Who’s a Good Boy?: Moonrise Kingdom and Value Judgements

By Emma Gibson

If you have not seen Moonrise Kingdom it is about two children–Sam and Suzy–who fall in love and runaway from their troubled lives together. There is a scene in the movie when the two encounter Sam’s Khaki Scout troop while navigating through the woods. Things turn violent when the Khaki Scouts try and capture Sam and Suzy to bring them back to their families and the Khaki Scout dog, Snoopy, is shot in the neck with an arrow and killed during the altercation. When the Khaki Scouts retreat, Suzy looks over Snoopy and asks, “Was he a good dog?” To which Sam responds, “Who’s to say?” (See clip here.)

This exchange got me thinking about the use of categories like goodness and badness as tools for authorizing one’s personal interests.

Suzy’s impulse to measure the value of Snoopy’s life in terms of “good” or “bad” is a move that reduces a lifetime into a single label, a move that Sam avoids. “Good” is not a universally agreed upon concept. A hunter may believe a dog is good if it is obedient while a family might argue a dog is good if it is loving. Some cultures see dogs as a nuisance rather than pets which would lead to an entirely different approach to the animal’s death. The goodness or badness of the dog’s life may be irrelevant in the moment of death because value judgements are overpowered by the fact that the number of stray dogs in a particular area is causes several problems for the community. The death of the dog may help solve a larger problem of overpopulation.

Sam’s question “Who’s to say?” pushes the viewer to rethink who gets to decide which person, society, or culture gets to define what it means to be good.

Snoopy might be a good dog in the eyes of the Khaki Scouts because he is a faithful companion to the boys all summer, not because his attributes are inherently “good”. If Sam told Suzy that Snoopy was good, Suzy’s idea of Snoopy is influenced even though she never knew him. To acknowledge that he does not have the ability to authorize goodness or badness, Sam avoids marginalizing those who disagree with him. He recognizes the implications that come when one assumes authority over value judgements. To deem Snoopy a good dog ignores the fact that reality is made up of multiple conceptions of goodness. Sam opens the doors for discourse that does not submit to categories, but wrestles with the intricacies of belief, authority, multiplicity, and truth claims.