Man domesticated the dog – an early descendant of the wild wolf. Scientists don’t fully agree on exactly when this happened – estimates vary between 9,000 and 34,000 years ago – but let’s roughly say that it was hunter-gatherers who turned the dog into a pet. People are happy, because the dog was a handy fellow hunter and nice and warm to lie against on cold nights. Dog happy, because plenty of leftovers. With that history in mind, look at the short 2Doc The office dog (KRO-NCRV), then you can only whine softly.
In the intervening centuries, not the dog, but the human being has been tamed, domesticated and transformed beyond recognition into a sedentary creature that stares at a screen in silence for hours, responds mechanically to beeps and whistles, and moves around on chairs with wheels. The language has evolved into a secret language. Targets. Meetings. Sales wrap. Merchandise. Replace. Meaningless for those unfamiliar with the open-plan office. No, that doesn’t make any dog happy. 1.3 million Dutch employees are sick from it. Burned out. But what do we do? We drag our family friend into hell without daylight. To make it more bearable for us,
Office dog James is wandering lost between the desks, Bobby is lying on the leg of his owner’s chair and is grabbing a ball from the coffee machine on a leash. Their owners are allowed to take their dogs to work as long as they behave – the dogs. To this end, a questionnaire must be completed in advance and there is a trial day on which the dog must prove that it is an asset to the office. Afterwards, approval follows, with or without strict conditions.
It remains unclear which office is in the documentary, or what the people who work there do all day. The dog sits on your lap, on the table or on a chair during meetings, and occasionally it pees against a partition. As if you were going to Tower C looks, the office satire by Margôt Ros and Maike Meijer. Alienating and laughable, but I don’t know whether that is because of the dog in this environment, or the human.
Danny Ghosen has found a sanctuary in Florida where humans are the predator. In the fifth part of Danny & The Americans he is in Lake Shore Village, a trailer park where mainly men live. Their identity cards state, next to their name and photo, what they are: sexual predator or sex offender. Sex offender. “You can kill someone, chop them up and burn them, and then nothing will be on the ID,” says Bob. He is one of the residents of this one adult community where you stumble over the signs ‘forbidden for children’ and guests must leave the premises before ten o’clock in the evening.
Bob groped his stepdaughter when she was less than twelve years old. He was sentenced to ten years in prison and then placed on probation for five years, but he will be labeled a sex offender for life. In California, the 300 meter rule applies to his ‘kind’, they are not allowed to live near a school or park, anywhere where there could be children. This forces them to form communities with like-minded people in areas outside built-up areas. That seems like the place for bad things to me, but the men claim that it is safe – especially for themselves. Their act is not only recorded on their ID, but also in an online register. One push of a button and everyone knows their score.
In the barely twenty minutes that Danny Ghosen’s program lasts, you learn less about these people than you would like. But it’s nice that he once took us to this place for exiled men.