Plato In Italian film

First, play this. It'll get you in the mood to talk Italian cinema.

         Plato’s Allegory of the Cave presents us with the tension between reality and representation. The reality we know is not always the truth, and what we hold to be true may not be reality. Within Plato’s cave, the prisoners know only what they are exposed to. Once one prisoner is exposed to the world, he realizes that what he had previously known to be true was actually an inaccurate representation. What if our world isn’t real? What if what we know is the truth is just a part of the whole? What if everything we know is a lie!?

A strong yet admittedly extreme example of this concept can be found in Roberto Benigni’s famous Italian film, La Vita è Bella (Life is Beautiful).  For those of you who don’t know the plot, it’s about a family enduring life in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. Throughout the movie we follow a father, Guido, and his son, Giosué, through their daily life and challenges at the camp. The unique quality of this movie comes with how they confront and conceptualize reality: Guido successfully convinces Giosué that the entire Holocaust is a game. He intensely protects his child from the brutal reality of Nazism and death that surrounds them and promises that it is just a game to be won. He tells his son that it was especially planned for his birthday and that all the “games” are going to be fun!

This scene is the epitome of how it worked: when a German soldier asks for an Italian translator, Guido takes this opportunity to convince his son that they are in a concentration camp to win a tank (his son’s biggest dream). The entire movie follows the “game” and the progress they “make.” Every day the father comes home to his son and explains how many points he won that day and that the game will only end when someone earns enough to take home the tank.

When reality temporarily permeates the game, Giosué says he heard rumors from other people that they put Jews in an oven and confronts his father with this. Temporarily, he is like the freed prisoner of Plato’s cave. He has heard the truth, but it challenges the reality that his father has created for him to believe.  Guido forces an uncontrollable laugher as a reply, and convinces Giosué that it is an absurd idea. Ovens are for food! Have you ever seen a person in an oven?! Haha! Later, we see the truth when Guido walks by a pile of skeletons. The division between Guido’s reality and Giosué’s reality is constantly juxtaposed to prove that this father is completely molding a reality for his son so that he isn’t exposed to the truth.

If we consider Plato’s Allegory, I don’t think this protective instinct is something he would endorse. He advocates for reality and truth, not deception and mere representation. Maybe times are really rough, but Plato would say that it’s better to deal with them realistically than to fabricate a fake reality. Our goal in life should be to find the truth, not hide behind a convenient and comfortable ignorance. But then Plato would frown upon Guido’s strategy for survival in the concentration camp, and I don’t think he should.

Now let's apply Plato to our own lives: consider whether or not we should blame anyone or anything for our false perceptions of reality. If we are living a lie, is it always a problem? Do we really need to be ascending from the cave? Would it be better for Giosué to know that he was living within an arena of death and brutality than to think incorrectly he was playing a game? I mean I don't think so. Can we blame the ones that care about us for protecting us? Would Giosué shame his father for getting them through the Holocaust the way he did? I certainly don’t think so. 

 Certainly there can be problems that arise from the realities our parents build for us. They protect us by convincing us that certain things are realistic and that our lives will follow the rules of such a reality, but what if we never grew out of it? What if the depiction of reality that has been forced upon us becomes all that we know and believe? “He bullies you because he likes you,” for example. If I go on my entire life thinking that every person who ever bullied me was secretly in love with me, it would cause some issues. I don’t debate that.

But sometimes these “lies” are necessary for happiness, and in the case of Guido and Giosué, survival. If we can grow up and ascertain the truth, I argue that no harm is done. I’d be a lot more upset as a child if I did know the truth; if I were the only prisoner outside the cave of childhood, it would be lonely and depressing without Santa and the Tooth fairy in my life. The truth comes to us with age, and when it does, it feels like a slap in the face from reality. But this is ultimately better than the alternative. 

 I admit that there are limits to how appropriate fabrications are, but in La Vita è Bella, the reality built by Guido for his son is within reason. He only convinced his child to play the Holocaust game because it was his means of survival. When Giosué grew up after the war he obviously realized the reality of his childhood situation and what his father had done for him. Fake representations of reality are threaded within our childhoods but I’d debate with Plato that it’s okay. And Giosué would have my back on this one.