My Dinner with Andre Revisited
Listen to this segment from The Mike Malloy Show here: Permalink: http://www.voicesinourheads.com/2016/04/14/dinner-andre-revisited/
In 1981 I saw the movie, My Dinner with Andre when it first was released. I didn’t like it very much at the time. I thought it was pretentious, self-indulgent, and silly. Then last week a friend of mine sent me a link to a scene from the film … and I Was Floored. So I went to the library yesterday, checked out the DVD, and watched it last night. Some of it was pretentious, self-indulgent, and silly. But more of it was brilliant. It’s about two friends, played by Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, who haven’t seen each other for years, meet for dinner at a restaurant, and talk about their experiences since they last saw each other. The movie is a 100 minute-long conversation between the two men at the restaurant.
Here’s a slightly edited transcription of the scene that made me watch the whole thing again:
Okay. Yes. We’re bored. We’re all bored now.
But has it every occurred to you that the process that creates this boredom that we see in the world may very well be a self-perpetuating, unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money?
And that all of this is much more dangerous than one thinks and it’s not just a question of individual survival, but somebody who’s bored is asleep. And somebody who’s asleep … will not say “No.”
A few days ago I met a man whom I greatly admire and he told me that he no longer watches television, he doesn’t read newspapers, and he doesn’t read magazines. He’s completely cut them out of his life because he really does feel that we’re living in some kind of Orwellian nightmare, and that everything that you see and hear contributes to turning you into a robot.
I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted his life to saving trees. And when I met him he asked me, “Where are you from?”
I said, “New York.” He said, “Ah, New York. Yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?”
And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?”
I gave him different banal theories. He said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.”
He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp where the camp has been built and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing they’ve built. They’ve built their own prison. And so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result, they no longer have (having been lobotomized) the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made, or to even see it as a prison.”
See, I think it’s quite possible that the 1960s represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished, and that this is the beginning of the rest of the future now, and that from now on there’ll simply be all these robots walking around feeling nothing, thinking nothing. And there’ll be nobody left to remind them that there once was a species called a human being with feelings and thoughts, and that history and memory are right now being erased and soon nobody will really remember that life existed on the planet.
I can’t argue with that scene from My Dinner with Andre. Can you?
What Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory were talking about in the film was a culture, our culture, that was transforming people into mindless robots living unaware of the nightmare world that enshrouded them … 35 years ago.
Has anything changed? Trump, Cruz, or Clinton, is going to be the next president of the United States. Any one of them would be a perfect choice for a world where no one is left to remind them that there once was a species called a human being, with feelings and thoughts, and that history and memory are right now being erased, and soon nobody will really remember that life existed on the planet.
I’m trying to keep thinking happier thoughts.
My Dinner with Andre Revisited
April 14, 2016
