Power Relations In Dogville

The 2003 film Dogville demonstrates the reinforcement of the power relations through the societal processes mentioned above. While civilization is supposedly rational, the poststructuralist movement claims that social life and interactions are disciplinary and carceral, exemplifying microscopic power relations (Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison). The power of reason, embodied in Tom’s attempt to use reason and morality as guidelines, merely allows the segregation of the well-disciplined “good citizens” from the dissident. Foucault adds to the traditional concept of power as a central agent to sovereignty the interpersonal relations of forces. Dogville analyses these constantly repeated and tolerated instances of power
in a closed environment. Being grateful for not being expelled, Grace surrenders herself and offers any type of ask. Although nobody needs it, everyone finds a way to help her by giving her work; however, due to apparent increasing danger, they ask for more effort and minor remuneration. The power relations end up becoming absolutely unidirectional up to the point of degrading into the most undignified human being and even literally chaining her up, even though the townspeople know Grace to be innocent.
The noble act, as much as the condemnable one, are not exclusive to men and women of action: inaction can be as lethal or good as more visible actions. Tom’s inaction drives Grace down her path to misery and despair, and his sudden action leads to the town’s destruction. His incapacity to detach himself from his rational, social self turns him into an empty shell, surrendering to self-doubt as he realizes he had been using reason as self-deception; so he gets rid of the source of this disturbance, Grace. Moreover, the film indicates that the socially disadvantaged can also be source of power, given the opportunity and sufficient resentment of failure. Power is not reserved to the rich and prominent members of society. In an environment embedded in poverty, boredom and sadness of insipid lives, the arrival of Grace, far from suggesting a spur to the numb relationships between the inhabitants (Tom believes she is the “illustration” he is looking for), points at the darkest violence against what they feel as a threat for their apathetic but pleasant
misery.
According to Michel Foucault, the social body is the result of self-complacency: “the phenomenon of the social body is the effect not of a consensus but of the materiality of power operating on the very bodies of individuals” (Foucault, “Body and Power”).
The first step to the degradation of the body is the loss of respect and control over one’s self, illustrated by Grace’s multiple rape. Connecting the relation between power and truth, the aggressors try to use Grace’s own arguments to justify the depravity of her body: Chuck reminds her that she apologized for having stopped his touch and Ben justifying himself in that she had showed understand for his weakness for prostitutes and the costs of the freight industry. Grace gives Liz some advice when the latter admires her hand, until Liz can return the favour once Grace’s hands deteriorate because of the physical labour she had to endure: Liz takes back power she thought to
deserve.
Foucault’s idea of the carceral world leaves no room for resistance whatsoever, as the combination of forces hush any sign of uprising. This counsels quietism, a feature often criticized in Foucault’s word(Leitch). The lack of defiance hides the truth to the individual mind, or, as far as the understanding of truth in a postmodernist sense goes, the quietist conceives his own truth based on the dimensions of social life he encounters. So the villagers let their reason be used as an instrument of discipline and control by those forces they believed they are subjected to(Ryan). The truth of the village and Grace collide: Grace sees her persecutors’ hospitality and need for compensation as morally justified, because it fits into her concept of the world and moral compass based on forgiveness. However, the village’s truth differs as their balance demands an excessive amount of compensation and unbinds Grace’s body from human dignity and actual freedom.