Talk:Straw Dogs (1971 film)

Significance of the film's title
I just watched this film, and was curious to find the significance of the title Straw Dogs. Finding none in the Wikipedia article, I did some research, which yielded the passage from the Tao Te Ching and other information regarding sacrificial animal figures, as provided in the article's new section.

However, without more research, I felt unable to document what I feel are the obvious implications of the metaphor without resorting to original research. But the lack of a conclusion makes the section rather lame. These implications seem obvious enough, but I ended up deleting two paragraphs of expository material for lack of citable sources.

A familiar English translation of the Tao Te Ching passage goes: "Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; the sage is ruthless, and treats the people as straw dogs." The implication is that the David Summer character (the mathematician/"sage") regards the people around him with the same dispassionate, analytical, cold practicality as the Taoist creator ("heaven and earth") regards all of us and everything else in the universe.

It is a chilling and compelling image, of which I feel Peckinpah must have been aware. But, of course, if I were to expound upon such things in the article without citing sources, it would seem as though I were unhinged and trying to proselytize some personal philosophy, which is not my intention.

Any help? It's just a beginning; the section could use some work. Rangergordon (talk) 07:04, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

If my memory serves me, this was the explanation given in a Time magazine article about the movie published on its release. Would need to research this though. 203.114.167.88 (talk) 06:55, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Chinese translation
Took the liberty of changing "ruthless" to "not benevolent" a more exact translation. The implication being that Heaven and Earth (ie. the world as a whole) aren't evil and out to get you, they're just indifferent, and that fortune may come or go. The sage should model himself on Heaven and Earth, and also be indifferent in regards to people (in contrast to the Confucian focus on benevolence, and strictly ordered hierarchical relationships among people.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.10.126.52 (talk) 17:52, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Anal rape?
"From Venner's expression, it is implied that the rape is anal." It would be interesting to know some more about the distinctive characteristics of the expression involved in anal rape. Clearly the writer has more experience in this area than I. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.171.176.206 (talk) 03:05, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree. Why anal? Because it was painful? I am sure we can find many women to testify to the fact that vaginal sex can also be extremely painful under the right circumstances. Given that she had just been previously raped (sensitive), she probably didn't find the second man attractive (not lubricated), and the fact that he probably wasn't being very careful (lots of friction/pulling), I would say that it is reasonable to expect that it would be painful in any case. I think without a source, we should take this out.--24.24.142.225 (talk) 09:01, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I concur with 24.24.142.225, and I've removed the statement per WP:NOR. Erik (talk &#124; contribs) 13:40, 13 October 2010 (UTC
 * I would rather say that any kind of sex can be painful under the wrong circunstances.

correct link ?
The Michael Sragow essay is at salon.cm at http://www.salon.com/1999/07/29/straw/

99.251.239.140 (talk) 19:49, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

What in the world happened to the plot summary?
Somehow the perfectly adequate--and grammatically correct--version of the plot summary from early 2016 has been brutalized into an almost unreadable morass of broken English.

"To which Davids comforts her, the events of the preceding morning never explicitly spoken."

"Seizing the opportunity, David wrestles the gun out of Venner's hand; who dies when David ensnares his head in a bear trap, Amy much dismayed at his death."

Seriously, almost every sentence is laughably bad. Anybody want to volunteer to un-F this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:3001:204:9800:A886:AC42:FB35:937B (talk) 20:34, 14 July 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks like an IP editor recently made those changes. I restored the older plot. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 01:27, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Where's the intelligence in Wikipedia? Not here.
With that as a clearly intentional provocation, I will quickly add that the same question can be put to the general public itself as regards the relatively weak, unintelligent reviews that are written about this quite dark and yet quite insightful film.

Meaning: You can't (at least, won't) find any truly intelligent summary of the film here on Wikipedia, nor will you find one amongst the many reviews written about it.

What's the purpose of an encyclopedia, if not to add intelligent insight? And this is a much larger flaw with Wikipedia itself than simply as shown by this one, now somewhat-obscure film.

In any case, to answer my own question because you, the reader deserve better than Wikipedia's "where's the citation" approach to encyclopedic knowledge: In this case, go read, a page at a time, the 5-star reviews of this film as listed in Amazon. Ignore the noise, and seek the intelligent offerings; some of them, not nearly all, are simply absolutely stunningly amazing with respect to their in-depth analysis and courageous clarity, and vastly serve their readers far better than any full-time movie critic. You won't be disappointed.

--104.15.130.191 (talk) 21:13, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * That's why Amazon reviewers are so handsomely rewarded for their (your?) work, whereas full-time movie critics are now all lining up to collect welfare checks or seeking new careers. Although, to be fair, I always thought Barry Norman was a self-important prat. MPS1992 (talk) 22:01, 18 October 2019 (UTC)
 * What's the purpose of an encyclopedia, if not to add intelligent insight? Well, per our very own article on encyclopedias, to summarize the knowledge on given subjects. Intellectual insight is the domain of academia and research, not encyclopedias. Grandpallama (talk) 15:28, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Title shared with fascist novel
While the relationship is likely only coincidence, maybe anyway, it seems interesting to me that the fascist writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle wrote a novel titled Les chiens de paille, which translates to “straw dogs”. It’s only noteworthy here because the film came under attack as “fascist” in sentiment. La Rochelle was an intellectual and committed suicide at the end of WWII, but was actually a well-respected writer despite his pro-Nazi sympathies. The question I’m left with is whether it merits inclusion in this article.

Chess book
The chess book Susan George is reading in bed (at around 00:22:00), is Svetozar Gligorić's "Selected Chess Masterpieces" (1970). You can check it from the book image and the movie frame, I found them in here and here.

It is miscellaneous information without RS, but I leave it here for "chess lovers". Alexcalamaro (talk) 11:12, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

rape scene
"What starts off as rape eventually turns consensual." is a disgusting sentence. Is there a better way of describing this? While I realize the film is trying to depict a woman enjoying being raped, it is ludicrous to say that someone can "consent" to sex in the middle of being raped. The way this is worded makes it sound like he didn't actually rape her at all, that in the end it was just consensual sex. Owen (talk) 22:38, 5 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I came to this section to see if anyone else was as disturbed by that wording as I was. I guess to a certain extent it comes down to perception, but the way I took it in the film was that Amy basically relented and stopped struggling. That doesn't make a rape cease to be a rape. It was basically survival instinct on Amy's part kicking in during a violent assault. 71.86.160.241 (talk) 23:55, 8 September 2022 (UTC)