Luc Besson’s Dogman could have been fun if it wasn’t a transphobic incel movie

So that your readers don’t have to if they don’t want to, to miss saw Dogman, the new film by Luc Besson. If it initially made us laugh, we quickly remembered that trouble was afoot Dogman they are much more alarming than a bad joke.

A profound philosophical journey “we live in a society”

Dogman it is based on a structure that we have already seen everywhere. At the beginning of the film, Doug (Caleb Landry Jones) is in a cell, where a psychologist visits him. The latter quickly admits that he is “fascinated” from its history. The film will therefore alternate sequences of interviews and flashback overlooked by Doug’s voiceover.

This famous Doug is a sort of sub-Hannibal-Lecter who would have eaten a piece of it Joker and an editor’s piece Skyblog. When you spit it all out, you get a kind of fake depressive clown with the half-smile of a broken man who has seen and experienced it all. Mistreated by men, dogs are his only friends.

Doug apparently dies if he speaks any other way than with phrases enigmatic AND deep Facebook photo caption style in 2008, but not funny. Let’s cite as an example the moment in which he responds “I can walk, but only towards death” when the psychologist simply asks him if he can carry on despite his quadriplegia, “I’ve already died, several times” when she tells him he risks the death penalty, or when he lets himself go, “I believe in God but I wonder if He believes in me”for no reason.

“Yes, yes”: the Dogman scenario, or the world according to an incel

What could have happened to Doug that was so bad that he would suffer so much?

The very long beginning of the film tells us about the character’s childhood. He takes out the violins: Doug literally he-was-caged-with-the-dogs-by-his-father (WTF) to be guilty of liking them. Her mother, about whom we will know nothing except that she spends her time cry and get hit, escape abandoning his son, to whom he says HI while in a cage (WTF.). The father will get there make the latter quadriplegic. He accidentally shoots her while she tries to kill the puppies in the cage, because puppies are Cuteand that the bad guys I don’t like what it is cute. Director filled of ethicsFilm by Luc Besson the child disabled for life, alone, hungry and completely covered in five centimeters of dirtdressing it all up with sad music so that we can understand clearly dramatic intensity of what is at stake.

Over the course of two hours, this level of grotesqueness continues to increase. We’ll spare you the details of a scene featuring the leader of a Mexican gang tattooed on his face is always shot in slow motion he gets his testicles crushed by the fangs of Doug’s dog sent to the nightclub. We will also spare you the sequence in which the latter kills a policeman thanks to his dogs because the policeman wanted to stay and taste his chili for dinner instead of taking it to the station.

We won’t even dwell on this scene, then bothersomeOR Doug screams, writhing on the ground for five minutes and cuts his hair (like all burned out characters in movies) because he was rejected by an actress he is in love with, even though he had offered her to him a notebook containing all their photos published in the press in the last ten years. You understand the logic: she’s human, so she is bad. She dares to tell him NO At that time that being haunted is so cute.

Luc Besson, Doug: two men “abused by society”

Mixing final lines spiritually out of place, dripping pathos AND counterpsychology, Dogman dramatically humorless. It takes itself so seriously that it’s almost funny. We might have laughed if Dogman it was not, not surprisingly, one of the most problematic films we have ever seen these last few years.

More than a lack of taste, this escalation of stupid cruelty in the scenario is not insignificant. It has a meaning politics. Multiplying the protagonists to the point of overdose bad guys and represent Doug as a martyr without never question him, Besson adheres to the worldview of a character incelI am sure “humanity” he is cruel and has turned against him.

Beyond ridiculous final lines mentioned above, Dogman it’s a movie incredibly verbose Why the word is monopolized of Douglas. Dogman it is his platform and, through him, that of Luc Besson. From the screenplay to the direction, through to the dialogues, everything is designed so that the viewer can enter into it empathy with Doug and in turn adheres to this depoliticizing ideology.

If the scenario sometimes seems to have been written by a 4 year oldit’s because there is never any question of society, power relations, systemic oppressions. Typically, it is impossible to tell when or where the film takes place. Luc Besson paints a picture of a apolitical worldwhere everything would be predetermined by “the profoundly imperfect nature of human beings”.

Therefore you would have to be blind not to see the parallel that the director weaves filigree between him and his character, marginal, haunted by the society. Recall that just a few days ago Luc Besson responded bluntly from Doug’s response to the psychologist (“Complaints are called to hell”) to a journalist’s question about the rape investigation he was the subject of. Seconds later, she even begged himwe leave it, “At 64, you make your films in silence. » PersecutedWe said.

Even if he declares himself an outsider, Luc Besson embodies exactly the norm: he bears witness to Dogman’s transphobia

If Doug is rejected by everyone and can’t find work because of his wheelchair, he will eventually get hired Neighbor drag queen in a cabaret, but on one condition: that he he stays on stage, despite his quadriplegia.

More than a heresy, this element of the scenario sums it up well the indecency of recovering the strangeness by Besson. The cabaret is by definition an eminently place politicsborn from the sisterhood between people Truly marginalized because of their gender, class, race or disability. If Luc Besson it fails to represent the universe queerit’s precisely because the director’s worldview is an aberration without any sociological or political basis : “yes, the “human race” is horrible ».

Above all, theexploitation of the queer communitythat should accommodate this (false) marginal, is abject Dogman reactivates one of the worst transphobic stereotypes at the cinema: that of serial murderer disguised. The character is explicitly shown as a heterosexual cisgender man (moreover, A stalker frustratedWho he never questions his toxic masculinity). In one of his first lines of dialogue, Doug explains that he “disguise »as a woman, because “This is what you do when you don’t know who you are.” » For Luc Besson, transvestism is just a sign of mental illness e psychological distress.

So his character is alonejust another psychopath serial killer disguisedas before him, that of PsychosisFrom The Silence of the LambsFrom Pulses, etc. etc. Furthermore, to understand the tenacity and the severity of this transphobic stereotype, we highly recommend the excellent documentary Disclosure on Netflix.

Unfortunately for Luc Besson, cinema is such a powerful mode of language that it cannot be denied. Whether the director likes it or not, the films speak for themselves. The simulacrum, therefore Dogman do not scream what Luc Besson tries to hide: the omnipotence of these filmmakers who continue to be overfinanced and overexposed, however mediocre and problematic the films in question may be. The same filmmakers who distill their retrograde and mortal worldview in their works, while complaining of being victims of ” ravages of #MeToo “.