People generally have an affinity for sticking to tradition, and ‘how things are done’, that go back generations. This is so entrenched that every era requires some form of revolution and a freethinker to ‘make war’ to release us from our self-imposed chains of ‘how-things-are-supposed-to-be because our grandmothers did it this way.”
Dead Poets Society in my opinion is a revolution that needs to keep happening, it is a revolution that spoke in the 90s and still speaks now and would speak long after I am gone.
Released in 1989, but set in 1959, Dead Poets Society was a movie that became a movement and an anthem for everyone around the world, preaching the message of Carpe Diem, meaning Seize the Day, live the moment, make hay while the sun shines and enjoy the sunshine too!
When the movie commences, it dips you, almost heartlessly, in a world steeped with the ancient traditions and prides of quintessential White America, symbolized by a prep school, described as the ‘best prep school in America’: White boys running around in uniforms, rich parents, a stern headmaster, and the heavy atmosphere of breeding America’s power players, young white boys who would become the old white men pulling the world strings for world benefit, America’s benefit or their own benefit. I saw no place for the black child in this picture. It just would not fit. But that is by the way.
I would like to draw a parallel to our own world, where a majority of schools indoctrinate their pupils in a very myopic view of the world. It's a chew-and-pour-philosophy, with the hopes of getting a respectacle job in future, and that's the straitjacket most of our children are put in in school. These are our own traditions and 'way things are done'. There is no space for glamorous dreams. There is no space for grand dreams. No space for dreaming dreams of changing the world. The few people who break through these myopic chains, and allow themselves to dream of the stars and make those stars real are viewed at as gods and goddesses, people who are different from the ordinary. When in fact, they are ordinary. All they did was dream where others chose not to.
Back to the topic: However, in this miniature version of American power politics, all was not well. Why? Because people that were human beings were being fitted, pushed, squashed and bent to fit into age old traditions that were trusted. So free spirits and dreamers who had otherwise beautiful souls that could create beautiful things for the world were being put in straitjackets because to quote from the movie, “Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams and I will show you a happy man.” This is an America where they still lash in school by the way, Parents define their roles as strict guides, where they guide their children into what they want them to do, not what the child would naturally be inclined or is interested to do and pursue. You find a lot of the time , parents talk at their kids, school authorities talk at the students. It’s never with the children and they never listen to the kids.
Drawing yet another parallel, it is needless to point out that in schools and homes here in Ghana, from when you are of a discerning age, a myopic view of your capabilities and the world is hammered in your head. All other options are made nonexistent. A good English student is told by his teachers and parents that he should become a lawyer. A good math student is told by her teachers and parents that she is to become an engineer or doctor. What if he wants to become a writer/ What if she wants to become an actress? Why are those options not options at all?
In Dead Poets Society, the revolution began when an English teacher appears on the scene, John Keating (played by Robin Williams), and he is very different, almost frighteningly so. He challenges the straitjacketed students to question the conventional views of the system, of their parents, of their teachers and school heads. He challenges them to think outside the box, he teaches them about the dangers of conformity, losing your voice in the cacophony of the masses’, and your sense of self. And he uses such techniques as asking the pupils to stand on their desks to teach them that (which teacher asks his students to stand on their desks?!).
One scene which was especially poignant to me was where he did a little experiment on uniformity and how people are naturally inclined to conform. He asked three of his students to walk in a designated area, one following the other in succession. At first they walked with footsteps that did not rhyme, one simply following the other in front of him. In a matter of seconds, all three marched uniformly, left with left, and right with right. And John Keating pointed out with that very natural, almost 'miss-able' occurence, that humans are naturally inclined to conform, and lose their individuality in their conformity. The march symbolized “the difficulty in maintaining your own beliefs in the face of others, maintaining your own beliefs though they may be odd, or unpopular”, then he declared the lesson, referencing, ‘The Road not Travelled by Robert Frost.”
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and
I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the
difference.”
Neil’s story is representative of a lot of Ghanaian children’s imprisoned minds. Neil was a beautiful free spirit who was killed by the very oppressive spirit of conformity and tradition. He was an extremely persuasive friend, kindhearted and unlike many, rarely in tune with all the emotional nuances of his friends. A truly beautiful soul who had that indefinable quality of a person that could change the world or contribute to it in an epic way. He loved to act, loved poetry, and after being bitten by the possibility of being more than he was told, led others to love poetry, and wanted to make acting his life’s work. But his father insisted he become a doctor, because “Neil had all the opportunities he didn’t have when he was growing up.” After an impressive performance where he received a standing ovation, instead of getting a jolly pat on the back by his father, his father decided to take him to military school. That night he shot himself. And the sad thing about that was though his father mourned for his death, he did not feel or understand he had driven his son to death. Instead, he had John Keating fired.
Did that mean that conformity would always win over freethinkers? Did that mean conformity would never understand the danger it presents even to itself when it shoots itself in the foot? I was extremely shaken by this.
In the last scene, after John Keating had been dismissed and he was gathering up his things, a Moment in movie history was made. Ever the image of progression and forward-thinking, though a battered image, Keating was leaving with a sad smile, till he was stopped by the moving picture of his students standing on their desks in tribute, a last salute to the man who had taught them that to really live.
Today, mourning the tragic death of Robin Williams we all stand on our desks in a last salute to a man who embodied the spirit of Carpe Diem, and enjoined all others all over the world to seize that day (in laughter) with him. Seemingly plagued by his own demons, he refused to lash out on the world but instead created something beautiful with it: laughter, and shared it with the world, crossing all racial, religious and national borders.
Moral lesson? Carpe Diem, Seize the day the way Robert Williams did with his life, write your own verse in the world, make your own mark, make your lives extraordinary, become the freethinker that begins the revolution, for in Williams’ own words as John Keating, ‘we are food for the worms’ You do not want to die, realizing you had never lived at all.
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