Putting Others on a Pedestal

The other morning, while I was sipping my coffee and trying desperately to wake myself up, I was watching the news about a topic that didn't interest me. So, I decided to flip through the channels to see if there was anything else worth watching.

For those who know me, I like old movies, so the first channel I looked at was the old movie channel. It indicated some 1934 film was playing, and weirdly there was something about the title that clicked in my head and drew me to this movie—however, despite this pull, I went ahead and scanned the rest of the guide and went back to the news story I didn’t like.

After only briefly watching this boring news story—whether due to divine intervention or just curiosity—I decided to switch to the old movie after all.

At this point, I had missed about half of the movie, so this is not a complete movie review. I tuned in to this movie to discover it was about a group of very wealthy, powerful people whose cruise ship had sunk. The group made it to this lone, desolate island along with the ship’s crew and staff. This island was inhabited by a powerful but dimwitted queen and her servants, staff, and army. At the point I began watching, the queen had made all the survivors strip off their fancy clothes and wear island garb consisting of grass skirts and some type of small top for the women. These wealthy and powerful people, or the “fat cats,” as they were called in that time period, all of a sudden were stripped of their wealth, status, and anything distinguishing them from the ship's crew and servants.  In this case, they were literally stripped of their clothes that had been so carefully designed to cover their physical faults and create an illusion of strength, power, and superiority. The image of older people wearing grass skirts, with their soft and blubbery physiques on full display, is something I'd rather forget.

With that said, the imagery bears a very important message: All of us—rich or poor, educated or uneducated, blessed or cursed, conservatives or liberals, in-shape or out-of-shape—are just mere human beings beneath our symbols of status and wealth. We are humans with faults, strengths, and weaknesses.

The most poignant piece of this movie is that these otherwise superior people were on full display, as human beings, and not super beings, and seeing them in this fashion hit home so much for me. You see, one of the things I have often contemplated is why humans put others humans on a pedestal. For some, it's their financial success and the power that can come with it, while for others it is their intellect or charisma, or even attractiveness and physical appearance. For some in today’s world, it may be that they own a spaceship or a yacht as big as an aircraft carrier.

When I was a young person trying to figure out how to improve, or change my life, I decided to make sure I didn’t put others on a pedestal, because I realized once you have considered or placed others as superior, you fail to think, dream, or imagine the world on your own. Instead, you base your life on the thinking and circumstances of the person standing on the proverbial pedestal.

One of the concepts of the movie that so strongly spoke to me resembles something I do in my head when I hear or see an important person—try to imagine them without any clothes. I don’t do this for a sexual or twisted purpose, but rather to make sure I see them as only human beings, and nothing more. And while that person may have more money, success, status of something else, they are nonetheless when stripped of these accoutrements, nothing more than a human being.  Once we overlook a person’s humanness and place them on a pedestal, we are inclined to also overlook the fragility and weakness that come with being a human, thus making them superhuman or some divine creature. Don’t get me wrong; some people may be stronger or wiser or more successful in some ways, but no person is superhuman, so we need to be careful of these inflated perceptions when picking our leaders, heroes, or role models.

Finally I will say one final word, and that this was an absolutely horrible movie, that had to have some of the worst acting I have ever seen, however with that said, the acting doesn’t have to be good, when the message is so powerful.