Analysis Of What Calling A Tail A Leg By Barry Welson

‘How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling it a leg doesn’t make it a leg.’ What calling a tail a leg does do, however, is affect our perspective of it. Whether one is inclined to see such a thing, is what decides how many legs we see a dog with, regardless of the actuality. Who we are, and how our perspectives materialise, has a great impact on our reality: the way we see the world, react to events, and make decisions. Often, an objective reality, the way things really are, the four legged canine, gets left behind, worth little in the face of stubborn views and beliefs. The opposite can also be true, with the actuality of a widely accepted reality refusing to lie dormant in the face of beliefs, the truth pushing

through and demanding to be recognised above any personality or individuality. While there can be a battle between ones own personal understanding of the world and a higher truth, the two can act more symbiotically; who we are can create the truth, calling a tail a leg can make it so. The two are not nearly as separate as one may assume.

Our perceptions are stubborn, our experiences determined, and our beliefs, to the individual holding them, flawless.

Often, this can change ones view on the objective, and cause us to construct, and believe, a reality that has little to do with fact. This is clear in Barry Levinson’s satirical comment on modern day politics in America, and much of the Western world, where unbeknownst to the public, their very participation in democracy is being swayed by the media. It is the preconceptions of the American people that make this so possible. The public trust the media, they believe that what they are being shown is true, and that it is all there is to say about it. This is evident when we see the interview near the end of the film, putting the president’s success down to ‘commercials, commercials, commercials’. This ignorance is a focus of Levinson’s, and we see the very response of the American people in Stanley’s response to the president’s book, ‘I never looked at the cover I just looked at what was signed to me’. It is this same trust that what is directed at you is enough that resulted in such a ruse being maintained, amidst Albania ‘screaming their defence’ to the war that united the American people behind their president. The presidential success was not due to commercials, as much as the media insists, with their repetitive and useless ‘Don’t change horses mid stream’, it was the war, the distraction. That is the actuality, and trust in the media to deliver the

actuality is what prevented the public from seeing it. Such a phenomena is similarly seen in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, an insight into the dark side of the American Dream. Willy Loman’s absolute belief in his son Biff creates a unyielding barrier between him and reality, lasting until his untimely death. While Biff himself admits he is ‘a dime a dozen’, who ‘stole himself out of every good job since high school’, Willy continues to idolise him. From Willy’s reality, Biff is ‘hardworking’, godlike, and ‘outstanding’, and it is this view that colours his perspective, preventing him from seeing the truth. Willy reaches his death still believing in this false reality, believing in Biff’s definite ‘magnificence with twenty thousand behind him’. In both of these circumstances, it is clear that the individual plays a large part in determining how a perspective emerges, preventing actuality from emerging.

In some circumstances however, actuality will not be squandered, and prevails, demanding to be acknowledged even when it contradicts one’s personal views or desires.

This is demonstrated in Wag the Dog, where for all Stanley's desires, the reality of the situation was not one that awarded him the credit. Stanley saw the world through the mask of his ego, his vision that this is his project, his desire to prevent any one ‘editorialis[ing]’ on his brain child. He holds himself to a ‘higher calling, art’, however the reality is that this is not a piece of art. This is business, and this is a pragmatic exercise in diversion, the means to ‘distract them’, and this success, with there being 'no mention of the firefly girl’ after war was declared, does not change its purpose. While for Stanley, it is ‘the best work [he’s] ever done’, something he did ‘for the credit', that can not eventuate. Brean is in control, even if Stanley is the producer, even if it is ‘[his] picture’, and this actuality will not be changed. Stanley’s death was the reality of refusing to accept his own, and demonstrates that seeing something one way does not necessarily make it so, nor does it deplete what it actually is. Death of a Salesman additionally shows this unfaltering nature of aspects of reality, in Willy being forced to face his own incompetence. We see his belief in his own superiority, asserting ‘I could outsell them’ when we see that reality has been contrary for years evident in his flashback

with hopes of ‘business pick[ing] up’, and the current desire to 'accomplish something’. While he remains deluded throughout most of the play, insisting that if only circumstances had been a little different he'd have ‘been in charge of New York now’, we see reality prevail in his defeated admission, ‘I was fired today’. It is in this that the facts of the matter, that Willy is not the incredible salesman he dreamed himself to be, emerge. Here, it is evident that some truths cannot be masked by ones own perspective, rather, they push through in spite of them.

The distinction between geo we see things, and how they actually are, is, however, sometimes not so cut and dry. Seeing something as such, can make it so, perception becoming reality. While the war in Wag the Dog is fabricated, it’s presence, an the feelings of fear, nationalism, and unity that come with it, are very much a part of the American public’s reality. A spanner is thrown in the works when the CIA, who were not responsible for the production of the war, announce to the public that the war is over. While nothing had actually changed, the perception of the public, that the war was over, changed their reality, as it forced Brean, Ames and Motss to adapt their constructed reality to fit it. When Brean states ‘The war is over, I saw it on television’, he suggests that what is real does not matter, but what is perceived does. In response to this, their campaign changed to accommodate for, and create, a reality where the war is in fact over. Here, the perception of the people, the way they saw the reality, was what resulted in it being so. In Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, an unsettling demonstration of protective parenting, the same connection occurs, albeit more unsettling. The father in the film controls the lives of his three children, preventing them from leaving the compound of their home, and teaching them falsities of the outside world, that ‘a cat is the most dangerous animal there is’, and that ‘a zombie is a little yellow flower’. They are constantly prepared for the horrors of the outside world, told of how it is ‘unsafe’, and how staying home is much better. It is their perceptions of the outside world as an uncomfortable and unsuitable place that make it so. While we never see the children interact with the outside world, viewers are shown the sisters believing with the utmost conviction that licking is a valid form of currency, able to be traded for hair clips and videos. These skewed beliefs have come out of their controlled and surveillance riddled lifestyles, and these are incompatible with the outside world. Because of this blatant lack of understanding, the outside world is unsuitable for these children, it is daunting, and it is unsafe. The reality of their eventual interactions with life outside their home stemmed from them being treated in relation to their interactions with the outside world, suggesting that the individuals, the children and their father, and their own views, and their own views, have created their reality.

Throughout Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and Barry Levinson's Wag the Dog, the complex relationship between perception and reality is explored. Whether calling a tail a leg makes it one is argued between, and often within, the texts. Often, perceptions prove themselves to be the strongest of the lot, surviving in spite of realities that contradict them, all due to the nature of the person making a judgement. Some realities however have proved themselves to be relentless, and to win out as what must be seen and acknowledged. In some cases, truth can not simply give way to perception, and one much remove their tinted glasses to perceive something in actuality. Individual ideas and beliefs can, however, be the makers themselves of a reality, and twist truth in order to reflect themselves, in a cyclical influence on one another. It would seem that sometimes, a tail is both a leg, and a tail, depending on where one is standing, and what one believes.