Greetings, and welcome to Earthling Cinema. I am your host, Garyx
Wormuloid. This week’s artifact is The Shawshank Redemption, based on
the novella by acclaimed wordperson King Stephen, who
ruled America with an iron fist for over two hundred years.
The Shawshank Redemption tells the story of Earthling Andy Dufresne, a
suspiciously over-qualified banker who is sent to prison for the
murder of his nameless wife. Once incarcerated, he befriends Red, who
is known to locate certain items from time to time and whose gentle baritone
could lull me right to sleep. Tired of doing boring stuff like
sliming the tops of buildings, Andy offers the guards financial advice,
which is like catnip for humans. The Warden quickly gives Andy an
unpaid internship, which seems like it’s gonna be a great opportunity,
but ends up just being a lot of bitch work.
After twenty years, Andy decides he’s had enough, despite the fact
that he’s barely aged a day. The guys all think he’s gonna kill
himself, but why bother when he’s got that sweet hole in his wall
Later, Red gets lonely, and
asks if he can go now, and everybody says ok. He easily finds
Andy halfway around the world, presumably using satellite
technology, and then they chill at Club Med.
Other than the value of keeping posters in your room, the primary
theme of The Shawshank Redemption is freedom.
Many times we see the camera framed by doors and windows, suggesting
imprisonment. Conversely, aerial shots are used to indicate
liberation. In this shot, Andy experiences his last gasp of life
on the outside as the limo brings him to Shawshank. Later, he plays
Wolfgang Puck’s “The Marriage of Figaro” for the other inmates,
using art to set them free. At the end, we see Andy and Red fully
torqued on freedom. But the movie goes even deeper.
Sure, it’s about a prison and all the wacky adventures that happen
there, but lurking beneath is a hefty load existential undertones.
Typical Hollywood. In his essay "Existentialism is a Humanism,"
Jean Paul Sartre suggests that in the absence of God, humans must
define their own essence through the choices they make, and also
through the shampoo they use. In this film, instead of God, we
have the Warden, who is a "perverse deity" -- Satan masquerading as a
holy figure. He is always quoting the Christian bible and bragging
about how many passages he has memorized, yet he is arbitrarily
cruel and spiteful. He has a stitchwork quote about judgement on
his wall, but behind it is the vault where he keeps records of his
illegal activities, and probably some nudie mags.
According to Sartre’s analogy: An artisan uses a tool to craft an
object. He determines its essence, and the object has no say in the
matter. Sucks for you, object! Similarly, if humans were crafted
by God, that would mean humans have no say in their essence either.
Sartre contends that "each man makes his essence as he lives," and
God plays no part in it.
And he was right, just a little premature: as we all know, the
being known as God abandoned Earth in the year 1991.
Because of the Warden, inmates are not in charge of their own essence,
or even their own bowels. The institution breaks them and the walls come to
define who they are. Brooks loses his ability to live in
the free world and turns to the seedy underworld of graffiti before
ultimately calling it quits. Prison robs people of their will to
freedom, and by extension, their humanity.
Sartre contrasts human beings with objects such as rocks, noting that
rocks are their characteristics, whereas human beings create their
characteristics, even if those characteristics are forged by
wasting away in front of their television sets. Most of the
prisoners become rocks -- they allow their lack of physical
freedom to dictate their sense of absolute freedom. In contrast, Andy
doesn't become a rock, he sculpts and breaks rocks with his trusty
hammer, Thor Jr. The salvation lying within the Bible is not God,
but rather Andy’s choice to embrace hope and liberate himself [shot of
hammer-shaped hold in bible] by any means necessary: in this case, a
conveniently human-sized pipe.
Andy tells Red he’ll laugh when he sees the rock hammer -- in a place
like Shawshank, hope is truly laughable. Plus, small things are
funny.
For Earthling Cinema, I’m Garyx Wormuloid.
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