How Do You Stop Worrying When Waiting...
Body & Soul1 min ago
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.'Straw Dogs' comes from a translation of a Chinese text called Tao Te Ching thought to have been written by Lao Tzu in the (Western equivalent) 2nd century BC. It is an important text in the tao belief system. The passage reads;
Heaven and, Earth are not humane;
They regard the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
The Sage is not humane;
He regards the hundred families as straw dogs.
The idea of the impersonality of Nature is fundamental to all Taoist writings (and seems clearly evident in Peckinpah's film). In addition, the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu records certain Chinese ceremonies in which woven straw dogs are made and initially respected but when the ceremony is over, are thrown away and trampled on.
Peckinpah recognised that a book originally titled 'The Seige of Trenchers Farm' by Gordon Williams actually dealt with something more fundamental than the violence that distracted the original censors.