I was listening to a podcast a few days ago, the hosts were discussing, well, actually more like mocking, an old movie called “My Dinner with Andre” because of its supposedly boring plot. The set up consisted on a man named Wallace Shawn, a playwright who had been told that his friend and coworker Andre Gregory had gone nuts, left the country and joined a commune. Wallace had been avoiding dinner with Andre for a year and finally gets roped into doing it. What the audience sees and movie centers around is a real time, two hour long dinner, during which you learn the reason why Andre lost his mind. I decided to watch this movie thinking it would be incredibly boring, as the podcast hosts were saying, what I found after watching it is that the movie wasn’t just two people have a chat while eating dinner, rather, an incredibly accurate study of society and why humans do what they do.
Andre explains that he realised something, the example he gives revolves around the news, a reporter was interviewing a terrorist, and the terrorist was dressed like a terrorist. What this implies is that the terrorist woke up in the morning and dressed up in a way that would be acceptable to other terrorists. What makes Andre lose his mind was the idea that everything we do, all the things we say, the way we dress, and they way we act, is based on what other people expect you to do. Those people expect you to do certain things only for the fact that they are expected by other people to expect you to do those certain things. In other words, if I were to go to school on Monday with nothing but socks, underwear and a cowboy hat, the first person to see me would be alarmed by it, they would be alarmed by it because if they weren’t, if they think it’s cool, then they’re also an outcast. Andre describes it as “They've (People) built their own prison, so they exist in a state of schizophrenia. They are both guards and prisoners and as a result, they no longer have, having been lobotomised, the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made, or to even see it as a prison." A great example of this phenomenon is biker gangs, these people brand themselves as outlaws, they say that they don’t follow society’s rules and in order to show that they are non-conformists, they dress exactly the same, they use the same vehicle and the same brand, the same logo on their backs, the same type of bandanas, the list goes on. All of this for the sake of maintaining their image of biker. Andre leaves home because he knows that when he talks to his wife, they aren't telling each other what they're actually thinking, they are telling each other what they are expected to say, he realises that he doesn’t even know that person. Therefore, Andre goes to find what a human life should actually be like if he didn’t care what anyone thought about him. The reason why i’m still thinking about this movie, the reason why I’m writing this blog post is because it’s left me with more questions that I can answer: Who am I? Where would I be if I didn’t care about society’s rules? How did this self-surveillance system where everyone keeps themselves on line based on what society’s expectations of you are even happen? Most importantly, how do I break out of the system? I don’t actually know the answer to any of these, it will probably take a lot of time for me to even understand the question to its fullest. So… what's the next step? I guess that the only thing left to do now is look for the answers.
2 Comments
Rafael Dasso
21/3/2016 11:58:06 am
Cristobal, I really like the introduction and the second paragraph of your blog post. In this you are disagreeing with a video and it makes everything more interesting. Im not the best on correcting the grammar and spelling but the three times a read your blog post I didn't find any errors. But one thing I didn't like and I feel you should change is the condition. Maybe saying "Who I am?" sounds kind of cheesy.
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Bon
21/3/2016 01:22:44 pm
Cristobal, this post is one of the most insightful you have. The anecdote you've chosen at the beginning wokrs as a great juxtaposition with the deep content of the movie and it goes to show why too often even movies can be stuck in their own formulaic prison. You've done a great job at capturing the essence of this movie and connecting it to you. Great stuff.
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