Milo and Otis

"Milo and Otis"

In her book, Dog Love, Marjorie Garber proposes the idea that fictional works that offer representations of canines are often used not to tell us about dogs, but to tell us about ourselves. “The Adventures of Milo and Otis,” directed and based on a story by Masanori Hata, stars a pug-nosed puppy that Garber would believe possesses many of the traits we deem ideal in humans, and also offers several moral truths and social maxims about human society.

The ways in which we as humans represent our relationships with dogs are explored in Dog Love. Garber assumes on the role of a cultural critic through her book, commenting on the role and social value dog representations have in our society, as represented in various artifacts: novels, films, advertisements, etc. She believes that through dog stories we create the ideal human, assigning valued human characteristics to the canine protagonist. She states, “The dog becomes the repository of those model human properties that we have cynically ceased to find among humans” (Garber 15). In our society, we no longer turn to our fellow men and women for the embodiment of virtue; we instead look to “man’s best friend.”

Canine tales are becoming an ever-more-popular medium for expression, says Garber: “Just as the pathos of human love and loss is most effectively retold, in modern stories, through the vehicle of the steadfastly loyal and loving dog, so the human hero has increasingly been displaced and replaced by the canine one” (44). The spotlight has been shifted from the larger-than-life human to the humble family pet and his canine brethren. Stories that feature a dog rather than a person are able to more convey a deeper sense of meaning, establishing their...

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...establishing a “home” has essentially been transferred from the parent to the child, and the traditional home, and consequently family, has all but disappeared in our society. This shift undermines the roles of the parents, and forces the child to take on adult responsibilities at a premature age. We live in an on-the-go day and age where nothing seems to remain constant for any time at all, and with this lack of continuity we have lost a great deal of what was once an integral part of society. The thought of a child ascribing to a “home” devoid of anything infallible is not a pleasant one. If every parent would spare a moment in their busy, fast-paced lives to consider the impact of the dissolution of the traditional home upon our children, we might not need films such as “Milo and Otis” to instruct our children to dissociate home from the world around them.