Two Handed Warriors

Ideas Have Consequences: The Power and Limits of Existentialism, Dead Poets Society 2

Part 9 of series:  Hollywood and Higher Education: Teaching Worldview Thru the Stories We Live By

“No matter what anyone tells you, words and ideas can change the world.”
-Mr. Keating (Robin Williams)

by Gary David Stratton

gal-dps-cast-jpgThe main characters of Dead Poets Society (1989) provide a perfect opportunity to observe, not only the remarkable skill of no less than three young actors (Ethan HawkeRobert Sean LeonardJosh Charles) on their way to Hollywood greatness, but also a profound illustration the various array of practice shifts involved in the worldview of Existentialism  (See, Bungee-Jumping to Eternity: The Existential Angst of Dead Poets Society).

Paradigm Shifts versus Practice Shifts

A worldview is a lot like an iceberg in at least two important ways: First, only their uppermost levels are visible to the naked eye.  Second, that visible tip is not even close to the most dangerous part of an iceberg or a worldview. It is that proverbial 90% lurking beneath the waterline that can sink your ship… and maybe even cost you your life.
Screen shot 2013-05-02 at 1.37.53 AM
You cannot “see” the strategies, values, or stories guiding a person or society. Unless they are reflected in actions, words, or “cultural artifacts”—art, architecture, literature, technology, institutions, etc.—ideas remain hidden under the surface. Like mounting pressure on tectonic plates, no one knows how much power is really stored up until the ground begins to shake.
Many anthropologists, therefore, make a distinction between “paradigm shifts” and “practice shifts.” A paradigm shift is a change in the unseen world of ideas of an individual or society, while a practice shift is a change in actual behavior. For instance, in Casablanca, we had no idea what a profound paradigm shift Rick was experiencing until the moment we saw his practice shift in putting Ilsa on the plane with Victor. Or in Fiddler on the Roof, it was impossible to know if Tevye had actually shifted his marriage paradigm from a business/social contract to a romantic covenant until he applied his daughters’ paradigm in his own practices by asking Golda, “Do you love me?”

The critical moment that ultimately leads Keating’s students from paradigm shift to practice shift

The relationship between invisible paradigm shifts and visible practice shifts is a critical element of all good filmmaking. Whether it is Luke Skywalker turning off his targeting computer, because he has finally put his faith in “The Force,” or George Bailey asking God to make him live again, because he has finally reinterpreted his life as “wonderful,” the clearer the connection between a main character’s paradigm shift and their practice shift, the better.

Dead Poet Society (DPS) Character Transformations

Dead Poets Society offers the unusual pleasure of following the transformation arc of multiple characters, four of who get their own complete storylines. And while their paradigm shifts are similar, their practice shifts are radically different.
While Mr. Keating implores his students that “words and ideas can change the world,” it is Knox Overstreet who gives voice to the counter-balancing truth, “I’ve got to do something!” And do something is exactly what the young DPS members set out to do.

Knox Overstreet: For the Love of Chris

For Knox Overstreet applying Mr. Keating’s worldview to his own life story begins with the inciting event of Chris Noel (Alexandra Powers) coming into his life. What begins as obligatory dinner at the home family friends—the Danbury’s—turns into the beginning of an epic adventure. The Danbury’s football star son, Chet, is dating cheerleader Chris whom Knox decides is “the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire life.”
Instead of accepting the script written for him by his family and school, he invokes “Carpe Diem!” in his headlong pursuit of the girl of his dreams. The new plausibility structures of his new worldview open up the possibility of engaging in behaviors that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks earlier.  He sneaks off campus to see Chris.  He writes poetry about her.

Chris Noel, the Goal of Knox’s Quest

Finally, the internal pressure of his newfound love and newly expanded worldview reach a boiling point. Standing by the phone with the entire DPS watching, he rewrites his life story from the Welton/family worldview to his newly chosen existentialism in a single moment:
Knox: She’s going to hate me. The Danbury’s will hate me. My parents will kill me. (Looking at the group.) All right, God damn it. (Inserts coins.) Carpe diem!
Once committed—the “midpoint” of his story arc—there is no turning back for Knox. He kisses Chris at a party, reads her poetry at her school, and just when all hope seems lost, he wins a date and the heart of his true love.
Mr. Keating’s teaching has shifted his paradigm in such a way that his practice shifts with it. Knox rejects his Welton/family story that social structures must be followed and embraces a new story where he is free to think for himself and find his own meaning for his day-to-day existence. The ideas found in Mr. Keating’s Existentialism have serious consequences for Knox. His life is clearly changed and enriched from the experience.

Charlie Daulton: The Name is Nuwanda

Charlie Daulton’s (Gale Hansen) life story, on the other hand, isn’t so much transformed by Mr. Keating’s worldview as it is confirmed. As the film’s steadfast character, Charlie really doesn’t change much at all. He is a charming rebellious hedonist at the beginning of the film, and a charming and even more rebellious hedonist at the end. From bringing pornography, and later girls to DPS meetings, interrupting a school assembly with a phone call from God (also about girls), to painting a virility symbol on his chest and adopting the name “Nuwanda,” Mr. Keating’s Existentialism functions primarily to free Charlie to act on impulses he had previously restrained.
Mr. Keating attempts to reign in Charlie’s character with the warning: “Sucking the marrow out of life doesn’t mean choking on the bone. There’s a time for daring and there’s a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for.”  Yet he never really succeeds in actually transforming Charlie’s girl obsessed life story.
On a more positive note, his new worldview also helps Charlie to stand against external pressure. He is perhaps the first Dead Poet to “get” Mr. Keating’s courtyard marching lesson on conformity when he tells his teacher, “I’m exercising the right not to walk.” In the end, Charlie alone is the only Dead Poet willing to endure both paddling and expulsion without ratting out his friends or betraying his teacher.
While Mr. Keating’s worldview doesn’t really change the direction of Charlie’s life, it does help strengthen his character. While not exactly a heroic character, his exposure to existentialism certainly hasn’t hurt his life.

Todd Anderson: O Captain, my Captain!

Perhaps the most moving transformation in the film is that of Todd Anderson. At the start of the film, Todd’s identity is buried so deeply in that of the Welton/Family worldview, he functions merely as a sub-plot of his older brother’s story.  Something inside him is so stirred by Mr. Keating’s message that he writes “Seize the Day” in bold writing in his notebook.  Then we watch as the Welton/Family story wins out and he crumbles the paper and tosses it in the wastebasket.
But Mr. Keating is not finished with Todd yet. When Todd refuses to even admit that he has written a poem to be read aloud in class, Mr. Keating steps in:
Keating: “Mr. Anderson thinks that everything inside of him is worthless and embarrassing. Isn’t that right, Todd. Isn’t that your worst fear?  Well, I think you’re wrong. I think you have something inside of you that is worth a great deal.”

Visions of a sweaty-toothed madman

In perhaps the film’s most moving scene, Mr. Keating writes Walt Whitman’s adage on the blackboard—“I sound my barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world”—and demands that Todd YAWP! Suddenly the paradigm shift that has been lurking beneath the surface of Todd’s life breaks into the open in his “sweaty-tooth madman” speech.
Todd: Truth like-like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold… Y-You push it, stretch it, it’ll never be enough. You kick at it, beat it, it’ll never cover any of us. From the moment we enter crying t-to the moment we leave dying, it’ll just cover your face as you wail and cry and scream.
Keating: [long pause then class applauds] Don’t you forget this.
Todd never does. In the film’s final climactic scene, Todd finally finds his voice. He leads the Dead Poets in their last act of heroism.
Todd Anderson [stands up on his desk]  O Captain! My Captain!
Mr. Nolan Sit down, Mr. Anderson! Do you hear me? Sit down! Sit down! This is your final warning, Anderson. How dare you? Do you hear me?
Knox Overstreet [climbs up onto his desk]  O Captain! My Captain!
Mr. Nolan Mr. Overstreet, I warn you! Sit down!
[Pitts climbs onto his desk, followed by Meeks, then over half the class, one by one] 
Mr. Nolan Sit down! Sit down. All of you. I want you seated. Sit down. Leave, Mr. Keating. All of you, down. I want you seated. Do you hear me? Sit down!
John Keating Thank you, boys. Thank you.
As the bagpipe music closes on a freeze-frame of the Dead Poets (and even non-DPS students) standing on their desks, you literally FEEL the incredible power of romantic Existentialism. Mr. Keating has freed these young men from bondage to the gravity of Physicalism and sent them soaring into the invisible world of Ideals.

Todd is the first one on his feet, er, desk, in a final DPS salute to their “Captain”

Neil Perry: Finally Finding What We Want to do

O, if that was all there was to the story. But there is another major character. And it is his story that points us to the second similarity between worldviews and icebergs—what you don’t can literally kill you.  Was there something lurking just beneath the waterline of existentialism’s iceberg that ultimately led to Neil’s tragic end?
We hate Weldon Academy making Mr. Keating their public relations scapegoat, and despise Cameron for insisting:
Cameron: If it wasn’t for Mr. Keating, Neil would be cozied up in his room right now, studying his chemistry, and dreaming of being called Doctor.
But he does have a point.

For Class discussion: The Trial of Mr. Keating

Come to class ready to discuss:  Who bears the greatest responsibility for Neil’s death?  Mr. Keating? Mr. Nolan? Mr. Perry? Neil? And why? 
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Next post in series:

The Blind Side Leading the Blind: Better Faith-Based Filmmaking through Better Stories 

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See also:

Hollywood and Higher Education: Teaching Worldview Through Academy Award-winning Films

Casablanca and the Four Levels of Worldview: Why Everyone Meets at Rick’s 

Fiddler on the Roof: Worldview Change and the Journey to Life-Interpreting Story

Crash goes the Worldview: Why Worldview Transformation Requires Changing Scripts

It’s a Wonderful Worldview: Frank Capra’s Theistic Masterpiece

If you Live it, They Will Come: The Blind Side and Better Faith-Based Filmmaking

104 thoughts on “Ideas Have Consequences: The Power and Limits of Existentialism, Dead Poets Society 2

  1. Pingback: Dead Poetic | All Things Latin

  2. Tadd W

    Part 2

    In one of the scene's at the end with Neil and his parents in the den, Neil's dad talked about 10 more years of school and it is referenced as a prison sentence. Neil didn't want to go to prison so he took what he thought was his only way out. Neil's realtionship with his father was similar to his relationship with Welton. Neil obeyed what they said, did what he was supposed to do, maintained a working relationship for the majority of his life, and didn't truly love or want to spend time with either.

  3. Tadd W

    Mr. Keating was most definitely responsible for the change in Neil's worldview. However, I do not believe that Mr. Keating was responsible for Neil's death. Mr. Keating was guiding Neil in a direction that Neil wanted to go and supporting him in the things that Neil wanted to do. If it weren't for the backlash from Neil's dad there wouldn't have been the tension and struggle regarding what Neil should and shouldn't be doing. I understand that parents need to do some parenting and have some authority to tell their kids what to do, but we are not talking about illegal activity, compromising of morals, or even sacrificing Neil's school work. Neil was still doing everything his father wanted. So when Neil's father took him away from the life he had grown to love, the DPS and acting, Neil couldn't take it anymore.

  4. M Tacheny

    I'm anxious to read Part 3 of this series – based on the title, I have a feeling I'm going to respectfully disagree with the idea that Mr. Keating was in any responsible for Neil's death. Yes, it was a time and place so entrenched in Physicalism that his Existential and Idealist concepts were revolutionary and threatening to those in authority. And the opening of the minds of these students to the real options for love and beauty and art did ultimately make Neil tragically decide that he couldn't go back to the closed life that his dad chose for him. But does that mean that their minds shouldn't have been open? Just because it may be simpler to live in the dark does not make the person who turned on the light a villain. Is every teacher that's ever exposed me to new ideas and opened my mind to new possibilities then responsible for what I do with that information forever?

    It's interesting because this was the first time I actually watched Dead Poet's Society, and I recall 3/4 of the way through thinking that there's no way that the story can end well for all of these characters. And for both Neil (and in some ways, Mr. Keating), it didn't. Because in real life people make choices about what they will do with their worldview and those choices are sometimes bad – no matter what their position is. Having our minds opened to new possibilities – and I don't think any particular stance so much as the idea of 'options' was forcibly imposed – is not the cause of those bad choices.

  5. Kevin Kaiser

    Welton Academy has many similarities to life in small closed family units. We have generations of family members that are conditioned to follow the path of life set forth by the elders of the family. The interesting thing is that it may not be the path of the individual. Even when two siblings look alike, they have their own individual personalities. This to me is where an institution like Welton gets in trouble with its time honored banners that profess "TRADITION” and "HONOR".

    In terms of movie parallels, I found Mr. Keating to infuse a new of way processing the same time honored information. For example, the scene where Keating has the students rip out the introduction to poetry is teaching them to think differently. The class was unable at first to adjust to the paradigm shift in teaching methods. This shift caused several parts of the structure to come apart at Whelton thus ending the employment of Keating. The parallel comes from the Star Trek movie where the Enterprise escapes the Borg by introducing a new way of processing information into the collective thought of the Borg. Welton and the Borg are much alike in that they have no room for existentialism. In each case the fixed institutions were faced with entities that introduced a new worldview that moved away from the physicalism of highly structured environments like Welton or the Borg.

    I like the iceberg example as it visualizes what can happen when people’s worldviews collide. If one person has a physicalist worldview like Neil's father, and Neil with his new found love of acting representing his emerging existentialism world view, it can play out like a scene from Titanic. Neil and his father collide long before they get close enough to even understand each other’s position or worldview.

    1. M Tacheny

      You woo me with your Star Trek references! Good parallel with the Borg. You and have discussed before that we have similar rural backgrounds and I think that applies here. I found myself thinking about that during this movie; about how I was provided a very rigid and specific worldview when I was growing up with no tolerance for freedom of ideal or thought. I ultimately rebelled drastically against that and maybe went too far for a time and still wasn't considering my true thoughts and feelings. That is demonstrated in DPS when Mr. Keating has to 'reel in' Knox because he is almost drunk with the idea of freedom.

  6. Olga Ornelas

    The movie was fascinating to me the number of students Mr. Keating was able to touch/impact was impressive. One of my favorites was Knox, he was aware of the consequences of his action towards Chris, but he decided to do something to take a risk and to follow his “heart” Neil on the other hand got a taste of the glory (participating in the play) and wanted to follow his dream, yet his world was already determine by his father and after that moment it was better for Neil to die than to summit to his father’s desires as he has done so for so long. Todd’s transformation was also remarkable, he did had something important to say and the class listened to him as the members of the DPS start standing on their desks the lesson was learned, in deed. Their society has expects for them to turn their eyes away from an injustice, yet they have a right to express they opinion and they exercise that right!

    1. M Tacheny

      Living in a society that doesn't accept your worldview is such a great obstacle. Ultimately Neil couldn't do it and before the character transformation of the other students was complete, they signed the form and weren't quite ready either. I think the movie does a great job of showing that – it's not always easy when you feel differently than the greater society in which you exist.

    2. Tadd W

      You mention what society expects and I think that is easily seen in the film through the character of Charlie. In the beginning of the film the way Charlie acts is seen as antics and like a class clown. His friends laugh when he says something funny and enjoy his free speaking attitude, but they still conform to the Welton way of doing things. By the end of the film all of the DPS has taken on the attitude Charlie started with at the beginning of the film eventhough they know society expects different.

    3. Tadd W

      You mention what society expects and I think that is easily seen in the film through the character of Charlie. In the beginning of the film the way Charlie acts is seen as antics and like a class clown. His friends laugh when he says something funny and enjoy his free speaking attitude, but they still conform to the Welton way of doing things. By the end of the film all of the DPS has taken on the attitude Charlie started with at the beginning of the film eventhough they know society expects different.

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