Human Distinction In Film

“How about this one: you are simply a distinction—a meme—invented because it was convenient to talk about the parts of the universe that feel pain when hit with a hammer. To the universe, there’s no you . . . or human beings or giraffes or solar systems or galaxies. All those are human-invented distinctions. They are all memes.” Richard Brodie is the author of Viruses of the Mind and within this book he reveals what he believes is the truth about human life, and the root of our being. Two films connect to Brodie’s opinions, forming a realistic visualization of what he attempts to explain. Sam Mendes’ American Beauty and Mike Nichols’ The Graduate bring together Brodie’s concept of being. The films show how the mind controls one’s actions, along with pleasurable activities such as sex or drugs, and how such activities can lead to an inevitable …show more content…
Aboriginal people feel that the method in which they live their life is correct, and anything different would be obscure. “Civil” human life, for example in the United States, people feel they must complete what they set out to do, with a somewhat forced pathway. Realistically, human beings do not have to obey what their culture views as correct, they simply choose it to “fit in”. In today’s life, it is all about fitting in to the crowd around you. If one chooses to step out of the crowd, and pick a brand new path to take, he will passionately walk in that direction while leaving the brainwashed individuals to live on in their expectation-heavy lives. As described, American Beauty and The Graduate show that if one steps out of his comfort zone and explores new and unknown things, a seemingly new person is created. There is no right or wrong, there is no specific way one must live. Conclusively, the voices inside one’s head is what controls the individual not the chaos around them. That is who we