Cultural Gap Film #10: Dead Poets Society

Relevant elements: "O Captain, My Captain" and all that other inspiring teacher stuff 

Why it resonated: Because it's always cool to reject conformity, man

General comments on the film: It wasn't until I started watching this film that I realized how little I knew about it. I was aware that Robin Williams played an English teacher in a prep school, but that was about it, so it was fun to have some moments of surprise and recognition: Ethan Hawke! The dad from That '70s Show! Lara Flynn Boyle? The film even quickly helped me figure out what year it was set in with a handy expositional speech that informed me that 1859 was one hundred years ago.


I know that as an English professor I'm supposed to identify with Robin Williams's character and all, but his taste in literature is so cliche and his apparent definition of poetry is of the "deep feelings" school that pretty much ignores the fact that poetry is made of words, not emotions. Lathering up buttoned-down teenagers with Romanticism is hardly difficult, or worthwhile for that matter. Not to sound like a wet blanket, but did those students actually learn anything about literature? I'd hate to see their standardized test scores, and if you asked them to write an analytical essay you would probably get back a bad open-mic poetry slam doodle about how they feel about the boxes society tries to force them into with its exams and formal essays.

While we're at it, let's take a look at the conflict in this movie. These privileged young men are totally bummed that their parents want them to be lawyers and doctors and go to good colleges and stuff. That's the worst-case scenario for them: they have to be wealthy professionals. I know it's tough to be bound by other people's ideas of what you should be and do, but I imagine there might be a lot of people in 1959 America who would trade problems with these rich white people. And by the way, playing Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream is pretty much the lamest act of rebellion I've ever seen. 

I remember people being really inspired by this film, especially the desk-standing, Whitman-spouting final scene, but I don't really get it. Maybe you had to be there. The dated feel (not just because it's set in 1959) and the cinematographer's love of whirling didn't help. But it's possible I'm just peeved because the curriculum excludes Eliot, Auden, or any other poet of the first half of the twentieth century.