I just saw Shawshank Redemption last night. I’ve kind of wanted to see this movie since I saw a poster for it when I was in Korea. There’s something relevant to me about the symbol of a guy standing in the rain. I had also heard that it was good. Anyway, I haven’t in that time due to the fact that it is rated ‘R’. I have however let up significantly on my rated ‘R’ rule due to the fact that over the past few years I’ve seen quite a few such movies by accident or reputation or something and I’ve discovered that the rating doesn’t mean very much. When a movie can be rated ‘R’ for language it doesn’t make sense to not see it when I’ve surely heard worse a hundred times over at my job. It also doesn’t make sense to not watch a rated ‘R’ movie that deals with teenage drug use or disturbing images. I’m not a teenager to be influenced to use drugs and I’m usually not too disturbed. The sexuality bit might be a bit of a concern but I’ve found that movie references to sexuality pale before the materials I’ve studied in an academic context. I would need to give up anthropology before not watching such movies made any sense. The last part is violence. I’ve found that the majority of violence that results in most ‘R’ ratings is highly stylized, not disturbing, and is insignificant in comparison to my daily exposure in martial arts training.
The Shawshank Redemption’s ‘R’ rating fell cleanly into the category of ‘R’ rated movie it makes no sense for me to not see. The swearing was not very prolific, the sexuality was obliquely referred to, and the violence was either mostly highly stylized or not shown.
Overall I would say I liked the movie. I really can’t think of anything I didn’t like about it. One of the things I found interesting about it is the discussion about prison’s institutionalizing people and making them dependent on the prison structure and so forth. There are two points I need to make about this. First, I think the effects of prisons as depicted in the movie are consistent with the effects of schools in the real world. I have had a lot of friends over the years that got into or out of college and couldn’t figure out what they wanted to do with themselves. I think schools’ capacity for dictating to us what we are and what we are going to do prevents many from developing certain skills of introspection and internal locus of control. The second point derives from observations of my own students. A lot of the people who get in trouble with the law have certain behavioral disorders created by the way they were raised among other things. A very common problem is that as young children they did not have adequate structure and predictability in their lives. It seems from the Shawshank depiction that perhaps prisons often meet these kinds of children’s needs but do so in a pathological way. Those most vulnerable to the dependency are those who get stuck there.
I think the makers of this film really wanted to portray the hope thing in a big way. Something more interesting to me was the way the main character made his own prison experience more livable by making that of others more livable as well. He took lots of opportunities to provide for the needs and well being of other fellow inmates both in terms of helping them inside the prison and in preparing them to leave.
The last thing I want to mention enjoying about this movie is the kind of irony regarding the warden. He’s a bible-thumping churchgoer. He frequently preached to the inmates and had a cross-stitch thingy in his office talking about the imminent judgment of God. But at the end of the day he demonstrated basically no Christian traits at all. Meanwhile, our main character convict demonstrated a great deal of both hope and charity.
That’s all. Enjoy.
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