Queer Classics in Jane Campion’s Adaptation of Thomas Savage’s <i>The Power of the Dog</i>

Abstract The core character in The Power of the Dog, a Western novel by Thomas Savage published in 1967 and set in 1924 Montana, is Phil Burbank, a rancher in his early forties beset by decades-old memories of his dead mentor, Bronco Henry. Savage’s slow, subtle method of leading readers to conclusions about Phil’s erotic desire for Bronco poses a challenge for adaptation to film. In her 2021 adaptation, Jane Campion meets that challenge in part by tucking into her film classical Greek and Roman allusions—sometimes verbal, sometimes visual, sometimes both—that are suggestively queer. Savage uses a few classical references in his novel, but they point only to Phil’s education and contempt. Campion thus channels an element from Savage’s novel but directs it towards different ends, creatively inviting viewers to wonder about Phil’s sexuality before she exhibits it. Writing and revising her film adaptation in 2017–21, a time comparatively safer for openly queer people than 1921 and 1967 and after critically and commercially successful adaptations of queer material such as Brokeback Mountain and Call Me By Your Name, meant Campion could be more revelatory than Savage where the exhibition of Phil’s sexuality was concerned. Accordingly, with lavish visuality, her adaptation gives viewers an autoerotic scene with no analogue in Savage’s novel and adds sexuality to a sensual scene in Savage’s novel. For most of the film, though, she only hints at Phil’s same-sex desire, offering a model of how to use classical allusions to carry a story about hidden, forbidden sexuality across media and time.