Contextual Framework: This paper is the final essay that I wrote for my Intro to Literature class. I took a very broad concept—the philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s stages of unreality—and applied it to the central characters in the film “Birdman.” I synthesized the information very well, and I demonstrated a keen sense of how to analyze film. I want to place this paper in my “great writer” section along with some journalistic pieces that I wrote. This paper shows that I have a great talent for writing about art in an identifiable manner
Baudrillard and Birdman: The Unexpected virtue of Ignorance
Birdman or (the unexpected virtue of ignorance) is a film that asks questions about the nature of reality, and in particular what counts as really important in modern society. The world portrayed in Birdman—an exaggerated version of real-life 2014—is one in which a Twitter post and a summer blockbuster are more meaningful and “real” than an artistic drama or one man’s career. Also, the film depicts the world as a society grappling with the question of what it means to have your life “mean something” (Iñárritu). The five principle characters of Birdman—Sam, Lelsey/Laura, Mike, and Riggan—each react to their world differently, and to varying degrees. Each character demonstrates varying degrees of displacement from their own reality, in a manner reminiscent of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulated reality. Baudrillard’s theories act as a lens through which Sam, Lesley/Laura, Mike, and Riggan’s respective concepts of reality can be understood. Baudrillard’s theories illustrate the rationale behind each character’s displacement, and relationship with the world around them.
Jean Baudrllard was a French philosopher who celebrated the distorted and often nonexistent distinction between the real and the unreal (Barry 83-84).
Jean Baudrillard was a French writer and philosopher who was concerned with “…`the loss of the real, which is the view that images from film, TV, and advertising has led to a loss of the distinction between real and imagined, reality and illusion…the result is a culture of ‘hyperreality, in which the distinction between these are eroded” (Barry). In his essay, “Simulations,” Baudrillard described a situation in which a sign “is not an index of underlying reality, but merely of other signs(.)” (Barry 84) The name Baudrillard gives to this false reality is “simulacrum” (Barry 84). Baudrillard is concerned with the steps by which true reality becomes merely an illusion, or simulation.
According to literary theorist Peter Barry, Baudrillard describes the process by which reality gives way to simulation in a series of steps. [“First], the sign represents basic reality…, the second stage [misrepresents or distorts reality]…The third stage for the sign disguises the fact that there is no corresponding reality underneath…The fourth and last stage for the sign is that it bears relation to reality at all” (Barry, 84-85). Over the course of this paper, Sam, Lesley/Laura, Mike, and Riggan will be individually discussed, and related—respectively—to the first second, third, and fourth stages of reality/unreality. Note: each character’s correlation with their respective stage of reality is simply a means of examining that character’s state of mind, and to concretize the level of displacement from their reality which they exhibit. Each character identifies with the world around them to various degrees, because they react differently to the world around them.
Before exploring the characters themselves, it is prudent to provide a synopsis of Birdman’s story and characters. The film follows Riggan Thompson, an actor who played the title character in the birdman films in the 1990’s. Birdman was a series of comic book films which predated the modern trend of big-budget, crowd-pleasing films based on comic books. Riggan decides that the best way to combat the emptiness he feels is to use what’s left of his money to write, direct, star, and produce a Broadway play adapting the Raymond Carver novel What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Riggan’s ex-girlfriend Laura and her friend Lesley are the stars in the play, along with Lesley’s boyfriend, critic-darling Mike Shiner. Riggan’s daughter Sam—a twenty something recovered drug addict—works in costuming for the play. The film picks up two days before Riggan’s play opens. Birdman is shot and presented to the audience as if it is a stage play. The camera glides through the frame in one continuous movement as the attention shifts from one character to another; the effect is the same as if the viewer is tracking the action on stage. There are no cuts from one scene to the next. Also, the film is structured like a play, with a succession of dialogue-heavy scenes which provide plot exposition and character motivations. More details about the film’s plot and characters will be explored during the character analysis section of this paper.
Sam is the only character of the five who has a firm grip on her own reality. Sam clearly resents (or used to resent) her life, as her drug addiction and stint in rehab. However, the other three characters, who also hold some resentments to reality, Sam is only character who goes through an arc. Sam’s first big scene is a confrontation with her father about why he is putting on the play:
Sam: “You had a career before the third comic book movie, before people began to forget who was inside the bird costume. You’re doing a play based on a book that was written 60 years ago, for a thousand rich old white people whose only real concern is gonna be where they go to have their cake and coffee when it’s over. And let’s face it, Dad, it’s not for the sake of art. It’s because you want to feel relevant again… I mean, who the fuck are you? You hate bloggers. You mock Twitter. You don’t even have a Facebook page! You’re the one who doesn’t exist. You’re doing this because you’re scared to death, like the rest of us, that you don’t matter. And you know what? You’re right. You don’t. It’s not important. You’re not important. Get used to it.” (Iñárritu)
In this soliloquy, Sam demonstrates that she understands modern society or at least how modern society (specifically the Millennial generation that she represents) thinks and sees the world. In other words, Sam is a realist. What is most interesting about that outburst, however, is that immediately after she is finished talking, her face changes, and she gives a look of remorse for yelling at her father: “Dad…” (Iñárritu). As Later in the film, Sam comes clean to Mike about her bitter feelings towards Riggan, claiming that he was “never around…it was how he always tried to make up for it by constantly trying to convince me I’m special.” By the end of the film however, Sam begins to mend her relationship with her father, in a scene where she shoes him that his march through Manhattan in his underwear (more on that later) has become a trending topic on Twitter: “Believe or not, this is power” (Iñárritu). By the end of the film, she has a touching scene with him while he’s in a hospital bed. Once again it is Twitter that brings them together, as she set a Twitter page for him. Her ability to grow as a character illustrates that she has a firm grip on reality, and in fact knows herself.
Sam represents the first stage of the metaphorical sign in Baudrillard’s concept of reality. In the first stage, which Literary theorist Peter Barry relates to a “the representation of the industrial city of Safford, in the work of the twentieth century British artist L.S. Lowry…the paintings have an air of monotony and repetitiveness—cowed, stick-like figures , and the horizon filled with grim, factory-like buildings…Lowry’s paintings seem to represent the basic reality of the place they depict” (Barry 84). Similarly, Sam is a character who tells it like she sees it. She also is very perceptive, as evidenced by her candid conversations with Mike Shiner. At one point she asks him: “why do you act like a dick all the time? Do you like to antagonize people? You really don’t give a shit if people like you or?”To both questions Shiner answers, “Maybe.” and, “Not really”. (Iñárritu).
Sam has her demons like everyone else in the film, but she demonstrates through both her dialogue and her facial features that she understands her own limits.
Lesley is one of the lead actresses in Riggan’s play. She and Rigan’s ex girlfriend Sylvia collectively represent Baudrillard’s second stage of reality, because while they have a firm grasp of their situation and relationships with others, they are happiest and most comfortable when looking at life through rose-tinted glasses. According to Barry, “the second stage for the sign is when it misrepresents or distorts the reality behind it. As an example of this let’s take representations of cites like Liverpool and Hull in the [Victorian paintings of] artist Atkinson Grimshaw…life in these places a that time was presumably grim [like in the Lowry example], but the paintings offer a romantic and glamorized image, so the sign can be said to misrepresent what it shows.” (Barry 84). Lesley similarly responds most positively to a glamorized interpretation of the events in her life. For example, she is thrilled to have finally “made it” (Iñárritu) to the big stage after presumably a long acting career.
Lesley almost seems in disbelief that she has fulfilled her dream, and tries desperately to hold on to that positive feeling. Shortly after her brother is cast, she warns him not to mess it up for her: “Listen Mike, this is Broadway, and I’m here, finally.” Lesley refuses to let herself believe, as she fears, that things will not go her way. When something does go wrong—and Mike gets lost in his character that, he solicits her for sex during a scene when their characters are in bed together, she breaks down completely. “Why don’t I have any self respect?” she asks her co-star Laura in a fit of hysteria. A few scenes later, Mike tells Sam that Lesley is “…moving on” (Iñárritu).
Sylvia also exemplifies her choosing to a see a reality she knows isn’t there when she interacts with Riggan. Sylvia is Sam’s mother, and while Birdman’s script does not explicitly state how long Riggan and Laura were together—or how long ago the break-up was—both characters still show affection for each other in various scenes in the film. However, that affection is tempered somewhat by the nasty break-up that they had. Sylvia wants to let herself love Riggan and wants to believe that there is still love between them. In one conversation between them, she is thrilled when Riggan asks her about her own life. She gets a gleam in her eye and declares with a smile: “I’m going back to teaching” (Iñárritu). Riggan doesn’t know how to respond, and brings the subject back his own life. Her smile vanishes. Later in the scene, she tells him “It’s funny, I was sitting here waiting for you, and all of a sudden I couldn’t remember why we broke up” (Iñárritu). When Riggan responds by talking about himself and his own insecurities, she snaps back to reality, her expression hardens, and she remembers: “You threw a kitchen knife at me, and hours later you were telling me how much you loved me” (Iñárritu) .
When Barry describes Baudrillard’s second stage, he compares that stage of the sign to Disneyland: “a mythologized representation of the United States” (Barry 85). Professor David Allen further explores the connection between Disneyland and Baudrillard in an essay in the European Journal of American culture. Allen quotes a Disney “imagineer” who says of the Jungle Cruise: “Our guests know that real elephants…wouldn’t be quite so happy with a strange boat in their midst…[the imagineers] have added a touch of un and fantasy, and the guests love it” (Allen). Allen notes that “The Disney [Park] does not simulate the ‘real;’ rather, it celebrates the art of simulation, the ability to construct fantasy worlds as if they were real” (Allen). In that same vein, Lesley can clearly distinguish real from fantasy, as evidenced by her blunt statement about the circumstances of the break-up. However, Lesley more than once seems to forget herself, and prefers her own romanticized version of events to the realty she knows exits.
Baudrillard’s first two stages of reality are straightforward in the sense that the sign is still close enough to its
The third stage of the sign “is when the sign disguises the fact that there is no reality underneath” (Bsrry). Barry illustrate this point with, “a device used in the work of the surrealist artist Rene Magritte, where, in the painting, an easel with the painter’s canvas on it is shown standing alongside a window; on the canvas in the painting is painted the exterior scene which we can see through the window. But what is shown beyond the window is not reality…but simply another sign, another depiction, which has no more authority than the painting within the painting” (Barry 85).
Mike, like the painting within the painting, has no true sense of self. The only time the audience ever sees the real Mike is when he interacts with Sam. And even the brief glimpse into the kind of person he really is reveals that he lacks self-respect when he isn’t acting. “I pretend just about every place else,” he tells her, “ but not [not on stage]” When she presses him about how he is more confident on stage than in real life, he tells her that “Nothing is a problem for me on stage.” (Iñárritu).
The first and last time that the audience sees Mike in the film, he is on-stage. He is so committed to his craft that he orders a sun bed as part of his method. He questions Riggan, his director, at every turn, and even re-writes some lines. Because he’s been helping Lesley get off book for months, he has the entire script memorized before he even starts rehearsing. He is impossible to work with; Lesley states that he is usually either fired from or quits many of his jobs. Riggan would have fired him at several points in the film if he wasn’t so desperate for a performer of Mike’s caliber. Mike appreciates that Riggan is risking everything for the sake of art, but questions whether he can be called an artist: “[to Riggan] And [Hollywood people like you] know that if you put out any toxic piece of crap, people will line up and pay to see it. But long after you’re gone, I’m going to up there on that stage, earning my living, bearing my soul, wrestling with complex human emotions” (Iñárritu).
Throughout the film’, Mike is mocked by Lesley, Sam, and Riggan for his apparent lack of masculinity or sexual confidence. He is attracted to Sam, but doesn’t try to press the issue, because the according to Lesley, the erection he gets while in character on stage is the first that he has had one in years. Mike does sleep with Sam, but only after a rare moment of vulnerability in which he speaks from the heart and complements her using dialogue which she derides as “Oprah, R. Kelly bad” (Iñárritu ). She doesn’t buy his line, but appreciates the gesture, and Mike gains the self-confidence that he had only been faking to that point of the film.
While Mike does break the illusion in this moment and finds a part of himself that doesn’t have to pretend off stage, the stage is where the audience last sees him, on opening night of Riggan’s play. Because of this choice by Birdman’s writers/director, the film audience is unclear as to whether Mike really has changed, or if he will continue to only truly be himself when he is acting.
Riggan is the most complex—and least emotionally stable—of all the characters in the film. The very first shot of Birdman shows Riggan in his underwear, deep in meditation, and levitating about three feet from the floor of his one-room apartment. A voice then speaks, the voice of Riggan actor Micheal Keaton, except gruffer, angrier: “How did we end up here? This place is horrible.” The voice is credited on the Internet Movie Database as Young Birdman and belongs to Riggan’s Birdman persona. No dialogue in the film specifies how long Riggan has been hearing the voice of Birdman in his head; nor does Riggan articulate how long he has been able to levitate, fly, or move objects with his mind—he demonstrates each of these feats over the course of the film. Maybe he has always had this power, or maybe he only developed them after he played Birdman in the earliest superhero blockbusters in the 1990s., All that matters is that he displays them in the film. Of note, however, is that because no other character outside of an unnamed stranger witnesses Riggan displaying these powers, it’s entirely possible that his abilities are imagined and illusory, like Baudrillard’s simulacrum (Coulter). For instance, Mike is not the original actor of the Mel character; that man’s name is Ralph. When Riggan is rehearsing with Ralph—who is giving a terrible performance—Riggan waves his arm, and one of the stage-lights falls and hits Ralph hard on the head. Riggan tells his manager that he was the one who caused the accident, but his manager doesn’t believe him. There was nothing to indicate to the audience or the characters that the light fell specifically because Riggan waved his arm; the incident is more easily accepted as a stage accident than an example of psychic powers. In another scene, the audience clearly witnesses Riggan flying over streets of New York. Shortly after Riggan lands, however, a taxi driver follows Riggan into the theater, claiming that he didn’t get paid for his services. The scene is framed in such a way that either possibility could be the case. Maybe the cabby is referring to the other person who walked into the theater, and not Riggan.
The end of Riggan’s play features a scene with his character committing suicide after Lesley’s character is caught cheating on him. At rehearsals, Riggan uses a fake gun in this scene. On opening night, however, Riggan uses a real gun, and shoots his nose off. His nose is surgically replaced with one that resembles the Birdman persona, fully cementing that Riggan’s sense of identity is directly tied to the fictional character he had played more than 20 years prior. In a literary blog, literary critic Erin Perry analyzes Riggan’s identity crisis s as a representation of the fragmented nature of the film: “…Riggan’s own perspective is [fragmented,] with his growing split personality of Birdman telling him what to do and how to feel. Throughout the film, we see more and more uncertainty in Riggan’s perspective, and as that uncertainty grows, so do his Birdman powers/fantasy powers.” ( Perry).
Through his play, Riggan tries to pick up the pieces of his life. For him, the play would not only help his tenuous financial situation, but, if successful, would make others recognize his merits as an artist. He put so much of himself into the play that he tells Sam that the play is beginning to feel like “a deformed, miniature version of myself [which] keeps following me around and hitting me in the balls with a tiny hammer” (Iñárritu).
In the film, Broadway critic Tabitha Dickinson represents the world of fine art. Tabitha is determined to burry Riggan’s play, because “I hate you and everyone you represent. Entitled, selfish, spoiled children…Unversed, untrained and unprepared to even attempt real art…” (Iñárritu). Riggan rebukes her for only critiquing the art she reviews from a surface-level perspective, claiming that she is more focused on labels than the style and content of the work. (Iñárritu).
The above confrontation with Ms. Dickinson indicates that not only does Riggan struggle with his own identity, buthis sense of self-worth is directly tied to the seeks validation he garners form othersfrom others—despite the assurances from his Birdman persona that he “[doesn’t] need those clowns” (Iñárritu). In fact, Riggan is obsessed with being forgotten in the face of the modern superhero film craze. When talking about himself to Lelsey, he says off-handedly remarks that acclaimed actress Farrah Fawcet died on the same day as Michael Jackson. He is afraid of being similarly forgotten in the wake of modern superhero blockbusters. Riggan wants to be remembered and loved, but even he isn’t sure what he wants to be remembered and loved for. At the end of play, Lesley’s character tells his character that although she doesn’t love him, he deserves to be loved.
Riggan meditates frequently, attempting to silence Birdman’s voice in his head; but the Birdman persona cannot be silenced. After Riggan dismisses Birdman as a “mental formation,” Birdman answers: “I’m not a mental formation, I’m you, asshole. You were a movie star remember? Pretentious but happy.” Riggan responds: “I wasn’t happy; I was miserable, fucking miserable.” Birdman then replies: “Yeah, fake miserable. Hollywood miserable. What are you trying to prove, that you’re an artist? Well, you’re not” (Iñárritu). In This dialogue between Riggan and young Birdman, Riggan’s Birdman persona tries to convince him (as he does throughout the film) that he doesn’t need the play, because he could garner all the respect, adoration, and money he wants by playing Birdman in a Hollywood blockbuster again. Riggan refuses, claiming that he was never truly happy as a Hollywood actor, and he would rather have critical acclaim than commercial success. As Perry puts it, Riggan’s thoughts are fragmented; he is torn between two aspects of his personality, both of which are advising him to do two different things.
The final scene of the film features Riggan admiring his new nose—which makes him look like the Birdman character—and beginning to patch his relationship with Sam and Leslie. He also gets a rave review for his play from the same Tabitha Dickinson that vowed to ruin him. Just when it seems like he has everything he wanted as Riggan Thompson, the Birdman persona appears, not as a disembodied voice, but as a separate physical character. Riggan then opens the hospital widow and looks out it. Sam then re-enters the room and looks for him. She doesn’t find in the room, nor does she react when she looks at the ground outside. The final shot shows her looking at the sky, and giving a small chuckle as the screen turns to black. Once again, the film presents both possibilities: 1) that Riggan has killed himself because he’s lost all sense of reality, and 2) that Riggan really and truly is Birdman.
Regardless of which of these possibilities is the case, Riggan is a prime example of Baudrillard’s final stage of reality. Barry relates the final stage to an abstract painting which “has no representation at all.” (Barry 85). Riggan is torn between two different realities: one in which he is a devoted actor, loving father and man trying to earn love and acceptance from others; and a reality in which he is a literal superhero doesn’t need validation from anyone. Riggan’s reality, like Baudrillard’s simulacrum, is indistinguishable from hypereality (Barry, Coulter).
Sam, Lesley Mike and Riggan demonstrate personalities and behaviors which are anlogues for the ways each stage of the sign’s representation, but not necessarily as examples of the stages themselves. Baudrillard’s theories about a simulated reality inform each character’s relationship with the world, but they do not explain them. Sam, being a member of the millennial generation, is the most receptive and accepting of the world, because the celebrity obsessed, Twitter-influencing reality presented in Birdman is the only world she has ever known. Lesley chooses a glamorized version of life over her own reality because she doesn’t know how else to cope with the disappointment that she feels in herself and her life. Mike also resents his life and himself, but his method of coping is to disappear completely into the people he portrays on stage. Riggan has lost his sense of identity completely. “I wasn’t present in my own life, and now I don’t have it,” he tells Lesley late in the film. Riggan doesn’t know himself, and it’s unclear whether he ever knew himself. The only self he identifies with any more is the brash, elf-assured, self-confident Birdman persona.
Jean Baudrillard was a philosopher who entertained the notion that after a certain point, reality ceases to be knowable (Coulter). Birdman or (the unexpected virtue of ignorance) presents four characters—Sam—Lesley, Mike, and Riggan—who live in a complex world that forces them to contemplate the kinds of people they are, and how they relate to the world around them. Of the four, only Sam tryly “knows epitomizes the true image of what Baudrillard calls the sign. The other three—Lelsey, Mike, and Riggan— each signify different stages of the sign’s disappearance into mere simulation. These four characters illustrate Baudrillard’s view of simulated reality by exemplifying the stages by which the real gives way to the illusory.
Bibliography
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Birdman, Or, (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2014. HBO On-Demand.
“Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance – Quotes”. IMDb. Web. April 6, 2016.
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Colin Vanden Berg Digital Portfolio 