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<i>Good Will Hunting</i> or Wild Goose Chase?: Masculinities and the Myth of Class Mobility

1999; Eastern Michigan University; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/jnt.2011.0019

1549-0815

Richard Rees,

Digital Games and Media

Good Will Hunting or Wild Goose Chase?: Masculinities and the Myth of Class Mobility Richard Rees Perhaps one of the reasons that 1997's Good Will Hunting received such warm critical and popular receptions is because its narrative is for many viewers another telling of America's most dominant myth. Leo RuIl, for example, a South Boston social worker from the depressed, working class neighborhood represented in the film, said, "You don't have to be a genius to make it in life . . . But the movie shows you can make it regardless of all the odds stacked against you" (qtd. in "South Boston"). The film's story falls into the well-worn grooves of the rags to riches story of class mobility whose ideological function is to rationalize the inequitable nature of labor relations in a capitalist society. In America, if you have enough perseverance, so the old homily goes, there is no limit to how high you can climb the ladder of status and wealth. Thus, those who remain where they are must view their own immobility as indicative of some personal, rather than social, failing. For the film's stars and co-authors, Matt Damon and Matt Affleck, Good Will Hunting has proved their breakthrough film. So the Horatio Alger narrative even becomes the story that the members of the Academy told when they awarded Damon and Affleck, previously "independent" bit actors, the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 1997. JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory 29.2 (Spring 1999): 228-240. Copyright © 1999 by JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory. Good Will Hunting or Wild Goose Chase? 229 But do you need to be a genius to make it or not? The chief difference between the usual formulation of the American Dream and Good Will Hunting's version is that it is not perseverance so much as remarkable inborn aptitude that is required to cross class boundaries. For Will (Damon), an autodidact, no educational apparatus exists for him or his friends that could develop this innate quality. The only difference between Will and his friends is his intellectual gift. As Will's best friend, Chuckie (Affleck), tells him, "Look. You got somethin' none of us [have]." It is only the occasional freak of nature that receives the opportunity to escape the cruel determinations of a lowly birth. Everyone else without rare talents, however , like his South Boston comrades, must accept the plan laid out for them by the requirements of class society. Taking a beer break at their demolition work site, Will's best friend Chuckie gives his approval for Will to abandon his class comrades, even reprimanding him for not doing it sooner: All right. No, no, no. Fuck you. You don't owe it to yourself . You owe it to me. 'Cause tomorrow I'm gonna wake up and I'll be fifty. And I'll still be doin' this shit. And that's all right, that's fine. I mean, you're sitting on a winnin ' lottery ticket. And you're too much of a pussy to cash it in. And that's bullshit. 'Cause I'd do fuckin' anything to have what you got. So would any of these fuckin' guys. It'd be an insult to us if you're still here in twenty years. Hanging around here is a fuckin' waste of your time. The film's central drama involves the main character's resistance to moving up and out of his working class neighborhood by capitalizing on his towering intellectual abilities. This reluctance, despite constant urging from the eminent M.I.T. mathematician Gerald Lambeau (Stellan Skarsg ârd) who discovers him and maneuvers him into therapy, is linked to his incapacity to trust as a result of childhood abuse. Thus the film psychologizes class oppression for the main character but naturalizes it for his friends. That is, while Will's friends accept that their chances of class mobility as equivalent to winning the lottery, Will cannot cash in on his "winning ticket" and advance his socio-economic standing because of his psychological and emotional problems. 230 JNT The Men of Southie Yet, class immobility is not all bad in the film. Compensation...