Richard Linklater’s 2001 animated film, Waking Life, is comprised of a series of vignettes, most of which are monologues of disparate characters. There is a plot that ties the many pieces together: the main character, unnamed, played by Wiley Wiggins is trying to decipher whether he is dreaming or awake. He repeatedly wakes within a dream, or a false awakening. Dreamscape tropes are prevalent, Wiggins floats through space and time effortlessly, yet simultaneously, in a slow-motion pursuit, he cannot seem to grasp how to wake up.
I first watched this film as a high school student. I did not understand it, but felt I was supposed to think it was cool – so I watch it more than once, and probably fell asleep watching it more than once. I wanted to watch it again to find out if I have gained more knowledge in the 20 or so years since my last viewing, I also know that I at least have a better understanding of Linklater’s work at this point. On this recent viewing I realized that Waking Life serves as a variant to Linklater’s earlier work, Slacker (1990), which is also a collection of vignettes, but with a quotidian focus on life amongst nonconformists in Austin, Texas. Waking Life mimics this form, but its focus is philosophical musings about language, existence, collective memory, society, free will and the meaning of life (amongst other things), and unlike Slacker, it’s animated, with illustrative styles that shift per scene, amplifying a dream-like quality. What I failed to grasp as a teenager, is that Waking Life is not quite a documentary, nor presented as strictly educative, it’s art; the line between what is scripted and not is blurred, and the line between what is based on established theory and complete nonsense is also blurred. Some of the characters are actors acting, some are lecturing and hold academic stature, and some are artists making art. The monologues are at times poetic, poignant, and thought provoking, and other times ridiculous, bizarre, and funny.
Indirect Realism
Early in the film is a scene of a blonde woman sitting on a couch in a blurry living room asserting that humans, instigated by “…a striving and frustration…” created language, and what she finds particularly interesting is when humans use this “…system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things we’re experiencing” (Linklater, 2020). She explains that we use language to communicate that which is elusive, such as feelings and emotions, and the receiver accepts our words, and they believe to have understood them, and we believe they have, but how can we know that they truly do? This notion that we perceive our reality, synthesize the information, then use communication tools to share our experiences with others, yet cannot fully and accurately relay our total truths is agonizing. It is an idea that is reminiscent of indirect realism, described as that which “holds that we gain knowledge of an objective world indirectly by making inferences from our sense impressions,” (Pritchard, 2018, p. 69). Although plausible, indirect realism overwhelms me with a sense of claustrophobia, as though we are each trapped within a body that both allows us to experience our world (albeit indirectly), but also restricts us from moving beyond the limits of our sense perceptions, or the limits of ourselves. Rather than feeling trapped and alone, the blonde woman ends her musings on a more optimistic note: “…when we communicate with one another, and we feel that we have connected, and we think that we are understood, I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion”. It is as though, it doesn’t matter if we truly understand each other, or if our perceiving selves obscure that which exists outside of us, if we believe we are connecting, it’s the same as if we are.
Viewing our reality through this lens, how can objective true belief be possible? I come back to Pritchard’s (2018) statement, “…that truth is objective in the following sense: at least for most propositions, your thinking that they are true does not make them true” (p. 7). Yet, perhaps the closest we can get to grasping knowledge is to gain an acceptance of a kind of relative truth – one that is considerate of many perspectives to find the truth amongst them, or between them – an averaging of truths.
Idealism
The question of, ‘what is reality?’ is a core theme of Waking Life that is explored through philosophical dialogue set within a meandering narrative dream state. In another early scene Wiggins’ is a student to a university professor who lectures on existentialism and Sartre. The professor explains these ideas are not pessimistic, but rather empowering, “…life is yours to create…what you do makes a difference…”. He describes a “person as a social construction” (Linklater, 2020). This scene introduces the notion that reality is constructed, a movable force that we have the power to affect. This idea is carried throughout the film, as Wiggins becomes aware he is dreaming and is introduced to the notion of lucid dreaming, which he essentially what he is doing. Once aware of his lucid dream state, Wiggins is passively urged by a variety of characters to take control of his reality – a reality that reflects the notion of idealism, or “…knowledge of a world that is constituted by our perception of it… ‘constructed’ out of appearances rather than being that which gives rise to such appearances, and thus it is not ‘external’ in the relevant sense at all” (Pritchard, 2018, p. 71). Setting Wiggins in this inescapable dreamscape amplifies the notion of idealism: not only is he in a world that he is repeatedly told is his to construct, but he is also within his own dream, a world that both philosophically and actually exists within his mind.
In the final scene of Waking Life Wiggins wakes up once more, and the viewer is hopeful that perhaps this time he is actually awake. He walks outside his house and begins to float. At first, he grabs on to the handle of a car door, but eventually lets go and floats away into the sky. In an idealist world, what happens if you refrain from constructing? Does your world cease to exist? Do you float away?
References:
Linklater, R. (Director). (2001). Waking Life [Film]. Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Pritchard, D., & ProQuest (Firm). (2018). What is this thing called knowledge? (Fourth;1; ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351980326