Further Thoughts on The Power of the Dog

*Spoilers.*

The Power of the Dog wasn’t my favorite Best Picture nominee this year, and I admitted that, while undeniably well made, it wasn’t really for me. However, the film definitely made an impression, and I was still thinking about it long after I saw it. So today, I’d like to revisit the film and its depiction of Phil.

Before I get going, I have to reiterate in no uncertain terms that Phil is terrible. His psychological torment of Rose is relentless and twisted, and when he underestimates Peter’s propensity for getting back, I understand why Peter decides to unequivocally take him out. A big part of the reason the film got under my skin, even though I wasn’t really a fan of it, is down to how disturbing Phil’s behavior is.

That said, the film is also an excellent demonstration of how toxic masculinity hurts men as well as women. Certainly, women are the main target when it comes to this social attitude, but it also harms men even as they perpetuate it. In Phil’s case, there are a few things going on that contribute to toxic masculinity basically rotting him from the inside out.

For starters, he’s queer in an environment that’s all about manly men, so to preemptively deflect any suspicion, he’s decided that he needs to be the Manliest Ever to Man. So everything becomes a pissing contest. He walks with bow-legged swagger and takes a weird pride in being unwashed and grungy. He insults his brother at every turn and has to have absolute reign over day-to-day business at the ranch. He also sneers at anything lovely or feminine. When the cowboys come into Rose’s establishment for dinner and Phil sees the paper flowers Peter has made for the table, he can’t ignore them. He can’t even make a quick quip or scoff and move on. He has to make a whole production out of it and set fire the flowers while Peter is watching. And in addition to the behaviors he adopts to overcompensate, I’m sure being closeted just makes him bitter—not to mention he’s also bereaved, as it’s implied that he was in love with the late Bronco Henry. So he’s a lonely, deeply unhappy man who gets off on dragging others down into his misery.

Side note: Are there gay cowboy movies that don’t have soul-crushing endings? If there are happy movies out there about a couple of guys falling in love while rustling cattle or fighting outlaws, I want to know about it!

Furthermore, because he’s such a Big Tough Cowboy, Phil has no healthy outlet for expressing his feelings (‘cause that’d be girly, or gay or something.) So when George marries Rose, Phil can’t bring himself to be happy for his brother. He feels frightened and jealous, because it’s always been George and him against the world and he’s terrified that Rose is taking George away from him. But he can’t let himself say any of that to George, so instead, he decides to make Rose’s life a living hell. He’s punishing her, not just for “stealing” George’s love and attention, but because she made him feel frightened and jealous. He can’t deal with those feelings, and he can’t cut them out of himself, so he sublimates them into the perverse pleasure he takes in haunting Rose’s every step.

Phil’s issues don’t excuse what he does. At all. Again, he is awful. But it’s interesting to see how the toxic masculinity that causes him to torture Rose, belittle George, and underestimate Peter, also causes him to bring so much misery on himself.