#littlesthobo

Our misty, videotaped dreams of the un-human Hobo as an actor of radical freedom may have been premature, if not delusional. The dog's narrow focus on interpersonal justice leaves no room for ideology, politics, or other forest-over-trees considerations. “Target For Terror,” the seventh episode of TLH, is a mix of menace, moral clarity, and naiveté that mimics a dog’s worldview, but draws uneasy parallels with our own.  

The fairly fantastic characters of “Target For Terror” literally leap from the headlines. The first thing we see is the bold, 72-point pronouncement at the top of a broadsheet, filling the screen: "TERRORISTS MAKE MORE DEMANDS." The unidentified newspaper reader then folds down the page, which, like an upside-down opera curtain, has the effect of revealing our human hero. Paul Hamilton – young man, snub-nose, Lego-hair, jacket-collar popped, flared pants swishing – is striding confidently into a train station. Following closely behind are two sketchy characters, who we immediately surmise are the terrorists. It is as if the dramatic headline conjured these players, or as if we have passed through the headline, into the world of ALL-CAPS anxiety, entering the fear-soaked deathscape of broadsheet news.

Briefly now, let’s jump ahead to an almost unaccountably strange moment that occurs halfway through the episode. One terrorist walks in on the other, who is perusing a thick paperback, and tells him to “Stop reading that junk!" Why were we invited to this moment? The title of the book, unfortunately can't be glimpsed. The only part of the cover we can see in an element in the lower left-hand corner: a swastika! Is it a book about Nazism? Are we being told that the terrorists are Nazis? Or that they're anti-fascists who consider Nazism "junk"? Perhaps it's a red herring to focus on that graphic detail. But surely there's a reason the one terrorist is chastised for reading a book.

I think it has to do with the newspaper headline at the start, which introduced our setting as a reductive and fearful world. Being in the world of a panicked newspaper means rejecting the world of books, which would include depths of context and greater stores of information, reasoning, empathy. Even the terrorists reject any intrusion from that world, which is foreign to the territory of the tale.

A dog must naturally see the world as tense and simple, but we are coached that way by broadsheet profiteers. And those who manipulate their message.

Paul Hamilton is a kind and rich fellow. The terrorists want to kill or capture him as part of an obscure plot to get at the boy's grandfather, Chief Justice Hamilton, played by John Carradine. Carradine, very old at this point, sometimes struggles with his delivery, but still has a large, theatrical presence, and beautifully gnarled, expressive hands that cling to fine lapels in his opulent office, which is replete with mahogany furnishings and a deep, patterned carpet that no doubt hides expensive Cuban ash. The camera films that office with a certain staid reverence: we’re not to scoff at this man, we’re to see his perspective as right and proper. The terrorists, in comparison, have weird, strained faces, natty clothes, and awkwardly-carved facial hair (one is played by the great Cronenberg regular Geva Kovacs).   The dog – named Nick, this time around – saves Paul in the train station, but Chief Justice Hamilton warns his grandson that the rugged schemers are still out there. Now that the terrorists have spooked their prey, they take another line of attack. By successfully kidnapping Paul’s fiancée, Pam, they force the groom-to-be to come out to a remote hotel in the country, where he too is kidnapped.  

“We have a cause,” the terrorist tells Paul, warning him not to try any funny stuff. “We live for it, and we’re willing to die for it.” But what this cause might be is, glaringly, never even hinted at.

In the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, US intelligence officials initially concluded that Syria was behind the attack, as retaliation for America’s downing of an Iranian passenger jet earlier that year. President Reagan, however, shifted the blame to Libya’s President Gaddafi, who was a more convenient villain (and happy to play along, to boost his anti-American cred). The U.S. president-cum-actor even participated in the creation of a neo-conservative conspiracy theory that had Gaddafi and Carlos the Jackal heading a deranged hit-squad hellbent on assassinating Reagan. A similar form of narrative alchemy happened in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, when the Bush administration shifted the story to point blame at the unconnected Saddam Hussein, even though almost all the attackers were Saudis. The point is that American government ideologues seem to kind of like terrorists because, unlike a state army, their origins and motives often seem unclear, and so can be manipulated in the public mind. Obviously, anyone willing to kill and die for a cause has strong beliefs, but American governments would rather obscure the meaning, or even existence, of a cause. We can all remember George W. Bush nonsensically asserting that the terrorists simply “hate our freedoms.”  

This matters, because our films tend to reflect, intentionally or not, the false storylines being peddled. At the height of the Bush-era terrorism panic, The Dark Knight was released, starring a Bush/Blair-style Batman battling an anti-ideology lunatic who just wanted to “watch the world burn.” Why? Oh, no reason. Terrorists, we’ve been counterintuitively led to believe by state propaganda, don’t really need a reason. Apparently they just want to fuck shit up (or “maximize chaos” to use the ridiculous description of Nazi motives peddled by Jordan Peterson). It’s clear why we’re fed this lie. Obfuscating the position and ultimate aims of the terrorists makes their actions seem mad, and any opposing actions seem justified.

With both Pam and Paul captive to the villains, it’s up to the dog Nick to save them. And here we’re introduced to the episode’s most sympathetic character: Osborne, the meek, bespectacled man who runs the dilapidated country inn where the criminal action is happening. Unlike Paul, Osborne is not aligned with state ideology; he’s motivated by narrow, everyday concerns, like ensuring no dogs loiter on his property. We’re clearly meant to identify with Osborne: when Nick sprays the hotelier with a water hose, to get his attention, the water is first sprayed directly on the camera lens, at us.

Nick rouses the non-ideologic self-interested character to the defense of one political side. However, he does this not by appealing to ideology, but by threatening the comfort of the passive actor. This is reminiscent of how the newspaper is always declaring our comfort to be under threat. The sleight is possible, since the terrorists’ positions have been strategically re-written so that it appears that threatening stability is a goal unto itself, rather than a means to an end.

The Hobo is of course not actually acting in defense of state ideology, but his narrow focus on context-free morality (and waking up the non-ideological actor with his moral concerns) can be exploited to that end.  

The dog comes from a third world, not of power or of resistance, but the world of the woods. Among the trees, living as an animal, there are only immediate concerns, so of course he can’t see the greater context of his actions. But at times, this can also be an advantage, for him. When the terrorists chase Nick, he leads them off into the trees, and there they become hopelessly lost. In the woods, among individual trunks, their ideology can't follow, so they're easily duped.  

Osborne has a “No Dogs Allowed” sign on his property. By forbidding dogs, Osborne wishes to keep the wildness of apolitical moral action at bay (the forest, after all, is cut down a safe distance from his beloved lawn). And yet, even though he appears unaligned, Osborne’s cherished obsession with self-concern is policed by the channels and apparatuses of the state (which are nourished by a particular ideology, though he doesn't see it).

The wildness of the dog's morality runs outside of these channels. And yet, it is the dog, the apparently-radical actor, that draws Osborne's actions to a political side, for it is a roused Osborne who eventually unties and frees the kidnapped couple.  

Here we see the dangers of radical actions being co-opted to state ends, if the actions don't have their own, competing ideological compass.

This is why Osborne changes his sign at the end, crossing out the “No,” so it says simply “Dogs Allowed.” Since the moral-ideological motivation of the terrorists has been successfully hidden from him, and his own morality has been manipulated to be indistinguishable from self-interest, he is now able to see morality, state ideology, and his own comfort as compatible, and indeed mutually-reinforcing.  

The freed Paul Hamilton says he wants to make the dog his “best man.” Nick has been granted humanity because he is perceived to have collaborated with the correct (state) ideology.

The Hobo naturally flees this.

Should we pity The Hobo? I return again to the theme song. It’s a fair question whether the lyrics can be taken as a genuine expression of The Hobo’s innermost thoughts, or merely as some human’s imaginative, anthropomorphizing folly. And even if the words can be taken as the best English expression of how the dog actually feels, we still come up against the fundamental untranslatability of a non-human animal’s sensations or experiences. But let’s assume, as an exercise, that the lyrics are our best approximation of the mysterious Hobo’s preoccupations. The voice that’s always calling him has to be the voice of a human, since a dog can’t be said to have a voice, and even if it’s a vague desire he chases, that desire clearly appears for him in human vocal form. The call of domestication, as we’ve mentioned, is the most likely culprit. How does this haunting appeal affect him? “Down the road, that’s where I’ll always be.” He’s unable to live in the moment, as he’s always possessed by a mental displacement towards an as-yet-unrealized comfortable future entrapment. Perhaps part of him envies the house dog, who is nothing if not a creature living always in the moment, always beholden to the desire of that very instant, completely enrapture by the squirrel, toy, or potential for food directly in front of them. Of course, they are imprisoned within this endless moment. Unlike the ownerless Hobo, who can picture a Down The Road, think In advance. But that freedom also introduces melancholy, and the anxiety of displacement. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll finally settle down,” he thinks, but this is a grim thought, because he’s talking about sacrificing his own identity for the unshakeable call of domesticity, that suicide of the self. We know that Tomorrow is not something to look forward to, because, “until tomorrow, the whole world is my home” is a happy thought, made slightly dark only by the implication of its finitude. Of course, all these traps he fears, and many more beside, may be what he sees foremost when he looks upon human beings.

Maybe The Hobo pities us.

Part two of “Manhunt,” just the third episode of The Littlest Hobo, introduces wild plot twists and strong symbolism, and comes up with a pretty dark conclusion about humanity, as seen from the perspective of our mute hero (read the previous post to get caught up on the plot and discussion).

The first section of the episode involves our dog hero, named “Einstein” this time, helping the fugitive Tom escape, with the wounded Old-Timer (whom Tom rescued) in tow. Einstein does this through his uncanny knowledge of the physical world, using trees, logs, elevation, and improvised simple machines to outwit the pursuing forces, who are over-reliant on projecting their quarry’s thoughts.  

Thanks to Einstein, Tom manages to elude the pursuers, and drag the Old-Timer to the edge of a road, there to flag down a passing vehicle. Then comes the shocker. The Old-Timer produces a pistol and says that he’s turning Tom in. The man that Tom killed in self-defense was the Old-Timer's nephew.  

Tom is aghast. As are we. The plot was already motivated by a tangled web of qualifying circumstances, with characters acting on partial information and assumption. Now we realize that we and Tom have also been victimized by partial information. The Old-Timer's allegiance to his family is stronger than that to the man he’s just met, even if that man saved his life.  

The next we see, Tom is in jail, and completely crestfallen. He is only glimpsed through the prison bars for the next several scenes. The prison bars are, well, prison bars, but the visual insistence on them begs our consideration. What has trapped Tom, who sees himself as fundamentally unguilty and deserving of freedom, is the many compromising beliefs and allegiances that make up human existence. It is peoples’ insistence on sticking to things they can name – “family” and “the law” – rather than the confusing mess of verifiable evidence (which, as should be clear by now, we can only ever see imperfectly) that has trapped him in this situation.

The Old-Timer visits Tom in prison, and it’s a striking scene. First, we hear Tom pronounce that he is “innocent,” and that he “didn’t do it.” Notable, because what he’s saying isn’t exactly true – he DID kill a man, after all. But even Tom feels the need to wield language to boil down his experience into a sharper, if less accurate, point. Then, as the Old-Timer is waiting outside, he witnesses Tom talking to Einstein through the bars of his cage. “I wish you could talk,” Tom says to the dog. It’s not clear that the dog, on the right side of the bars, wishes the same. Then the Old-Timer comes in to tell Tom that, “regardless of everything else,” he does greatly appreciate what Tom did for him, out in the bush. Depressed Tom is unmoved. In his defense, the Old-Timer says, “the law is the law, and I have to answer to it, just as you have!” An unconvincing argument, given the circumstances. Even the Old-Timer seems to realize this, as he murmurs, looking around him, “I suppose that’s easier to say out here.” Hearing himself say “the law is the law” seems to be the moment that changes the Old-Timer's perspective. The flabby tautology shakes him out of his rhetorical reliance on comforting language. Indeed, the Old-Timer is hobbling on crutches throughout this scene. He seems to become aware that he’s using verbal concepts like “the law” as a crutch to cover for his lack of availability to a messier narrative based in the observable world.  

So he sets out to correct that. Though keep in mind that he’s probably only doing this because Tom saved his life, not because he’s determined to exonerate his fellow man. More qualifying circumstances. Every experience and belief is a question of relativity (and now perhaps we begin to understand why the dog is called “Einstein”). The Old-Timer identifies this as the key to the case: Tom claims he was assaulted with a tire-iron before killing in self-defense, but the men who were there insist there never was a tire-iron. The Old-Timer only has to voice his suspicions out loud for the Hobo to come to the rescue, as is his wont. Einstein draws the Old-Timer out into the bush, and shows him where the tire-iron was hidden. The incriminating evidence has been recovered, and is passed from maw to hand.

The Old-Timer hobbles into the bar where the family of the dead man are playing cards. He throws the damning implement into the middle of their game. There’s a shot of the tire-iron clattering among the playing cards and currency. This represents what happened to the instrument when it was passed from the dog to the man. Playing cards and dollar bills are objects that are almost pure signification. By being placed among them, we see that the tire-iron has also been transformed into a signifying object. It is now not just a physical thing, but something that speaks, something imbued with a value and a meaning in the context of invented human laws and beliefs. The concept of “the law” locked up Tom, but now this “trump card,” played correctly, can be used to free him through use of the same concept.  

In the concluding scene, we see Tom as a free man. But he isn’t happy. He has clearly been transformed by the experience. In the flashback to the encounter in the bar, in “Manhunt: Part 1,” we saw Tom as almost blissfully confident in his ability to freely and guiltlessly interact with strangers. Clearly, after having been trapped and tortured by mitigating circumstances, after having been made a villain in the eyes of a man he saved, that is no longer the case. He can no longer believe in humans’ ability to interact justly with one another, and this is made clear by the remarkable final line.

Einstein trots off into the woods without a single glance behind him. Tom hollers his name twice, but to no effect. Tom looks sour, then growls this startling conclusion:

“That’s the only goodbye in the world worth anything.”

What on Earth do we take this to mean? Perhaps Tom is so disillusioned with the deceits of language and meaning that he no longer trusts any spoken sentiment, not even a “goodbye.” As harsh as it is, he prefers the pure, unsympathetic act of Hobo’s departure to any potentially false sentiment. It’s unclear whether The Hobo shares in his disgust. It is clear that he feels he has to leave.