Dogville , directed by Lars von Trier born Lars Trier , is a film set in the United States of America by a Danish man who has yet to visit the country, but who has been so thoroughly saturated with the television programs, films, music, business, and politics of the country that he feels compelled to address it as a subject in his work.
How do we treat those in need? Of course, seeing the film, I may have felt simply the pleasure of gratified anger, the pleasure of the wounded and the resentful, at seeing an accusation clearly made and harsh justice delivered against society. Was my pleasure the pleasure of a civilized man, or the pleasure of a barbarian; or, inevitably, both? Culture may be what we make of our daily habits and basic social relationships, the ways in which we wake, wash, eat, work, play, and sleep; but civilization, which requires knowledge and organization, is more than the handling of necessities and simple doings—civilization is the result of choices that are willed into being.
We may or may not need to be intelligent and sensitive to survive, and we may require the intelligence and sensitivity of others in order to prosper, but we do not need intelligence and sensitivity in the form of a film, a book, a painting, or a sonata—we desire it, we will it.
A cup of water might be required for drinking water—that is a necessity, and its use a basic part of human culture; but when that cup is made for comfortable use and embellished with design, made with a concern for beauty, that is the realm of civilization, and the more intricate the design the more complicated the civilization. Culture concerns what we do ; but civilization, the realm of the aesthetic and the intellectual, is like morality, the realm of the good and the just, in that it is concerned with how and why.
Many people live without asking many questions about how and why they do what they do—and Tom Edison, Jr. The questioner and the social critic, or the moral agent, are all traditional roles for the individual, for the intellectual, and for the writer, as they help others to see themselves better and make more conscious choices.
