Whose crisis? Dogtooth and the invisible middle class

Abstract

Abstract Lanthimos’s Kynodontas/Dogtooth (2009) has been viewed by audiences, journalists, critics and the Greek political class alike as tapping into the issues that stand at the heart of the contemporary political moment. Reception of the film has often focused on the allegorical family in relation to the malaises of neo-liberalism, austerity and the crisis. My contention is that one of the most crucial aspects of this type of account, the economic well-being and class identity of the family, has strangely failed to be taken into consideration. This article shows that the upper middleclass status of the fictional family is one of the premises of the dystopian world of Dogtooth, and demonstrates the various ways in which the omission of the family’s financial prosperity has been central in the rhetoric used to discuss the film’s ostensible political import.