Noah Berlatsky wrote this:
If there’s one memorable scene in “Dead Poets Society,” it’s the last one. Robin Williams as the disgraced English professor/guru Mr. Keating stands with mournful pride in the door of his classroom while his loyal students, one by one, climb atop their desks, defying social convention and the ineffectual whining of their headmaster (Norman Lloyd) in order to bear him tribute.
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Their tribute to Keating, the star teacher, is also our tribute to Williams, the comedian making his transition to serious acting; their gratitude to him for inspiration is our gratitude to him for that same inspiration. Onscreen and offscreen are fused in joyful, righteous contemplation of the great man. He has taught us all, students and audience, to join together as one in the worship of nonconformity.
In celebration of “Dead Poets Society’s” 25th anniversary, Kevin J.H. Dettmar of Pomona College recently performed a pleasantly vicious evisceration of the film. Dettmar points out, accurately, that Keating, the supposedly genius teacher, is a crappy reader, utterly unaware of the irony in Frost’s “I took the road less travelled by,” turning the nuanced, knowing contradictions of Whitman and the Romantics into chautauqua orations and encomiums of bland uplift. Rather than teaching the students to think for themselves, Keating teaches them to think like him. Or, as Dettmar says, “while the boys are marching to the beat of a different drum, it’s Keating’s drum.”
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So, “Why does all of this matter?” as Dettmar asks. Why spend time skewering a 25-year-old movie, enjoyable as that skewering may be? Dettmar’s answer is somewhat disappointing. He argues that “Dead Poets Society” is important because it shows a lack of respect for the humanities.
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In fact, the problem with “Dead Poets Society” is broader than its misrepresentation of the professional status of disgruntled English scholars. Rather, the film is a perfect example of what Walter Benjamin called the “aestheticization of political life.”
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Economic problems, tensions between competing groups, discussions of political power, are all addressed not through political action, but through meme and symbol — the Nazi salute, the swastika, the inspirational film.
Again, Benjamin originally developed this concept as an explanation of fascism. But as Costello argues (and as I discuss here) it also, and often, seems applicable to political modernity more generally — whether the modern governments in question are fascist, communist or liberal democratic. Certainly, “Dead Poets Society” itself seems like an engine to subsume issues of democratic government and liberal individualism into aesthetics.
This is most obvious when Charlie Dalton (Gale Hanson) begins to advocate for the inclusion of girls at the private Welton Academy. Circa 1959, when the movie is set, educational opportunities for women were a serious social justice issue. But that issue is never presented in the film on its merits; indeed, Dalton’s enthusiasm for it appears to have more to do with his libido than his sense of fairness. Votes for women is not about women or power or equality. Instead, it is about Dalton’s response to the charismatic Keating’s message of “carpe diem.”
The height of Dalton’s activism occurs when he pretends to receive a call from God at a school meeting, informing him of the Deity’s preference for women at Welton. Politics is a spectacle and a comedy routine — an aesthetic performance. It’s an occasion for Dalton to demonstrate his nonconformity and (when he is viciously paddled) his fortitude in the face of punishment. Having served as the occasion for this inspirational, moving parable, the issue of women students at the school is quietly abandoned.
The implicit sexism here is heartily endorsed by the rest of the film as well — and that endorsement consists of turning gender politics insistently into aesthetics, and vice versa. Keating tells the boys jokingly-not-jokingly that the purpose of language is to “woo women,” and the film in general treats its (always minor) female characters as an occasion for the verbal and visual pageantry of male virtuosity and self-assertion. Charles pretends he’s written poems by folks like Byron in order to wow some girls, because, apparently, girls are just that dumb.
Even more disturbingly, Knox, filled up with beer and talk about sucking the marrow out of life seizes the day by caressing his crush object Chris (Alexandra Powers) while she is passed out drunk. This is not presented as a moral, ethical or political issue involving Chris’ consent. Instead, it’s part of Knox’s romantic progress and progress as a Romantic. The relationship between white privileged boys and their aesthetics is more important than, and subsumes, the ways those boys treat women. Similarly, when Charles draws a (supposedly) Native American potency symbol on his chest and begins to call himself “Nuanda,” the exoticism stands in for any actual discussion of race or colonialism, or of the fact that Keating’s Romantic curriculum excludes, not just the realists, but all non-white males, not to mention any discussion of Whitman’s homosexuality. Political differences and exclusions are transformed into the aesthetic accouterment of a feel-good pageant.
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The truth, though, is that, in its own way, “Dead Poets Society,” and the broader culture, take the study of aesthetics, and their manipulation, very seriously indeed. That’s because politics, in “Dead Poets Society,” and in America today, is constantly slipping into aesthetics. The “axis of evil,” welfare queens, birth certificates, “yes we can” — the realm of politics is the realm of the meme. It’s not an accident that Keating encourages his students to call him “O Captain, My Captain” — the phrase Whitman, at his most sloganeering, used to refer to Abraham Lincoln. Idolatry, loyalty, pageantry in the name of individualism and freedom — that’s not just the basis of Keating’s class. It’s the basis for our political life as well. (The "Dead Poets Society" takeover of America, Salon.com)
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