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Re-Education as Exorcism: How a White Dog Challenges the Strategies for Dealing with Racism

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Animal Horror Cinema

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Abstract

One dark night, the actress Julie (Kristy McNichol) hits a white German shepherd dog with her car while driving through the Hollywood Hills. Because the owner is nowhere to be found and she feels responsible for the animal’s injury, she takes him home after a visit to the vet. They quickly bond during his recovery, and Julie’s boyfriend Roland (Jameson Parker) even suggests she should keep him as a ‘bodyguard’ since she lives alone out in the hills. Sure enough, when an intruder actually tries to rape Julie inside her house late one evening, the dog attacks him and saves her. After this incident, she wants to keep the stray as her pet. However, in the events that follow shortly afterwards, Julie’s canine companion is unmasked as a very special kind of attack dog: trained by bigoted racists, it is ‘programmed’ to viciously attack black people and savage them to death. It is literally and figuratively a ‘white dog’.

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Authors
  1. Susanne Schwertfeger
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Umeå University, Sweden

    Katarina Gregersdotter

  2. Linnaeus University, Sweden

    Johan Höglund  & Nicklas Hållén  & 

  3. University of York, UK

    Nicklas Hållén

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© 2015 Susanne Schwertfeger

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Schwertfeger, S. (2015). Re-Education as Exorcism: How a White Dog Challenges the Strategies for Dealing with Racism. In: Gregersdotter, K., Höglund, J., Hållén, N. (eds) Animal Horror Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137496393_8

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