In DEAD POETS SOCIETY, Director Peter Weir establishes the villain of the piece in the very first shot… a series of banners carried by students in a start-of-the-school-year procession which read TRADITION, EXCELLENCE, HONOR, DISCIPLINE. Absent from these banners are concepts like ENLIGHTENMENT, KNOWLEDGE, MATURITY, and CRTICIAL THINKING. Later, in a conversation that is meant to be encouraging but comes off as menacing, the headmaster of Welton Academy (nicknamed Hellton by its students) says this to Mr. Keating, the movie’s hero… “Prepare them for college, John. The rest will take care of itself.” The unanswered question, of course, is what does it mean to “prepare them for college”?
In the world of the movie, “prepare them for college” really means “prepare them for the RIGHT college”… one where they can get the credential that will admit them into the ranks of the elite, where the kind of man you have become matters less than the name at the top of your diploma. To do that does not require creative critical thinkers. It requires rigid, indoctrinated cogs ready to be inserted into the machines of government, law, medicine and finance.
Not much has changed, it seems.
Yes, in many ways the Welton Academy of DEAD POETS SOCIETY is an extinct dinosaur, a relic of the 1950’s. While the Welton students of the 50’s were indoctrinated in austere monastery-like environments, today’s top-tier private school kids are indoctrinated in settings that resemble five-star resorts more than a Tudor Abbey. But in many other respects, the world of Hellton Academy is still with us.
As Caitlin Flanagan relates in her Atlantic piece today, the villainous white Septuagenarian with the bald dome, the severe eyeglasses and the “thank you sir, may I have another?” paddle in his desk drawer has been replaced by the Tiger Mom and the Helicopter Dad. And while the goal remains the same, “get my kid into Harvard no matter what it takes”, the power dynamic has shifted from the Torquemada in the Headmaster’s office to the hard-driving parents willing to do anything, including putting their kids on mind-altering drugs, to help them endure the soul-crushing process of creating a Harvard-ready resume’.
Now of course, these kids do not need our sympathy. They will no doubt all wind up rich and/or powerful, if not happy. But still, there is something depressing about all this. There is no doubt in my mind that most of these parents who are relentlessly whipping their children into shape like worn-out mules, loved DEAD POETS SOCIETY when they were young and childless. As the music swelled, and the boys of Welton Academy stood atop their desks saluting their Captain, I suspect these soon-to-be parents imagined themselves as courageous independent-minded Rennaissance men and women, just like Todd Anderson, Charlie Dalton and Knox Overstreet.
It’s sad that, in the end, most of them have turned out to be more like Richard “Let Keating Fry” Cameron. And twenty years from now, their maladjusted spawn will be running the country.
Sleep tight, America.