O Captain, My Captain

Since his tragic passing, most major television channels are breaking out the Robin Williams movie collection in force.  After returning from a workout at the Y, I found Dead Poets Society airing on Flix.  I was planning on watching a few minutes, just to get reminded of how great Williams was as Professor John Keating, and ended up catching it all the way to the end, with my kids eventually joining me.  It's a tour de force for Williams, but it's also an amazing movie, which inspires just as strong today as it did back in the late 80's.

After I first saw it back in 1989, I wanted to be expressive, a writer, a thinker.  I became more interested in the arts, not just poetry, but painting, acting, music, sculpture; things I still cherish today.  It helped me learn to try new things.  Doesn't mean I have to be good at them, but I usually don't shy away from a new challenge.  Want proof:  I really don't like heights but I volunteered to be an airborne traffic reporter, flying around the metro in a small Beechcraft Sport 2-seater.  I'm impressed I sounded human on most of my reports.  I only heaved once.  I also did television.  I only heaved once there too.

Watching the movie today, it makes me want to be a teacher.  The pure joy William's character gets by teaching people to think differently is captivating.  The scene where Ethan Hawke's character creates a terrific poem while under duress from Keating, and the look on William's face when it finally does happen, summarizes, I imagine, the joy a teacher gets from helping an individual muster the courage to take the next step on their individual path.

When this movie originally came out, one of the reasons it resonated was due to the prevalent 1980's 'Greed is Good' mindset in American life.  Money and power were important.  Your happiness is secondary to your standing.  Being a successful business person trumped everything.  Romanticism was dead and poetry, the arts and free thinking were the playthings of the lost and wasted mind.   The movie was based in 1959, another time where human priorities had been detoured.  Today...we definitely need Professor John Keating once again.

At the end of the movie, I lost it at the same exact place as I did back when I watched it in 1989.  When the student named Hopkins (!), the jock-like dim bulb who said, "The cat sat on the mat," stood up, I was bawling.  The heck with it, give me a desk to stand on...

O Captain, My Captain.