Revolutionary Road

I saw the movie , Revolutionary Road (directed by Sam Mendes and screenplay by Justin Haythe) last night and was quite moved. Not only did it bring back personal deep-seated feelings, I could see where they were wrought--from my intensive reading of the literature and my attunement to the film culture of the fifties and early sixties. I remember all the angst of repression built in the fifties surfacing in the sixties, because it became quite personal to me as an individuating teen (with a revolutionary mind and spirit).

Naturally the zeitgeist of the early sixties would light my fire of mind, if not stir my more cautionary nature to rapid response. A fence sitter, I was not, but torn, I was -- between my own two natures. Much has been said lately about American Exceptionalism and about the sense of entitlement of the Baby Boom generation, who came to believe the world was made just for allowing their suns to shine. There may be some truth in that to be seen in the arrogant recklessness we have recently witnessed with the Bush administration's grab for power and the financial markets' rabid excess of financial irresponsibility (though I would attribute the latter more to Generation Jones). But in a field of thought outside this box, there is also some need to question the whole notion of a spineless social conformity that would have us in step with a Stepford wife type mentality. Into this movie (I never read the book, but will now), where we might initially expect romance, creeps the theme of a compelling culture of conformity that so stagnates the human spirit that it becomes overwhelmingly depressed and dispassionate. It is altogether too tempting from a "conformist" mental health perspective to "diagnose" the existential depression of the chararacters in this Tennesse Williams type drama as being caught up in a form of manic-depressive psychosis that is worthy of the electro-convulsive shock treatments given back in those times before the advent of Abilify (or behavioral health care).

Even though the press for freedom, for adventure and free-spirited expression of uniqueness may be considered childish things to be left behind as we accept the limitations of becoming responsible adults caring for our careers, our families and children; it remains important, does it not, to live with passion and with meaning as unique individuals? This is the question Richard Yates in Revolutionary Road (published in 1962), and other writers of the late fifties and early sixties put before us. How do we answer it? In it lies both an internal psychological and an external cultural archetypal dilemma to somehow be resolved. A challenge to the individual, a challenge to human nature.

Clearly, without the newly acquired affluence of a broadening middle class in the fifties and early sixties, this question could never have been asked. Without the security of those conditions, it would have been impossible to risk thumbing our noses at a deadbeat job or a lifeless marriage that didn't allow us to “follow our dreams". And will the freedom to have dreams and desires of expressing ourselves as unique individuals once again have to be set aside as we deal today with an economy (and climate and energy resources) gone critical, a rapidly shrinking and unstable middle-class? In times such as these, the call to the "exceptional" life becomes quite risky. Answering such a call may be threatening to our very survival. In times such as these we plunge to the lowest level of Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”. We fall from the level of individual achievement and “self-actualization” to the scrapper mentality of physical survival.
In these times of economic--really, global insecurity, we seem to be called upon to surrender our higher callings and our deepest longings (or is it our foolish illusions?) for a narrow focus on survival which requires personal sacrifice.

Can you feel the pain?