“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.”
There’s a jarring bit of silence in the film as the audience reels from Sam’s harsh words. Her steely eyes soften as we digest the meaning of her outburst: much of our lives are a show for others, and even if we put on our best performance, the seats will remain empty.
Birdman (2014) follows Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), a washed-up actor famed for his younger days playing superhero ‘Birdman’, a hero that wears a CGI bird suit and saves the world. Riggan’s inner monologue laments that even though Birdman raked in lots of money, the movies weren’t all that substantive. In an effort to revitalize his career and sprinkle ‘critical thinking’ into his resume, Riggan sets out to put on a Broadway production about a 1960s short story.
If there is anything to admire about Riggan’s lackluster virtues, it’s his work ethic. Once his mind is set on something, he will not stop until he’s claimed it, even if that means almost refinancing his daughter’s home to afford rising star Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) or walking naked through the streets of New York City. In other words, Riggan will do anything to escape the voices of the person he used to be.
Perhaps Riggan’s estranged relationship with his daughter best explains the person who wore the Birdman costume. Like many celebrity archetypes, Riggan lusted for fame and money and was absent as a father. After the partying and the flashing lights had lifted, Riggan was left with a body that looks like “a turkey with leukemia” and the person that knows him best being his ex-wife. Riggan’s Broadway production is his last shot at redemption. In the entertainment world, relevancy is the currency that buys one into stardom and success, but in his case, Riggan’s bank account has run dry.
For Riggan, however, there’s a lot more riding on his play, even more than his relevancy: in his play lies ‘meaning’, or as much meaning as he can act out. Riggan’s play, an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, is a demonstration that underneath the superficiality of the Birdman mask is a man with depth, understanding, and meaning. And these qualities are important, because they're the only path to leaving behind a legacy.
The question of ‘meaning’ is one that has been grappled with for centuries. What is the meaning of life? For most people, the answer is ‘purpose’. It is believed that every person has an innate purpose bestowed upon them by some higher being, and it’s up to you to discover what that is. Maybe it’s to do something you love. Maybe it's giving back to the world. Find your purpose and chase after it, because if you don’t, you will surely regret everything you’ve done up until your deathbed.
On paper, the idea of it is so beautiful. To live a life doing what you love – to make work not feel like work – must be the greatest gift of all. But that saying is an old fishnet with many holes, and the holes have only widened as time goes on. In today’s economy, the American Dream is exactly what it’s labeled as: a dream. Inflation is at its highest levels since the 1980s and minimum wage has barely budged or let alone kept up (Pew Research 2022, Economic Policy Institute 2022). With anxieties surrounding an imminent recession, an economy fresh from a pandemic, and rising prices sowed long ago by Reagonomics and globalization, perhaps it is just as admirable to live financially sound as it is to live doing what you love. To try to achieve both is preserved for the bravest of individuals, but I don’t think anyone is anything less for not having that same courage.
This life-long chase after 'purpose' has caused a great deal of anxiety for a great amount of people. It leaves one fearfully awake at night, wondering if they chose the correct path, if they did the correct thing, and whether what they’ve done for the world is any good at all. When I die, what will I be remembered for? is a common sentiment. These same motivations are certainly a driving force in Riggan’s eccentric – and sometimes abusive – behavior.
But what we fail to consider is that in the end, there is no feasible way to quantify the meaningfulness of someone’s life. We don’t have a metric system where we can decide when to place value on one’s life and when not to. Even Merriam-Webster’s definition of ‘meaning’ hardly provides any indicators of its existence (‘meaning’: ‘significant quality; implication of a hidden or special significance’). And with that logic, the meaning of life can be whatever you make it to be.
At the very foundation of what it means to be human, you must do one thing, and you have done it already. You don’t need to change the world to matter. You don’t need to earn a certain amount of money to matter. You don’t need to create something to matter. You exist, and that is all you were brought into this world to do. You live, so you matter, and no one can tell you otherwise.
If purpose and meaning were a real thing created by the world and natural to the universe, we would see cats and dogs striving to be more than someone’s pet. But that’s simply not the case, because purpose and meaning are abstract concepts invented by the human mind.
Of course, you can create your own expectations and definitions of meaningfulness, but you are not imprisoned to do so. Life is sacred and finite, and you do not owe anything to the world or anything else. It’s a privilege to discover your ‘purpose’, whatever you envision that to be, because for many species on this planet, the first step – surviving – is not a given.
In the end, Birdman doesn’t explore Riggan’s definition of “meaningfulness”, but it does eccentrically detail Riggan’s plight to put on a Broadway production. Beautiful camera work that prowls and soars, a soundtrack so fitting that it melts away, and superb acting are just a few archetypes of director Alejandro González Iñárritu's work. During the film, the audience has no time to think, but after the end credits start rolling, one leaves the theater pondering if they’re very different from Riggan Thomson at all.
Perhaps that’s what makes Sam’s frenzied monologue so cathartic: No one cares. Only you do. And how powerful is that?
Works Cited
DeSilver, Drew. “In the U.S. and around the World, Inflation Is High and Getting Higher.”
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 15 June 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/15/in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world-inflation-is-high-and-getting-higher/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20report,by%20the%20consumer%20price%20index.
“Tying Minimum-Wage Increases to Inflation, as 13 States Do, Will Lift up Low-Wage
Workers and Their Families across the Country.” Economic Policy Institute, https://www.epi.org/blog/tying-minimum-wage-increases-to-inflation-as-12-states-do-will-lift-up-low-wage-workers-and-their-families-across-the-country/#:~:text=The%20federal%20minimum%20wage%20has,is%20the%20lowest%20since%201956.
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