Mark Collins, "Make-Believe in ‘Dead
Poets Society’"
in: English Journal, vol. 78, 8/1989, p. 74 - 75
Ein kurzer, recht kritischer Aufsatz eines australischen Rezensenten zu dem Film des australischen Regisseurs Peter Weir. Collins stellt die Frage, ob der von Keating praktizierte Unterrichtsstil ein überzeugendes Modell bietet für Schüler, die ihr Leben im positiven Sinn verändern wollen. Der Autor bezweifelt das und sieht die emotionalen und intellektuellen Schwächen des Filmes begründet in "the make-believe world depicted in some American literature". Keating selbst sieht er in der Tradition des literarischen Entertainers Mark Twain. Sein abschließendes Urteil über den Film faßt er zusammen in dem Satz: "Though the film’s poetry and music are unquestionably the food of love, the simplistic dichotomy of institutional authority and student freedom sheds little light on the complex reality of private and public schools in 1989."
Peter Weir's recent film about an unorthodox English teacher, Mr. Keating
(played by Robin Williams), who inspires a group of senior boys to form
a poetry society in a top American private school in 1959, has caused
a stir. Some teachers admit to being moved to tears and inspired by it.
Some students say they wish they had a fun poetry teacher like Mr. Keating
- but what an act to follow! Even a university educationist at a recent
meeting of Australian teachers, entitled "The Challenge of Teaching,"
recommended that teachers see Dead Poets Society.
The film is attractive visually and emotionally, sensitive certainly to
the awkward age of adolescence and the call to seize the day (carpe diem).
It challenges teachers and school administrators to reflect on many issues
that are also among our most important educational concerns: individual
identity, thinking for oneself, risk-taking, pressure to conform, and
the pursuit of excellence. The advice inherent in the film is timely:
Words and ideas can change the world.
But does the teaching style portrayed by Williams as Keating offer a convincing
model for students whose aim it is to change their lives for the better?
I have my doubts. Are not the emotional and intellectual weaknesses of
Dead Poets Society based on the make-believe world depicted in some American
literature? Briefly put, make-believe involves the cult of personality
and a romanticized view of change.
Personality consists of the ability to act, to put on a show making student
audiences believe that what the teacher offers is vital and transforming
- a unique impulse for change. The teacher wins over the class/audience
by the sheer force of humor, visible energy, confidence, and a passion
for words. Keating's personality is in the tradition of the literary entertainer
Mark Twain, who consistently attracted enormous audiences in America,
Australia, and Europe.
Mr. Keating makes students believe in themselves by introducing them to
the discipleship of Walt Whitman, "the bard of personality."
Whitman's portrait, high on the front wall of the English classroom, looks
like the inspirational equivalent of another bearded speaker for humanity,
Karl Marx. Whitman's poetry, especially his Leaves of Grass (1855), creates
a "natural hunger" for the soul to do more and to be more with
joy and optimism. The irony of this model is that Whitman's only conventional
poem, "O Captain! My Captain!" is the only one known to the
American public in general. "My Captain" is the self-descriptive
identity that Keating encourages his boys to use in addressing him. Keating
does a solo act. His performance never falls flat or disappoints because
it must satisfy the wish-fulfillment of filmgoers.
Keating's bardic personality creates two sub-plots: a father-son collision
and boy-gets-girl situation. These two stories relate to a passion for
acting out the American dream - making the world all new. Arthur Miller,
best known for his Death of a Salesman (1949), notes the magnetic pull
of make-believe in his autobiographical Timebends: A Life (1987, London:
Methuen). Many American writers,
had fathers who had actually failed or whom the
sons had perceived as failures....
If they could, they would devise a new order of
perception that would make the world
all new, as seen through their eyes (114).
Miller adds that acting on a stage
must be an overflowing of love... but that it
left too little space and time for the
wordless darkness that underlies all verbal truth.
But again, this was something that
perhaps only music could suggest (144).
Miller's view of acting and art seems to me to parallel Weir's dramatic
emphasis on spell-like music, the enchanted wood, and Puck's magical role
in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he introduces into his script with
considerable forethought.
Although Dead Poets Society may appear to Australian audiences to debunk
tradition - the arch conservatism of an all-male private school - the
make-believe of a literary personality is the cohesive, traditional American
force in the film. The two "biggies," Walt Whitman and Henry
David Thoreau, preach the turning of dream into reality as well as the
pursuit of happiness. It is ironic that Peter Weir, an Aussie product
of the 1960s rebellion against tradition, presents a black-and-white version
of the romantic rebellion against repressive authority.
The Great Gatsby, perhaps the most impressive literary work of American
make-believe, ends in disillusion: "the orgiastic future" yearly
"recedes before us." There are more complex relationships between
past, present, and future than this film suggests. Though the film's poetry
and music are unquestionably the food of love, the simplistic dichotomy
of institutional authority and student freedom sheds little light on the
complex reality of private and public schools in 1989.
Copyright May 12, 1989 by the National Council
of Teachers of English. Used with permission.
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