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. To sign up for your very own prison
pen pal, click the subscribe button.
