’t know or understand. It’s something that we have to overcome and not let ourselves fall into, but we can’t change the fact that the feeling is almost always there on some level. A dog obviously has less cognition than a human and is much more instinctual in its behavior, so it would be even more difficult for a being such as that to truly overcome its aggression. Not helping is all the trauma his owner put him through to drill the racism into him, because as many victims will probably tell you, trauma is not something that can be easily overcome, and often you can only learn how to deal with it as opposed to truly getting rid of it. It’s sad that this is all still an issue that we are dealing with to the current day, but as I’ve said, it isn’t always easily solvable, nor can you always get everyone to go along with the effort and methods needed to make the changes. The best we can do is keep trying to promote change, never give up, and not fall prey to those potentially destructive instincts ourselves, though we should always keep in mind the difficulty and trickiness in this sort of endeavor.
So, as you can probably tell, I feel that this film gets across its message very well. I’ll admit that I did think that some of it came across a bit heavy-handed (for example, when the dog escapes the second time and takes another victim, he kills the man in a church that contains a stained-glass window depicting Saint Francis), but generally it hit the right balance of tonality and also allowed you to glean some of the message it was trying to send without completely stating it outright. I also just have to note how interesting it is to watch films from the early years of a decade, in this case the 80s, as while it does definitely feel like the 80s, it also feels very much like the 70s (in fact, this is the sort of film that I could see being made in the 70s very easily: dealing with a heavy topic like racism and its effects on someone while using a slightly different means to show it rather than just having it be about a racist person). Anyways, it is a somewhat heavy film, so be prepared for that should you decide to watch it, but I do recommend it for those that would be curious to see it. It has a message that is still sadly all too relevant in this day and age, and I must wonder if it ever won’t be in the future.