My Dinner with Andre is a famous film based on a single shot of a postmodernist conversation at a restaurant in NYC. It features that bald guy from The Princess Bride
The movie focuses on two men. One is a struggling playwright, who moonlights as an actor in order to pay the bills. The other is Andre a successful playwright who leaves town in the midst of some kind of mid-life crisis. The protagonist arranges to meet Andre and is nervous. He is jilted by Andre's success and his long absence.
Initially the conversation delves into Andre's experience's in experimental theater with a polish director named "Brutowski" in Poland.
He describes his first experiment. He asks Brutowski to give him"40 Jewish women to play harp in the forest" and that they "do not speak English". He emphasizes the nature of theatrical improvisation and its importance in helping solve the question of "Who am I, Where am I going, What am I doing here? He then tries a beehive, or a mass concentration of human beings interacting randomly. He remarks that their is a striking similarity between the "Group Trance" he experienced and the Nuremberg rallies.
Andre describes himself as completely flabbergasted by these experiences. He calls these random interactions an example of "surrealism" and the art of Jackson Pollack. The next stage in the conversation is his trip to Morocco and a desert oasis. It is here that he "eats sand, and throws up". He also meets cuson, a Japanese Buddhist monk who helps "enlighten" him.
Later he returns to NYC with kuson. He decides to make a flag based on the Tibetan swastika which is just "hideous". Later it is destroyed by some random women. It is here that he begins ruminating on Finhorn. This is an experimental artistic colony in Scotland where he enjoys carrying out his experiments. He exclaims that while there he "could see what if alive in those leafs" and describes "drinking instant coffee out of the top of my shaving cream with brutowski in the bathroom". Throughout these episodes is constant drinking, and dancing until "7:00 AM" as described by Andre. With the last bizarre comment I wondered if the participants in these "experiments" were possibly jacked up on psychedelic drugs.
Eventually he describes writing his last will and testament and "being photographed naked and then buried alive". Then he begins attacking his identity and likening himself to Nazi industrial minister Albert Speer and describes his artistic record as "horrific". The existentialist leanings of the conversation and its reminiscence of Sartre and German Nihilism is revealed when he says
"I feel like I am just washed up, I feel as though I squandered my entire life"
Andre attempts to show how perspective can be diluted through emotional confusion. He describes a doctor expresses optimism at his mother's failing health when he actually knows that she is dying. This is complete nonsense. The woman is either sick or she is not sick, just like an object is its identity or it is not. For example you cannot say that "the piano is a piano but also not a piano". Fact in objective reality is unyielding. Human emotions have no implication on the actual existence of objective reality. A is A, B is B. A is not be and also not A. Just because a doctor is uncomfortable with a sensitive topic and chooses to articulate in a careful way does not mean that perception of reality in itself is changed. These arguments echo the moralistic interpretations of duty and skepticism of sensory perception common in today's Postmodern/Existentialist philosophy.
Andre emphasizes that suppressing emotions is abnormal. By this method of reasoning , perhaps I should interrupt the teacher in class every time a point that i disagree with is made. Since I am a savage male perhaps I should express my sexual libido to females whenever the instinct tells me. This nonsense is rooted in the German and Austrian school's of mental repression. Sigmund Freud argued that all human interactions are predicated on thoughts and feelings which are suppressed in the sub-conscious mind. Freud also believed that cocaine was good for you, and regularly "interpreted his female patients dreams to mean they wanted to have sex with him".
Consider the story of Joe Sixpack as articulated by the postmodern left. Joe Sixpack works a 9-5 job a an industrial factory doing a repetitive task. Before he comes home he purchases beer, a product of mass manufacturing. He guzzles his beer and sinks into his comfortable chair. He then turns on the television, and for several hours is bombarded by advertisements and erroneous information. As he does this the phyco-active effects of the beer slowly comforts him and dilutes his inhibition and perception of the world around him. When he becomes tired he goes to sleep and then repeats this process indefinitely.
This the postmodernists say, is how all reality can be predicated on sub-conscious reality and the pervasive effects of technology and society. These themes are common in the writing of Chomsky, Parenti, and Postman. Not included however is a more important factor, free will. Individuals in a free society can choose to go about their lives in any way. Joe Sixpack can watch survivor and work at the factory while I build a business and rehearse a piano concerto. A woman can get a tatoo above her rear end and then watch sex in the city while I write a song and read Sir Edward Gibbon. Most people are ignorant and stupid and always have been. If the postmodernists have such contempt for "Joe Sixpack" than why do they so fervently wish to liberate him? Just like abstract socialist thought, the school of repression aims to influence individuals who have no concept of these arguments much like Marxisms intellectual relationships to the proleteriat.
Andre says that individuals often "really don't know what they are talking about". This may sometimes be true, but I assure you I and many others KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. If I say please pass the ketchup, than please pass the Ketchup. There is no sub-conscious agenda in passing conversation for most individuals. Consider that relativist epistemology and postmodernism have absolutely no application to any of the technical fields. I suppose a mathematician doesn't know what hes talking about when he addresses a complex problem, or a biologist doesn't actually understand the micro-biotic events taking place in a petri dish.
Andre exclaims that people place no value on "the perception of reality". He goes on to ridicule the idea of individual goals and plans.
If this is the case than postmodernists can go about life in an aimless and pointless manner while I set practical goals. Postmodern theorists and educators are themselves examples of planning and individual goals. They hate America, the west, reason and fervently study relativistic epistemology and sociological issues to enumerate points to this effect. When contradictory philosophy becomes a matter of principle, it is easy to make non-sensical arguments based in emotional feelings.
Andre eventually asks "are we really hungry, or is it just a habit". I will answer this succinctly. Yes I am oftentimes hungry. In fact when I woke up today I was hungry and then made a sandwich. I ate the sandwich and my hunger was satisfied. The reasoning wasn't predicated on any "habit" accept my own need and desire. Andre than ruminates on how an "electric blanket" misinterprets reality because it eliminates perspective on "all those poor people in the cold" or the starving children of Africa. Once again postmodern contradiction is evident. Technology is bad but it is unfair that some people have more technology than others.
I am not responsible for starving children in Africa or the bum on the street. My material comfort is created by wealth produced by myself and my family. I have no moral responsibility to society besides respecting other peoples individual rights and safety. My goals are my own just as your goals are your own. Altruism is a concept rooted in religion and contempt of reason. It is not abnormal that people should reflect their own rational self-interests. Perhaps all my friends should give me a foot massage because it is a "nice thing to do". I'm also pretty broke right now. Maybe society should give me money so i don't have to work, I sure do hate working.
In conclusion I despise My Dinner with Andre and its philosophical overtones. The film is boring, pretentious and biased in its presentation of philosophical concepts. The movie implies that it has done a great service by "liberating" the protagonist from his blind perceptions of reality and daily habit. I think however that this film has actually done a dis-service to humanity. It emphasizes emotions, perception, altruism, contempt of technology, and anti reason as the most important factors in understanding "truth". Curiously absent however are arguments based on individual rights, private property, goals , reason, science, liberal capitalism and rational self-interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment