“This is what the Holy One says, ‘For three and for four offenses of Israel, I will not look the other way. Because, you have sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes'” (Amos 2.6).
Dead Poets Society, released 2 June 1989, is the least summer-like summer movie we’ll talk about this season. It’s set in a school, many of its scenes take place in classrooms, and it centers around an English teacher, his students, and one’s approach to literary criticism.
The story follows young Todd Anderson who’s new at Welton Academy—one of those stuffy, rich in tradition, New England schools. He and his friends encounter the new English teacher, John Keating, who is very different from their other instructors.
Early in the film, Keating has his students tear out the introduction to their literature books. But first, he has them read it aloud, treating us to the thoughts of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard who feels that a poem’s perfection can be graphed out according to its rhyme, meter, and turns of phrase.
The literary philosophy of Mr. Pritchard is called formalism. While the movie gives us something of an extreme example, it captures the spirit of what was, for many years, the dominant method of literary criticism in the West. The sum of a poem’s parts, literally, determines its value and greatness. If it had a good beat and you could dance to it, it was a hit.
Amos’ words seem, at first, far removed from literary criticism, but it’s very near to what Dead Poet’s Society is critiquing. Both are about how we determine value; because what is valuable is what is beautiful, useful.
The decent and upright have been sold for money, and the needy for a pair of shoes. It sounds like hyperbole, but I imagine it was as close to the truth in Amos’ time as it is today. Life, some of it, is cheap. Certain people are more valuable than others. The “makers” and innovators are worth so much more for their products. Far more than the people working the fast food counter or scanning groceries at the store. Nothing against them, of course, they just don’t rate as high when we add up their skills and contributions, do they?
For Amos, the idea that we’re attempting to quantify people, to assign them some monetary value is abhorrent. And for good reason. Cheap, inexpensive things are easily thrown away. They’re made to be replaceable.
Keating, in the film, has his students rip out and dispose of Pritchard’s philosophy. It is, in his words, excrement. But not just because it attempts to reduce literature to simple math. No, the issue he has is the same as Amos’—who determines what is and is not valued. The boys in Welton are vessels trained to receive what is handed to them. But Keating is challenging them to think, to question what they are being given.
That’s dangerous, of course. Teachers and prophets tend to run into trouble when they encourage such things. Because those who have assigned the values and perfected the math have a lot to lose.
Jesus, you challenged those you met to consider who were considered valuable. You challenged everyone’s quantification by daring to place rich and poor, strong and weak in equal placement. Help me to see everyone as you valued them, to comprehend the beauty in every person. And to accept, in your estimation, everyone is priceless.