Six Degrees of Separation: Questions for Consideration
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This week’s installment in the Ethical Dilemmas on Film series is the 1993 film adaptation of the John Guare play Six Degrees of Separation. In addition to spawning the game that would put a certain actor at the hub of all cosmic intersections, the film touches on a number of issues that are worthy of our consideration. Here are some questions and suggestions to get you started in your thinking about the film:
Six Degrees of Separation was written and first performed as a play. How can you tell? Why does it matter?
Why is Jeffrey from South Africa?
What is the importance of the Kandinsky painting?
Think about these lines:
- “I’m trying to keep this abstract.”
- “I still don’t fully understand how this came about or the sequence in which it came about.”
- “That everything can be blamed on a bad childhood just doesn’t hold water.”
- The imagination = “what is most uniquely us.”
- “Safe.”
- “Imagination is not our escape. On the contrary it’s the place we’re all trying to get to.”
Why are the following mentioned in this film?
Guess Who’s Coming to DinnerThe Sistine ChapelMatisseAndy WarholSidney PoitierPygmalionCatcher in the RyeCats
Do the Kittredges owe Paul anything? Does he owe them anything?
What do you make of the film’s title?
What do you make of the film’s use of colors?
One of the most interesting parts of this film for me was the presence of the Kandinsky painting. I love that scene early on when they are flipping it back and forth repeating, “Chaos, control.” If this film were able to be reduced to a microcosm of itself, this painting would be it. It so exemplifies the core theme that everything, everyone, ever situation is multifaceted.
Paul himself is the Kandinsky painting. He flawlessly, effortlessly pulls off his ruse in crashing the Kittredge’s dinner (and making a “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” allusion) and so soon after spirals into a strange, disturbed young man who’s actions land him in jail. Control to chaos. The skill in which Paul impersonates a Harvard student and the eloquence he employs when discussing Catcher in the Rye had me absolutely convinced that he was who he said he was. And like the flick of a switch, we see him in a phone booth making dangerous claims and suffering from severe delusions. This film is arguing that we are all duplicitous my our very nature, and that with the right opportunities we can become something entirely new and different.
Consider Mrs. Kittredge at the end of the film when she looks at her reflection and thinks of the double-sided Kandinsky. They show her high-fiving the hand of God again. I see this as an example of how all things, people and objects, have two meanings. Like the Kandinsky, we see the Sistine Chapel painting as having one meaning, but when you reach up to slap the hand of God, it’s as if the painting itself develops a new meaning entirely, just as the Kandinsky can.
This film, while hopelessly frustrating, highlights extremely well the double-edged sword that is the human ability to be more than one thing. While we can change our meaning and our purpose, we can never be both at the same time, just as the Kandinsky can only show one side at a time. We see this exemplified through Paul who, as his scheme comes undone, cannot seem to maintain his façade, nor can he find a middle ground. He dissolves completely in to a frightening character. The idea that we may change, but only to a certain extent, is haunting, and something that I think the filmmaker wanted us to be haunted by even after the credits had rolled.
Sorry for commenting so long after the film but I just now figured out how this blog works. I enjoyed the movie Six Degrees of Separation and enjoyed the discussion after particularly. This movie brings up many ethical and moral dilemmas and also has a fair amount of symbolism. I think the most symbolic thing during the movie was the Kandinsky painting, which represented peace on the one side and chaos on the other. Paul was the chaos that came into the movie, everything was peaceful before he came, and once he arrived chaos ensued. The thing that I think that this movie teaches us more than anything is how a little chaos in our lives can be a good thing. If you look at the impact that Paul had on Mrs. Kittredge, the chaos he brought into her life may have been a very good thing in the long run because it helped her learn so much about the life she was having, and that even though her life was a peaceful one it wasn’t necessarily a good one.
Another thing that I like from the movie is the actual concept that everyone is six degrees away from each other. My hometown newspaper did this with several of our county residents, and in five degrees they were able to connect my one friend to Gandhi. I just really like the concept and how it plays into the movie.
One of the things that we discussed after the movie was the affect of race in the movie, in the fact that Paul is a black man. I don’t think the fact that he was black had nearly the impact on on the Kittredges as the fact that he was gay. I think that if Paul had brought a female hooker home the reaction of the Kittredges would have been different that they were when he brought the man home. In this day in age there is much more discrimination against gays than there is against minorities, and I think that he was gay had a much bigger impact on the Kittredges than the fact that he was black.
Another thing from the film I noticed that is one hundred percent true in real life is the attraction of people to powerful figures. When Paul name dropped his father he immediately got a much warmer reaction to from his audience. For some reason it seems that we all have an affinity with people who are big names, and we will go the extra mile for them and those around them. When the Kittredges find out that Paul is not related to a famous producer they are more upset that they won’t be in Cats that the fact the Paul lied to them.
Six Degrees of Separation:
Initially, I tried to speculate around why Paul was the only black character in the story and connect any possible separatist undertones the film might be trying to convey. I immediately moved past this notion, because the idea that Paul’s character was black to demonstrate racial tensions would be too much of a cliché and completely undeserving of Will Smith’s time. Yet, that is not to say that the answer I came up with is not equally as simple. Paul in this movie is able to use cunning wit and charm to convince total strangers to let him into their home. He has an uncanny ability to make the people around him trust him from the moment he makes their acquaintance; but how could someone be so persuasive? Moreover, how could Paul’s character know exactly the type of people Ousia and Flan were, without having ever met them?
Well, it is because Paul is black.
He is the absence of what the Kittredge’s are and the embodiment of what they aspire to be. The reality of Paul validates the facade the Kittredge’s uphold each and every day, because his existence proves to the Kittredge’s that their desires are actually attainable. Their ability to immediately let down their guard around Paul and refrain from securing even a single strand of truth from his testimony, denotes that Paul possess an air of superiority that is very attractive to Ousia and Flan. As the film continues, the audience watches Paul execute his mission with accuracy and swiftness. In a matter of hours he is able to confirm his worth to the Kittredge’s through simple conversation and the courtesy of preparing dinner. At this point in the movie, it would appear that the conflict driving the plotline is issue of Paul’s character being “too good to be true.” Well not only is that the case, but it also the intent of Guare to base the source of this problem on the fact that…
Paul is black.
The representation of black is to be absent of color, substance, and a symbol for darkness and the unknown. Its properties act as a canvas to facilitate the manipulation of human emotion; enhancing situations like the potential of being cut off from the world and even from our selves. It can also work in the opposite effect, providing an escape for those who are not ready to face the light. The significance of Paul’s character being black, and the primary black image throughout the entire film, is precisely because he epitomizes the innate conflict humans confront when faced with darkness. Some will use the dark as barrier to prevent them from ever leaving the light. Others, like the Kittredge’s, use the dark as a shield to stop them from seeing what their true reality is. The presence of Paul in this film is to perpetuate the blackness and emptiness that surrounds the Kittredge’s. Guare illustrates that while the darkness may blind us from ever truly seeing ourselves, it will also prevent us from ever seeing the environment that surrounds us. Thus, allowing characters like Paul to easily pick his victims, because only one pool is open at night.
The two-sided Kandinsky painting referred to as “Chaos, Control” plays a large part in the movie and throught, the audience sees Ouisa evolve from a caricature of the upper echelon of society to an actual person for which the audience feels. As the movie begins, Ouisa is the epitome of control – everything she says and does follows what her status in life dictates. She controls what she does and how she acts to maintain her social connections and even formulates her speech to attract the widest audience. She and Flan have to work in order to keep the lifestyle they want to live, but for them there is no other option then the life they lead.
When Paul enters their life, he seems to fit into their idea of control. He claims Sidney Poitier as his father and Harvard as his university. He says the right things, he acts the right way. However, as night turns to day, the audience sees the flip of the painting and control becomes chaos, as Paul is found in bed with another man. As the movie continues, Paul becomes more and more a focal point of chaos. He is found to be a phony, an act put on to the wealthy.
When Paul enters her life, Ouisa begins to lose some control. The audience sees her having more and more real life issues – relationship problems with her daughter and monetary issues. She starts to show genuine emotion and become more a person and less of a socialite. She tries to help Paul because she realizes that he has something, chaos, in his life that she does not have. She wants some of this chaos and wants to lose some her control. Visiting the Sistine Chapel, she overcomes her sense of control and slaps the “Hand of God.” She reaches out to feel a painting for the first time in her life. She realizes that her account for life previous to Paul, has been a financial account – how does she stack up compared to her social circle. She reaches for the divine and realizes that feelings and emotions are the true account of one’s life. At the end of the movie, she leaves the luncheon she is at. She realizes that she has lost the control. However, unlike Paul, she is not chaos. Rather she becomes the fraction of second as the painting turns – in the happy medium between chaos and control.
I thought the most important theme in Six Degrees of Separation was the way in which we experience reality. This was shown most explicitly through the characters Flan and Ouisa, and the fundamental differences in their worldviews that became more apparent as the film progressed.
Flan seems to view the world as a collection of items and symbols. His art collection, his money, and even his relationships with other people seem to be used as cheap party tricks and means to raise his own social standing. When he finds himself in a group of people, he tells stories of his art and his interactions with Paul not because he wants to share the experience, but because he views these things in an owner-merchandise relationship. While it is hard to argue that he does not own his art (in terms of the physical object; e.g. the paintings themselves), he views his interpersonal relationships much the same way. He seems to feel as if everybody he meets affects his net value as a person, rather than the sum of things which makes him who he is. This is best shown in the final scene, where he claims that his experience with Paul has not affected him. If this were true, one must ask why he continued to tell the story.
Ouisa begins as a very similar situation to Flan, in terms of mindset. She appears in the opening scene as an out-of-touch, impersonal aristocrat. Her discussions about art reflect a worldview similar to that of her husband. However, Paul’s introduction into the film has a slow but steady impact on her character. In his first appearance as a total stranger in her home, she reduces her experiences to anecdotes in hopes of impressing Paul. I think the turning point also comes in this scene, when Paul reveals himself to be an (apparent) educated intellectual. At this point, Ouisa finds common ground between her and Paul, and forms a personal connection that affects her on a deep emotional level. The high point of this change in herself comes in her final phone conversation with Paul. Just days prior, Paul was a stranger to her, and when he calls to ask for a place to stay, she is torn on whether or not to let him come back. On an intellectual level, she knows that he lied to her and had gay sex with a stranger in her daughter’s bed, but on an emotional level, she recognizes that he is more than just another passing character in her timeline.
The ability to acknowledge people as people rather than collections of information and events is key to understanding reality, as far as Six Degrees of Separation is concerned. Flan rejects the idea, and could be considered almost solipsistic in his views on life. Ouisa, on the other hand, has the ability to integrate her relationships into her own life and allow them to have a conscious impact on her life. I think this is the core ethical problem the film addresses. On a planet with over six billion other people, what does life mean if you cannot connect with any of them? I’d say it means very little. Everyone has a life full of sensory information and memorable events. The important thing is not the objective amount of information you collect or the number of events you experience. What makes life beautiful is how you respond to these things and how you learn from them. Life is not how others experience things through you, it’s how you experience them yourself. Life is about recognizing that everything affects you. It’s about how you feel.
One of those most profound reflective motifs in Schepisi’s Six Degrees of Separation involves the contrast between anecdote and reality. Do we make an effort each day to live in a new, productive way? Or has life become so monotonous that we content ourselves by living through memories of the past and the stories of others? This film is illustrates, is rather the essence of, this question.
To an audience of art, film, literature, or any other piece, the first and most crucial aspect of mechanism of interpretation is the frame of the work. For example, throughout the film the characters refer to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. In this classic, Salinger tells his story through Holden Caulfield, who in turn tells of his reality through another. The reader is asked to accept, almost blindly, Caulfield’s narrative as truth, even though his character comes across as more than questionable. Salinger tells Caulfield’s story in the hopes that the reader will gain new insight on actual reality. Put simply, the author uses a series of concentric stories to convey an inescapable reality of the human experience. And we are expected to trust him.
This particular film is similarly constructed. From the beginning credits, we are under the illusion of actually witnessing events, when in fact we are simply being told about them. In fact, it is not until the very ending scene that we see events unfold as they actually occur. We are expected to accept the upper-class retelling of the events as purely factual. And, when viewing the film, Ouisa and Flan did not seem like the type of people to mold their retellings to reality. So why not suppose the account of their experiences with Paul is entirely, or even partially, embellished? And, with this distrust in the back of the mind, what can the audience take from the film?
The difference between anecdote and reality is the essence of Six Degrees of Separation. If, from day to day, people allow the present only reach the limits of the past, no progress will be made. The world would be trapped in a continuum of outdated accomplishments and embellished illusions. When Ouisa leaves the meal and Flan in her tracks, she has finally realized this. No longer will she be satisfied with reliving the thrills of the past. Instead, she will take the knowledge she has gained and turn it in progress. No longer will she be trapped in a circle of experience without knowledge. She will take what Paul has taught her and make a difference in the wealthy community at the heart of New York City.
Will we do the same in the reality of our own local communities, or will we be trapped in the cycle of mistakes without progress? Will we be stranded somewhere between anecdote and reality, content to live in the thrill of the past?
One of those most profound reflective motifs in Schepisi’s Six Degrees of Separation involves the contrast between anecdote and reality. Do we make an effort each day to live in a new, productive way? Or has life become so monotonous that we content ourselves by living through memories of the past and the stories of others? This film is illustrates, is rather the essence of, this question.
To an audience of art, film, literature, or any other piece, the first and most crucial aspect of mechanism of interpretation is the frame of the work. For example, throughout the film the characters refer to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. In this classic, Salinger tells his story through Holden Caulfield, who in turn tells of his reality through another. The reader is asked to accept, almost blindly, Caulfield’s narrative as truth, even though his character comes across as more than questionable. Salinger tells Caulfield’s story in the hopes that the reader will gain new insight on actual reality. Put simply, the author uses a series of concentric stories to convey an inescapable reality of the human experience. And we are expected to trust him.
This particular film is similarly constructed. From the beginning credits, we are under the illusion of actually witnessing events, when in fact we are simply being told about them. In fact, it is not until the very ending scene that we see events unfold as they actually occur. We are expected to accept the upper-class retelling of the events as purely factual. And, when viewing the film, Ouisa and Flan did not seem like the type of people to mold their retellings to reality. So why not suppose the account of their experiences with Paul is entirely, or even partially, embellished? And, with this distrust in the back of the mind, what can the audience take from the film?
The difference between anecdote and reality is the essence of Six Degrees of Separation. If, from day to day, people allow the present only reach the limits of the past, no progress will be made. The world would be trapped in a continuum of outdated accomplishments and embellished illusions. When Ouisa leaves the meal and Flan in her tracks, she has finally realized this. No longer will she be satisfied with reliving the thrills of the past. Instead, she will take the knowledge she has gained and turn it in progress. No longer will she be trapped in a circle of experience without knowledge. She will take what Paul has taught her and make a difference in the wealthy community at the heart of New York City.
Will we do the same in the reality of our own local communities, or will we be trapped in the cycle of mistakes without progress? Will we be stranded somewhere between anecdote and reality, content to live in the thrill of the past?
What I found most interesting about this film was its connection between life and art. The Kandinsky painting has a strong symbolism of the chaos and control that occurs within a person’s life. This can especially be portrayed through Will Smith’s character. During the first scene, it appears he has control because of the way he carries himself and how well spoken he is. However, in the middle of the night, the old couple discovers that there is much chaos in his life as well. In fact, he is very unstable. Additionally, both the man and the woman experience chaos and control in their own lives. The control comes from the amount of money they have and their luxurious lifestyle, but the chaos comes from their hectic encounter with Will Smith. This is expressed especially through the man who constantly states “he could have slashed our necks!” The chaos also occurs through their relationship with their kids as well as the internal conflicts of their marriage when the woman discovers they are not a good match.
In aspects other than those to which the Kandinsky painting relates, art still has a major theme throughout the movie. For example, through the character of Paul and the color of his skin. It seems that color represents art, and Paul represents color. Therefore, Paul represents art in human form. His surprising tendencies, pleasing and disturbing behaviors, and overall madness is basically the definition of art. This is why he has understood the concept of art throughout the entire movie, while the old couple did not. This is also how Paul taught the woman to open her eyes and really understand the purpose and meaning of art, which we witness at the end of the film when she slaps the hand of God. Paul says “the worst thing is to go through life unconscious”. Through the true appreciation of art in every aspect, one stops living life unconscious.
Chaos, control. Chaos, control. I couldn’t get that line out of my head during the entirety of the movie. I felt the significance and the weight, of those words, but I didn’t figure out their meaning until the end of the film—although I can only say “meaning” in reference to my own subjective interpretation of the film.
Will Smith’s character “Paul” is a strange combination of chaos and control. Chaos, as a con man who was picked up on the street and “trained” by a man from an affluent family. Chaos, as an emotionally unstable fugitive, calling Ouisa with irrational hopes of avoiding justice and dreams of becoming an art dealer like her husband. Chaos, as a liar and a thief. Control, as a man who can charm a room, cook a delectable meal, and speak on all sorts of topics with alarming profundity. Control, as a boy who projects an image of a confident, successful man who doesn’t wait for things to happen to him—he makes them happen. Control, as an intellect, someone who could truly make something of himself. If he wasn’t so chaotic.
Flan, on the other hand, seems completely in control. At the end of the movie, when Ouisa asks “how much of your life can you account for?” and he answered “all of it!” I assumed he meant he was in control. An active participant in his life, he meant to be where he is now. Ouisa, on the other hand, tells Flan and the rest of her dinner party that she is a mess, she is a collage. She has blindly followed Flan instead of carving her own path; now, she finds she cannot account for the whole of her life. She, chaos, connects to Paul in a way Flan can’t. That’s what I took from the repetition of “chaos, control”—the Kandinsky painting was a double-sided masterpiece representing the couple and Paul himself. At the end, when Ouisa waltzes away from her high-society friends and slaps the hand of God, I took it to mean she was finally accepting her inner chaos and embracing her own life path for the first time.
“Imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, it’s the place we’re all trying to get to,” represents so much in both the film, and our lives outside of the film. The imagination is of course something that is defined as purely human. There are no other instances of any other creature in the known universe that has the capacity of cognations, or imagination. The ability to think and be creative is what sets humans apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. It’s why we are important, and why we are what we are. It’s brilliant really Cogito ergo sum. I think therefor I am. But the imagination is more than merely human. It’s individual. The imagination is something that only I can have, just as you can too. It’s individual, yet common to each person. It’s a beautiful thing really.
The thing about the imagination is that it is truly unique. Because of its individual nature, because it belongs to a single person alone, and is exclusive (unless of course, that person is so desirous to share their imagination, and we all know that sharing is caring, with a few exceptions [namely STIs]) to that single person, we covet the imagination, or at least, in theory. The imagination is the least used faculty of the mind (opinion), the ability to create something from nothing, to redefine, morph, shape, sharpen, change, make, this is the imagination, and as we all know, it is children who possess the wonderful ability to the greatest extent. Children are brilliant; not yet defined by their world, and physics, they are able to imagine wonderful and fantastic world, and creatures. It’s something that we as adults, or near adults, wish we still were able to do. That’s not to say that all children are creative, I personally was a fantastically boring child, or that all adults lack this faculty, as artist writers and engineers are all able to imagine with great ability; what it is saying is that on average, the child is more able and willing to imagine, to day dream in abstract terms, than the adult, whose creations are defined by their realities. This quote is brilliant as well, for it taps into our fascination with children (in the good, non-Sandusky sort of way), and the imagination, yet it goes far deeper than that still. It’s not our escape, the first part of the quote states that we are constantly trying to escape, escape anything that we don’t want, can’t want, can’t deal with, we escape to this fantastic place, the place of imagination, and unbridled creation and innocence (hence the children bit), yet Paul decides that this isn’t true. We aren’t trying to escape (well yes, we are but its different, just trust me), but that we are all in want of returning to a place of innocence of brilliance, like a Childs’, and this place is of course the imagination. The imagination is truly the place we are all trying to get to.
If you’ve lasts this long, thank you. You must have a great deal of fortitude; however, I’m not yet done. This idea of an exodus from reality to the imagination is rather double sided. On the one side, we see that the world would be a better place. Creativity has the potential to solve so many of the world’s problems, yet, on the other side, it is not possible to get lost in the fantastic worlds we would inhabit within our own minds, and thus the reality in which we would live would be neglected? Just a thought or two
The film Six Degrees of Separation brings to light many different ideas and themes that could be pretty controversial. The ideas that struck me the most were those regarding imagination. In particular the lines about how imagination is “what is uniquely us” and “Imagination is not our escape. On the contrary, it’s the place we’re all trying to get to” were the lines that really stood out to me in the movie. I found myself to agree with these lines pretty deeply. I think that each and every one of us starts out to be imaginative. We see this most commonly in children because they usually come up with some of the wildest things that we have ever heard. But I feel as though society tells us that we have to give some of that imagination for the good of the social functioning in the world. Somewhere along the line, imagination has become synonymous with something extra that we gain, something outside of ourselves. It’s as though we can’t have too much creativity or imagination out there in the world because then our society would fall apart. And we’re told this all the time. In school, we’re told not to stray from the norm and fix into perfectly constructed boxes, like with standardized testing and when we grow up we’re told to work within the social constructs that have been thrusted upon us. As a teacher, that is why I hope to foster my students’ imagination. I want to let them live in a world where if they can dream it, plan it, and reason through it, they can do it. These lines really bring to light the question of whether imagination can survive in modern day society.
Finally, I found some great symbolism in the art presented in this film. First, in a more general sense, I thought that it was interesting that Flan was an art collector/ dealer. Art is arguably the most imaginative and creative career in the world, yet this is juxtaposed with the rigidity and sheep-like lifestyle that this character lives. Second, I think that the presence of Kandinsky’s painting reflected the unstable balance of chaos and control that pops up throughout the film. In scenes such as chasing Paul out of the apartment, we see chaos in the chase itself, but control in the apartment to the restoring of the Kittredges’ lives. And third, I found the scene at the Sistine Chapel to be profoundly symbolic. In this scene, Ouisa is literally slapping the hand of fate and possibly foreshadowing her departure at the end of the film, changing her fate by the closing credits. All three of these scenes demonstrate the symbolism presented in this film.
When reflecting on Six Degrees of Separation, I keep thinking back to Paul. Will Smith’s character is fascinating, and throughout the movie, I was consistently confused by him and what he was doing, why he was doing it, and what he represented on a larger level. I think that his character is not a protagonist or antagonist but rather a stimulus, causing the audience to stop and consider what is really going on.
I think that the issue of race in this film is an interesting subject to examine. Paul is the only black character in the movie, which is an interesting feature of this movie that seems to recent to have excluded black actors and actresses from its cast. Instead, this must have been a conscious decision and a way to further alienate Paul from the rest of the characters in the movie. Mrs. Kittridge keeps saying “don’t think about elephants” during the meeting with Jeffrey and Paul. Does this line mirror her unconscious thoughts about how Paul different is from them? And just as she is trying not to think about the $2 million but cannot help herself, is she also judging Paul based on the color of his skin?
After viewing the movie, I was stuck wondering whether the film’s creators intended for us to sympathize with Paul. I left the theater feeling like his story is unresolved, and therefore I can’t put my finger on whether I sympathize with him or not. Should we feel sorry for Paul, considering the possibility that he has a mental disorder that causes him to lie (like when he claimed to have the last name of Kittredge)? Or does the portrayal of him in Boston as a quick-witted guy keep us from thinking of him as someone who is vulnerable and rather positions him in our minds as a con-artist. I think that my hesitance to trust him and my suspicion that some piece was missing to his story both keep me from liking his character.
What is Paul doing in this society? His story has infiltrated the lives of the wealthy art dealers on the Upper East Side of New York City – so much so that the Kittredges cannot attend dinner parties without the guests insisting that the story be told. So despite the fact that Paul’s actions may be strange, his background not as elite as the Kittridges associates, he nonetheless affects their world simply through the stories that are told about him. Paul may seem as out of place as the statue of Balto in Central Park, but nonetheless, he is there are causing people to stop and look.
Six Degrees of Separation
In viewing Six Degrees of Separation, it emerged as a struggle between the nature of chaos and of order. Specifically, the hinge point of this dichotomy is exemplified in the Kandinsky painting, a double-sided masterpiece of two differing techniques. I enjoyed exploring the different paths and viewpoints in which the Kittredges, Paul, the children, and other miscellaneous characters sprinkled throughout the film attempt to define and establish order in their world.
It seems most logical to begin to explore the possibilities of art as a means of orderly expression, a medium to utilize all other aspects of ones body besides their mouth. It is a way of making sense of a momentary and raw feeling; it is unfiltered and abstract. Some may even argue that it breaks down our notions of sanity and insanity, that nothing exceeds the boundaries of normalcy because these boundaries do not exist in art. Oddly enough, Flan Kitteridge is an art dealer and Ouisa as his trusty sidekick in business. Art decorates their home and funds their lifestyle. Art has become a collection for them, a showpiece of status and success. Through business, they get engulfed in the big names and classics, which are essentially works that others have previously determined as a masterpiece. Thus, the Kitteridges and their wealthy comrades corrupt art into money, which lies at the crux of their every decision.
Yet, in walks Paul Poitier, a phony, a visual pleasure, a black con artist. He enters the homes of the Kitteridges and others in town peddling the same story, shaking up the order of their lives. In walks chaos. Paul does not make sense to them or the viewer; he’s unpredictable and an unreliable character. To me, Paul is a reconstruction of art, a walking art form. He is a masterpiece that Flan can’t try to sell, a non-marketable product of beauty and brilliance. Paul reintroduces color into the world of the wealthy, using his rich black skin and an attitude of youthfulness and appreciation of the present moment. His charisma is addicting to the Kitteridges and other families that become victims of his mind fame because they automatically respect him as a “somebody” from the show he puts on. It is comparable to anybody automatically respecting a Van Gogh painting because it’s a Van Gogh but not actually taking the time to observe it and be with it. Paul is an interesting addition to the collection of people and stories the Upper East Side continuously adds to throughout their days, without anything better to do. The Kitteridges and friends thought they had established order, that they had accounted for what they wanted in life and were living the high life. Yet, Paul introduces to them that the visual is nothing without the emotional, without the process. The paintings on their wall mean nothing if they can’t apply them to their own lives, no matter the artist. I think this film focuses on figuring out what one wants from their own life to be the defining factor- how do they want to slap the hand of god?
Every time I watch the film Six Degrees of Separation, I wish that I was watching the stage play instead. However, I feel that the actors do a fantastic job of making the experience of watching this story evolve feel as much like a play as possible, mostly through the delivery of their dialogue. The way the lines are dovetailed, making the delivery fluid and conversational, just as if you were watching a play, or eavesdropping on someone’s conversation.
Perhaps my favorite aspect of Six Degrees of Separation is all the references to major works of art, literature, film and architecture. I find the references to Cats to be the most entertaining and trivial. To think that Sidney Poitier, a world renowned actor and director would ever associate himself with the likes of Cats, quite possibly the worst musical ever written, is hilarious. The fact that Flan and Ouisa fall for it makes it even more entertaining. Increasingly interesting is the reference to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, a film starring Sidney Poitier himself. In this film, a white woman brings home her black fiance to her parents, causing racial tensions within the family. When Paul comes into the lives of Flan and Ouisa, there is certainly racial tension that Ouisa works to rise above throughout the entire film. In terms of literature, I think the references to The Catcher in the Rye say a lot about the characters in Six Degrees of Separation. Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye goes on and on about how everyone around him is phony, and how people are simply not genuine. I completely agree with Kylie; Flan, Ouisa, their friends, colleagues and children spend so much time concerned with material things, their preoccupation with social standing and how others view them that they are exactly the people that Holden would despise.
I had seen this movie previously, and it never really hit me how pretentious the characters of the film are. Every single character simply drops names and rattles off figures for the purpose of gaining social standing and the ‘respect’ of their peers.
Paul’s description of “Catcher in the Rye” fits the majority of the characters perfectly. Ouisa and her husband spend the entire movie honing their anecdote word for word and purposefully playing pretend coy about their money and social power. They perpetuate their standing through playing their parts and feeding into the phoniness of the class. Paul plays a part, perhaps in a more literal sense, since he pretends to be a member of a different social class, but he is not that far away from the couple. He throws dates and quotes by Freud around to impress his audience and improve his standing, just like the couple. All of the couple’s friends also behave this way, only talking of superficial things, and when anything serious comes up, they make a joke or an anecdote. Even the children behave in a phony manner, putting on an act of rebelling against their parents even if they don’t actually want to. The only character who (as far as I remember) was completely honest was the Heather Graham character.