Good evening. This is Radio Free Beszel. I am
Alphonse. Tonight: Shawshank and professional myth. I'm going to have spoilers for the film
the Shawshank Redemption. It's a story about a banker who is accused and convicted - falsely,
as it turns out - for the murder of his wife, but who escapes from the prison after
20 years through a tunnel he's dug and he ends up on a beach in Mexico. I don't think this is really a movie
about a prison. I think it's a story about work life in an institution
and
about the values of the professional class. It kind of works like Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
where Buffy takes the inner turmoil of teenagers and their inner demons and turns those demons into
actual demons and monsters that Buffy can fight. So the prison is really a dramatized version of
the institution in which many professionals work. Now this is a prison full of working class
uneducated people who have committed murder and other serious crimes, but the main character
here, Andy Duf
resne, is college educated. Clearly he's professional class. He's different from
them. Their ignorance is pointed out several times during the film. Now this didn't use to be
the case - if you go back to the mid-20th century you have a lot of films whose main
characters are not college educated. Westerns, for example, or
Casablanca, or It's a Beautiful Life. But now, it seems to me, most Hollywood movies
most TV shows feature viewpoint characters who are members of the professional class -
even though
most of the audience members probably aren't. In any case, in the context of the prison this
jumps out at me. One of the first things that happens to Dufresne in prison is he is repeatedly
assaulted and raped by a gang called the Sisters. But he's able to avoid this after some
time by using his skills that he learned in school - his professional skills - to
aid the prison authorities. Now the prison authorities are corrupt, but by helping them
to dodge taxes with his accounting
abilities Dufresne gains privileges, including protection
from the Sisters and working in the library where he's able to lobby for state funds and help
to upgrade the educations of other inmates. Education is a running theme in stories about
the professional class. But secretly Dufresne, using a tiny hammer every night, has been
chipping away at the wall of his cell, digging an escape tunnel. After doing this for
20 years he's ready to get out. He crawls through his tunnel and then through
a sewer pipe through
500 yards of shit. And then he retires in Mexico. I think diligently chipping away at a wall for
20 years and then crawling through 500 yards of shit is the best metaphor for working
at a bad employer that I've ever heard. In any case, if all I wanted to do is argue
that the Shawshank Redemption is about work life for a professional I wouldn't bother. But as it
happens, before I watched this this time around, I just finished reading a book, Disciplined Minds
by Jeff S
chmidt. What Schmidt, a physicist, argues is that the job of professional education
is not so much to teach professional skills like physics and math, but to shape
professionals into tools of the system. The professional myth is that professionalism is
about intelligence and education. The reality is it's about conformity and submission to authority.
And the shawshank redemption shows this in spades. I mean it's really odd in a way - if you think
if you're Dufresne, and you go to prison, an
d it's full of violent men - and the thing
that saves you is your accounting ability, the thing that you learned in college - what are
the chances of that? It seems like a fantasy. And I think it is - I think that's probably part
of why this movie appeals to so many people. Now Dufresne faces two problems in the prison. The
first is the Sisters. The Sisters are attacking him and he needs to get away. And what he finds,
accidentally as it turns out, is that by serving the authorities with hi
s professional skills,
they give him protection. In fact, the head guard, who's a sadistic murderer, cripples the head
Sister when the Sisters attack him again. So by serving the system, even though it's
corrupt, Dufresne gets protection. Now the warden is thoroughly corrupt - he uses the prisoners for
slave labor, and he skims off profits for himself, and then he has Dufresne hide the
profits and launder the money. Now Defresne's friend, Red, in prison,
challenges Dufresne's ethics on all
of this. And I think this is a common problem that
professionals face in their institutions when they feel that they're doing things that they don't
believe in. And I think that Dufresne's response reveals a guilty conscience, which is that yes,
he is indeed helping corrupt authorities, but at the same time he's getting money for the prison
library and helping to educate other prisoners. Schmidt says that professionals, when
they run into problems with their jobs, when they see ethical dif
ficulties or they
think things are being done that should not be, that they blame their managers. And that's
what the movie does because essentially it doesn't blame the system itself, it blames
the corrupt warden and the corrupt head guard. In the end, Dufresne is able to get the police
to go after the head guard, who is arrested, and the warden, who commits suicide, but the prison
itself is unchanged. The system is unchallenged. In fact there's more evidence of this, because
Dufresne is
not guilty - but his friend Red is. Dufresne escapes early, but Red only gets out
on parole. So the message of the movie essentially is that the system is doing its job. Red was
guilty of killing a man, whereas Dufresne was not. Red says that in the prison everyone says
they're innocent but in fact everyone is guilty. Dufresne is the exception - the innocent man who
actually is an innocent man. Actually the reason I watched this movie is because of a podcast episode
by Brian McDonald, a scr
eenwriter. The podcast is titled, You Are a Storyteller. He's also written a
good book called Invisible Ink, which I recommend. McDonald argues that the premise of the Shawshank
Redemption is actually a line from the movie: "get busy living or get busy dying." Well, I
think the get busy living supports what I've said so far - this is about life, it's not about
prison. But there are particular instances and times in the movie when this makes sense, because
Dufresne is contrasted with a man n
amed Brooks who also works in the library. But Brooks becomes
institutionalized. He loses his sense of freedom and individuality and his ability to function
outside when he is given parole. He finds that he is unable to live on his own and he
takes his own life. And Red is the same. He too, when he gets out of prison, is unable
to cope. So what makes Dufresne different? The thing that makes Dufresne different is something
about his psychology. He has an argument with Red. Red argues that ho
pe in the prison is a dangerous
thing. But Dufresne insists that it's essential. And one of the ways that Dufresne sustains
his hope is through art - high art. Where Red plays checkers, Dufresne plays chess from
pieces that he's actually carved himself. He listens to opera music and he recites poetry.
So he is able to keep hope and freedom in his heart, and that's what allows him to struggle for
20 years to dig that tunnel and finally to escape. Well, that's a nice myth. But Schmidt
says i
t doesn't work that way. He says that if you are in a graduate school,
for example, and you find that you're doing what's required of you, eventually you will
turn into that kind of person. You may try to keep a part of yourself independent from the
system, but you will fail - unless, Schmidt says, you get together with other people, and together
you resist and push back against the system. The movie has shows no hint of that. When
Dufresne escapes red actually thinks his friend is committi
ng suicide. He has no
idea that he ever had a plan to get out. The movie, in essence, is conservative.
It affirms the power and the legitimacy of the prison institution. The flaws in the
institution are attributed to corrupt individuals, and the way of dealing with the institution is
to serve it - even if the institution is corrupt, it still benefits the individual. And
psychologically, salvation comes through individual psychology. There's another bit of
evidence for this because when Red
gets parole it's because he himself has had
a psychological change of heart. The movie underlines that the key characteristics
of professionals is that they are educated and that they are independent. So the message
of the movie is ultimately conservative. As an individual professional working in an
institution your job is to serve the institution, even if you don't share its values, even if you
find it corrupt. And if you do find it corrupt, that's because of individuals not because the
system as a whole is flawed, and you must work your way through as an individual. And if you do
that diligently for long enough, in the end you will be able to achieve the dream and retire. This
is Alphonse for Radio Free Beszel, www.beszel.ca. Good Night.
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