Moviegoing as Metaphysical Philosophy: Binx Bolling's Search for Authenticity in Percy's The Moviegoer
Overview
This paper analyzes Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, examining protagonist Binx Bolling's use of cinema as a means to escape the banality of everyday life. The essay argues that moviegoing functions as a metaphysical philosophy through which Percy explores themes of despair, authenticity, and the human inability to act meaningfully within modern existence, drawing on film theory by Stanley Cavell and Gilles Deleuze.
What this essay covers
- Introduction establishing Binx as an unreliable narrator seeking to evade commonness through exile and movie-watching
- Analysis of how Binx's search paradoxically generates despair rather than fulfillment, culminating in his acceptance of everydayness
- Application of Cavell and Deleuze's film philosophies to interpret Percy's use of cinema as a vehicle for exploring metaphysical authenticity and the tension between cinematic and lived reality
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The Moviegoer is a narrative that features the character Binx Bolling’s hunt to evade commonness. Percy commits to establishing Binx as an undependable narrator and disenchanted searcher confined by the unfamiliarity of how life look like the cinemas he watches. The character refugees himself from the society and the public because of anxiety that the concept of everydayness may challenge him. The result of the exile is that Binx loses his knowledge about the world. He is unaware that the lack of familiarity is instigating his despair. Binx is self-assured in the avoidance approaches, including warranty, recurrence, and revolution that blinds him from appreciating the true hopelessness, helplessness to act under the realism of daily routines. In the first three moviegoer events, Percy notes that the hunt, despite its aim to evade despair, is the actual forerunner of misery.
The concept of film as philosophy by Stanley Cavell helps to clarify the use of Percy's moviegoing actions to display that the despair of Binx is a result of his lack of knowledge about the hopelessness. Binx's search stops following a train ride to Chicago when the concept of everydayness confronts him, but he later accepts the reality. The search falls apart, and Binx learns that the idea of everydayness exists and understands the reasons for his despair. He learns that his unhappiness results from the lack of aptitude to act and react or gain the capability to move.