To Infinity and Beyond: the Future of Dogs, Humans, and their Relationship

     Susan McHugh's book Dog provided some very interesting insight on humans' perspectives of dogs and is a great example of how we use representation to express ideas about ourselves, our experiences, and our world. At the beginning of chapter four, Dog Futures, McHugh mentions a particular film called Cats and Dogs (2001). The movie is about a secret organization that fights an everyday war of which humans are completely unaware of. Two armies of cats and dogs struggle against each other; the loyal dogs protect the current world where the sinister cats try to change the current situation for their own benefit. All in all, it's a fitting film to demonstrate the way we use dogs as a complex representation of ourselves.

    It is likely that most people would simply brush off Cats and Dogs as a child's film with little depth, and this does make sense since the movie is aimed at eight-year-olds. In fact many people, especially adults, treat these age-focuses as limits. If it's meant for third graders than we shouldn't find anything meaningful from it as adults. However, this social perspective is the very thing that's preventing us from seeing the true representation films like this demonstrate. With this in mind, it's important that we don't try to revert back to a child's mindset when discussing Cats and Dogs. To be blunt, we miss pretty much every meaningful thing as youth. Instead of trying to think like a kid while watching a child's movie, it is more beneficial to think like yourself while watching a film representing dogs and consequently ourselves. I do acknowledge the irony of how changing your perspective of the film itself allows you to view the very perspective the movie is trying to present.

    With the proper mindset, it is clear to see just how scarily accurate Cats and Dogs is to our current situation. We fight within ourselves for consistency and change. We want to keep things the way they are while also trying to change the world around us in a way that will improve our lifestyle, even though this is usually done without malicious intent. We do this to ourselves, to those around us, to our world. We do this as individuals and in groups. And often times we're completely oblivious to everything, no matter how sure we are that we are in fact completely in control of what is happening. And this is just one tiny concept from the film. There are countless other large perspectives besides this one, and even more small elements that are scarily real and yet we almost seem to refuse to acknowledge their existence.

    Now, it's impossible to truly dive into too much of this film. That would be another research project (or maybe a few research projects) in itself. That being said, this only further emphasizes how we use representation. This one film, something that most people brush aside or more likely have never even heard of, demonstrates so much of our relationship with not only dogs and other animals, but our own species and ourselves. Representation is endlessly deep and constantly ignored. There's always something else to discover and always something else to turn away from. Cats and Dogs is literally three words from one chapter of Susan McHugh's book Dog. That trio of words represent so much but are only one small part of a text that goes even further.

    And that's truly the point of this entire class. You can never stop learning. There's always more to learn and representation is a strangely difficult yet easy way to do so. By taking even one brief moment to view and think about the world around us we will gain a much deeper understanding than we could possibly imagine.