The Boss, Jehovah, the Old Time Religion and our own self-respect
My comments focus on the ending of Dogville. The Boss, revealed to be Grace’s father, comes to Dogville, rescues Grace and metes out terrible punishment on the town and all its inhabitants for their atrocious behavior. Grace at first protests, ready to forgive them, but is convinced by the Boss’s arguments that respect for the residents implies that they must be held accountable for their actions.
In this interpretation, the Boss is God (and in particular he is the Old Testament Jehovah) and Grace (note the name) is Christ. The Boss, as Jehovah, is all about right action, reward and punishment; humans need to follow his rules, and if humans break the rules they are in lots of trouble. Grace, as Christ, is all about love and forgiveness; humans are imperfect by nature, they are bound to break God’s rules, and they must be forgiven when they do so.
What makes this interesting is The Boss’s convincing Grace that her forgiveness implies a lack of respect for humanity. If humans are to be respected they must be held to account for their behavior and, if it merits punishment, they must be punished. And the punishment comes in this world; the movie has no reference to heaven, hell, or anything about an afterlife. According to the movie, Jehovah respects humanity while the Christian God/Christ disrespects us; indeed, treats us with even less respect than one might treat a child, or even a dog (!) who should be forgiven but also should be trained to follow the rules, as the Boss mentions to Grace. Until her conversion, however, Grace is not interested in holding people to account, nor even in teaching them to act better. She simply accepts them as they are. By forgiving the people their atrocious behavior, without protest or any other attempt to reform them, she shows less respect for the people of Dogville than one would show a dog.
The bottom line here is a view that the Christian God’s love and forgiveness demean us; if we need a god and also have some self-respect, we should pick the demanding and unforgiving Old Testament Jehovah, rather than the loving and forgiving God/Christ of the New Testament.
Instead of the Christian story that God sacrificed His son, allowing men to torture and execute Him, to wash away the sins of humanity, in Dogville God and Christ do just the opposite. The Boss/Jehovah rescues his daughter Christ from the cruelty of humans, and then persuades her not to forgive but rather to punish. Jehovah converts Christ back to the Old Time, Old Testament religion. Grace pronounces the people of Dogville a blight on the world and assents when the Boss gives the order to kill them and to burn the town to the ground, just as Jehovah did with the flood and in Sodom and Gomorrah. Grace herself executes Tom, remarking immediately afterward to the Boss, “Some things you have to do yourself,” which may well be another reference to the vengeful Jehovah. And then, in what is almost a Hollywood ending, Jehovah and the reformed Christ drive off together, presumably to reign rigorously ever after.