Oftentimes, when I’m just getting to know someone, and we’re heading through all the small talk, I mention I’m an English major, said “someone” quips, “Oh, well, you must LOVE The Dead Poets Society!” I then find out why, as an English major, I should love this film: apparently a Robin Williams character inspires boys to live in the freedom of creativity through introducing them to the reality of poetry. Literature, according to the new “someones” in my life, comes alive in this film, and begins changing the lives of boys who are stuck in a patriarchal, strict, formal, 1950s private school situation.
Recently I was introduced to a video on YouTube, the link as follows:
I think every anxiety I’ve ever had about attempting to become an English professor is contained in this short, badly-done video. But then, there’s the girl with the pigtails, the eternal optimist, hoping to make a difference in the world through writing, research and… teaching “like Robin Williams in The Dead Poets Society.” Hmmmm, thought I, it’s time to watch this film.
(WARNING: Spoilers throughout!) It’s a lovely film in a lot of ways; I got goose bumps in all the right places, I think, even when they did ridiculous things like stand on their desks. I cried at the end, but that’s no surprise: this is ME we’re talking about… I happen to be the person who cries at the end of Monsters, Inc. every time: heck, I cried near the end of Dickens’ great novel David Copperfield, when Dora dies (don’t judge me!).
But something was not satisfying about this movie. I’ve been sitting on that dissatisfaction for a couple of weeks now, and I see now that the movie is connected to other thoughts I’ve had in relation to some of my classes: the aestheticism that John Keating (Robin Williams’ character) promotes is extremely Paterian, and therefore reminiscent of Oscar Wilde. In other words, literature is not the primary agent of change in these boys’ lives, but an aesthetic philosophy, a philosophy which is in diametric opposition to the philosophy of “The Educators” in this film. “The Educators” is a poem by postmodern Scottish poet D. M. Black, and it begins like this:
In their
limousines the
teachers come: by
hundreds. O the
square is
blackened with dark suits, with grave
scholastic faces. They
wait to be summoned.
These are the
educators, the
father-figures. O you could
warm with love for the firm lips, the
responsible foreheads. Their
ties are strongly set, between their collars. They
pass with dignity the exasperation of waiting.
As it was written in 1969, this poem is in dialogue with the issues brought forward in The Dead Poets Society. As the poem moves forward, a dwarf, which can be read as a symbol of myth, imagination, and creativity, is literally dismembered by the educators, with graphic and systematic efficiency. I had to do a formalist analysis of “The Educators” for my Critical Approaches class, and its relation to the film struck me immediately. At the end of the poem:
They
return to their cars. They
drive off smoothly, without disorder;
watching the road.
The ending is full of irony, given the violence which precedes their calm, "disorderly" exit. According to Black and the makers of The Dead Poets Society, this is how education was in post- war America. If it was the case, it was a good thing these power hungry, brain-washing preachers of conformity were overthrown, and a new definition of the word “education” was developed. But is Keating’s new definition adequate? Is it the answer to the problems in an old model?
Firstly, it struck me that there is actually very little poetry quoted in the film from great “dead” poets. I caught some Shakespeare, as well as some Byron, here and there; John Keating’s name is obviously an allusion to John Keats, the great Romantic poet. But I kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for some of the “greats” to be brought forward as an answer to the stifling atmosphere at Welton Academy. Mostly, Keating spends his classroom time teaching the boys to get new perspectives, and to balk their current education restrictions. He gets them to tear out the mathematical introduction to poetry in their text books, to stand on their desks (symbolic of said “new perspective”), and to march in unison in the courtyard (symbolic of conformity), always emphasizing to the boys their uniqueness as human beings, and the creative contribution of beauty they can make to the world.
Ah, beauty: this is where Walter Pater comes in. Pater was an English essayist and critic: his dates are 1839- 1894. Keating isn’t really preaching a return to the poets, but a return to beauty and imagination as an end in itself: Pater writes, in the conclusion of his work The Renaissance:
"To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. […] The theory or idea or system which requires of us the sacrifice of any part of this experience, in consideration of some interest into which we cannot enter, or some abstract theory we have not identified with ourselves, or what is only conventional, has no real claim on us. […] For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love […]. Of this wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for art’s sake, has most.”
I LOVE Pater’s prose, by the way: it’s gorgeous! But art for art’s sake, the beauty of the moment (“carpe diem” anybody?), living with passion… John Keating, I’m taking bets, loves this guy to bits. This language also has sexual connotations, and it seems that many writers have illustrated the natural conclusion of this philosophy, if it is taken to its extreme. Try Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray: Wilde was an aesthete of the Paterian mold, but he saw the logical end of attempting to live Pater’s transcendence through the worship of beauty. Try again, (but don’t read!) D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. In that novel physical experience is the goal, the only way to achieve the actual connections in life.
Therefore, I admit it: when Knox Overstreet in The Dead Poets Society bends over and kisses an all but senseless maid lying on a couch at a party, it gives me the creeps. His rally cry? “Carpe diem!” He worships her beauty, but the relational, mutual aspect of this opportunity is utterly negated. I know I was supposed to take Knox’s side in the fight that ensues with Christine’s boyfriend, but part of me felt that the blows were deserved. Later, when Christine says to Knox, “you don’t even know me!” I thought: exactly. She is a beautiful, physical body to Knox. He is living “poetic passion” and the “desire of beauty”… but it leads him to objectify another human being.
Then of course, there’s the main character Neil Perry. He is prevented from living his passion, the beauty and transcendence of the moment through acting, and this circumstance leads to his suicide. Besides the fact that I felt his controlling father was over done, I couldn’t help but feel that his suicide was more than the result of the brain-numbing atmosphere at his private school. His suicide happened, in part, because Keating offers him freedom with no form, with no end, with no structures. Neil has no ability and no point of reference for this approach to life, and indeed, it could be argued that humans are not made to live a “formless” life. The diametric opposition of the two philosophies he is offered results in no middle ground… he wants one but must have the other, so he kills himself.
One of my favourite priests of all time, Fr. Clair Watrin, always says, “You were made to be captured! The question is: what will you let capture you?” This comment, I think, reveals true freedom. Freedom, according to The Dead Poets Society, is the ability to live the passion of the “hard, gemlike flame” as per Walter Pater and the worship of beauty. True freedom, I think, is the ability to choose a form that we will live out of: the freedom of “formlessness” is an illusion and trap. Personally, I have chosen the “form” of the Catholic faith, and that form lets me know that beauty reveals the ultimate End, an Object for the transcendence of art: God. Imagination, creativity, and beauty are a means to communion with the Most High. This End places a moral structure on poetry and experience of beauty, thus preventing the use of people in order to experience beauty and passion for their own sakes. The “form” at Welton Academy is not to be desired, as it devalues the students and squelches individuality, imagination, and creativity, but Keating’s answer to this problem is also not sufficient.
And I suppose you’re free to disagree with me. Just know that you're replying from a form that has captured you!
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