Left to right: still from The Power of the Dog; still from The Lighthouse
A conversation about the portrayal of homoeroticism in the critically acclaimed The Power of the Dog and Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse’s with Alex Ho of The Asian Glow blog
The praise surrounding the film The Power of Dog, a story of a closeted gay man reconnecting with his self through the relationship with a younger, androgynous boy in rural Montana returned me to Robert Eggers’ 2019 film The Lighthouse. Although both films slightly differ in genre and plot structure, both touch upon queer romances and subjects of homoeroticism and toxic masculinity, particularly in cis white men. The connection between both highlights a strain of queer films made by heterosexual filmmakers. As an outsider looking in, I include these details of the films.
Most recently, The Lighthouse has been on my mind chatting with a high school girlfriend. We were at a bar, two femmes next to two cis men. Aside from the immediate surroundings of an American Southern dive bar that may have elicited a conversation about the film, I remembered the first time I watched The Lighthouse with another high school friend. To draw a comparison, the film seemed to be a mirror to both their personal lives and boyfriends’ insecurities with heterosexual masculinity, and the presentation and performance of such.
I wanted to ask you, what were your initial reactions to The Lighthouse? Did you, like me, see any similarities to The Power of the Dog?
Alex: I got to see The Lighthouse when it was in theaters, thanks to a college friend. I remember talking to people after the movie that my main takeaway was the psychological horror of a bad, isolated work situation. I didn’t think that much about the homoerotic moments, which was just one of a variety of creepy set pieces that pushed our characters’ sanity. So, the Robert Pattinson character and Willem Dafoe character slow dancing and threatening to kiss until they push each other away and get into a fistfight doesn’t give me “queer romance”–which, to me, would refer to a story of love relationship between queer characters–so much as it gives me “homoeroticism”–the kind of dangerous allure of same-sex attraction–and for the purpose of continuing to unmoor our main character. After all, the movie ends with him killing his coworker and ending up in a purgatory state himself, not falling in love with a man.
Alex: When I saw The Power of the Dog this holiday season on Netflix, I don’t think I made connections to The Lighthouse. But homosexuality is definitely more central to The Power of the Dog than The Lighthouse. It’s too bad that The Lighthouse is a way more entertaining movie experience than The Power of the Dog, which, to me, was kind of ridiculous, boring, and way too pleased with itself. Where The Lighthouse does kind of comedic, excusable “gay panic”, The Power of the Dog turns gays into the usual stereotypes from tragic, to self-loathing, to murderous. To add insult to injury, pathological homosexuality is ultimately just a device for an infuriatingly coincidence-heavy plot. My dad, who was the one who recommended we watch it, even was quick to compare it to Psycho when we finished it. I really don’t know why so-called liberal Hollywood is going in this direction, other than that a lot of prestige-y movies these days are getting huge passes and using the LGBTQ+ cause, which after a perceived period of shiny mainstream “acceptance” is back to being demonized and stereotyped, to somehow be “edgy”. So, I’m not really sure what to make of your friends’ and your discussion if it’s about straight men’s insecurity of their heterosexuality, but I guess it makes sense. The movies are not surprisingly pretty heteronormative in perspective, by making homoeroticism this deviant danger that drives their plots.
Maybe I’m not giving these movies a fair chance. Did you feel that The Lighthouse or The Power of the Dog have meaningful things to say about queer experiences? Or maybe just where the culture is at in terms of understanding of sexuality? As a film enthusiast, were there other things about the films other than gay subtext (or overt text) that were interesting to you?
Julie: Nope. Neither film had anything meaningful to say about queer experiences. I mean, The Lighthouse screenwriters (Eggers and his brother Max) based the film on Edgar Allen Poe’s unfinished story “The Light-house,” which was a lot about isolation, paranoia, and loneliness surviving in a small, narrow space. There is not actually a lot of physical space in a lighthouse. You can only go up. If you wander out of the lighthouse, there’s only the ocean. So, I guess I’m seeing the film from a perspective of macabre and horror. What was more interesting to me was the cinematic qualities of the film being shot on 35mm, black and white, and the aspect ratio 1.19:1. The film was like a compressed formal study of two characters and what happens when men are repressed, to the point it bursts out through volatility.
Julie: In The Power of the Dog, it’s not so overt. There isn’t an obvious representation or performativity of queerness. Phil isn’t with a guy but we see him in a dance with himself naked, as well as seeing his coworkers in the water naked. We never see him being intimate with anyone. There are moments but the film never goes there. I don’t think the story is about that. There are those moments where he talks about his mentor Bronco Henry throughout the film and infer that it was a deep relationship. Although the book isn’t a memoir, I feel like the story is a reflection and an indirect autobiography of the author processing his sexuality in the Fifties, which at a time if you were gay, you couldn’t be yourself. Also, the story and Savage are from rural Montana so I would not have any clue to know what that would be. I think what Jane Campion adds to Savage’s story in her film adaptation is more beauty in all the sinister and insidious qualities of Phil who really is the catalyst of the story. Most of my intrigue in the film is in the character Phil and how his interpersonal world becomes cataclysmic because of the interaction (with Rose) that shifts his relationship with his brother. The power imbalance in the sibling relationship; Phil no longer has influence over his younger brother as he has been comfortable in being.
Going back to the idea of homoeroticism being “othered” in the films, I agree with you. I think this is a way to move the plot forward. But I wonder if the films are antiquated or limited in their storytelling because of the original story/ book they are adapted from? Do you agree? Because the stories take place in a particular historical period, how could the films have been relevant today?
Still of the character Phil Burbank in The Power of the Dog
Alex: I enjoyed The Lighthouse, and I generally thought it worked as a movie. Like you said, the movie has a striking cinematographic format that is really effective at trapping us alongside Robert Pattinson’s character. By choosing the matter-of-factness of early photography, Eggers takes full advantage of the story’s Edgar Allan Poe origins. The limitations of The Power of the Dog might have to do with the source material–I wouldn’t know. But they certainly aren’t helped by Jane Campion’s fatalistic and mopey cinema. The interpersonal, familial power dynamics just didn’t work for me. I couldn’t deal with how obnoxious and fragile all the characters came across, reliably aided by screechy, dissonant violins, and how just tired and mean all of these closet-case tropes were. Bullying over a paper flower, or piano-playing? Are you kidding me?
Still of Pattinson and Dafoe in The Lighthouse
Alex: Maybe the reason that these films are in the zeitgeist and feel relevant to people is that, as with world politics, the popular culture has gotten more cynical and fearful–simultaneously more illiterate and more literal-minded–and this reflects in the film culture as well. People are acting like repression and domination is somehow sexy or something. And it’s because people are completely misunderstanding the particular historical periods and regions that The Lighthouse and The Power of the Dog are referring to. Both are stories about seasonal work or livelihood on frontiers or borders, predominantly coded male, done in order to ensure U.S. land expansion. Whatever “reality”–socioeconomic, ethno-national –we can make of these bygone homosocial spaces is reduced to whether or not these characters are straight or gay–very 21st-century, almost post-human concerns–superficially re-marketing an atrophying American imaginary for the Instagram generation. Maybe America is super bi-curious right now?
Julie: I think why popular culture has become more illiterate and literal-minded is because of the constant presence and production of digital content, everywhere! Despite the pretense that anyone and everyone can be a content creator, it’s really still operating under the guise of a capitalistic framework of making more. So like the broad narratives of seasonal work on land frontiers and borders from The Power of the Dog and The Lighthouse aren’t discussed because that’s not cool or provocative enough for social media. (It doesn’t include dance routines or sound bite that can be repeated.) Then, the attention goes into the faces and identities of the stories in order to be accessible for the general public. I think the global pandemic really exacerbated all the pressures around online platforms, and America is realizing that it is not the center of the world.
Julie: But yah, Phil is mean. Just a big bully, plain and simple. Peter and his mom wanted to give a pleasant experience for guests but Phil wanted all the attention for himself. Have you watched Bright Star or Holy Smoke? Two films of hers that fit that descriptor of ‘fatalistic’ but don’t have a dispiriting tone like in The Power of the Dog. The ending for Bright Star is inevitable but the airiness in capturing a brief romance doomed from the beginning still gives an uplifting undertone to the film. Screechy violin playing is included but actually works. I think it’s obvious that I have a soft spot for Campion films, hahaha…
Alex: This is the first Jane Campion film I’ve seen, and maybe I had an overly critical reaction to it since it is so acclaimed in the lead up to the Oscars this year. From your loving tributes to Bright Star and Holy Smoke, it sounds like I’m missing out on some of the ephemeral poetry that Campion brings to her mysterious studies of inscrutable characters and settings. If there’s anything The Power of the Dog excels at, it’s at creating a sense of awe of natural geography and the ways that settlers and guardsmen have at various times been shaped by their harsh environments, which it shares with The Lighthouse. And if this veteran director’s photographic art is being widely appreciated by the image-minded masses at this moment when we too are helpless to a global pandemic, that’s definitely not the worst thing that could happen to film culture. Besides, I’m eagerly awaiting the porno parody The Power Bottom of the Down Dog.
Alex Ho is Professor of Chinese Culture and Heritage, Asian American History, and Asian American Literature at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Follow Alex @alexjho88 and Asian Glow blog
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