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• 1 2016-11-02T03:22:54-07:00 Hurts to Watch: The Tragedy of Patch Adams 22 plain 2016-12-13T04:42:22-08:00
   

  The concept of beauty is difficult for any one person to define. For the writer, beauty is found in the narrative, form, and the character of their work. For the artist, in the subject and the method. For the sadist, beauty is found in the suffering of others. Luckily many of us are at least mildly sadistic when it applies to tragedy. This is not to say that we all possess a hidden malevolence, but rather that we actively attempt to experience others' suffering in order to alleviate our own. This letting of emotion, either as purification or purgation, is also known as catharsis (Schaper). Tragedy and its sibling, horror, are always made as spectacular and sinister displays of ruin. Frequently, films seek to take something beautiful or meaningful and destroy it beyond repair. Sometimes it is the act of suffering itself which can render something or someone beautiful. Take, for example, the anti-acclaimed and yet well-recieved film Patch Adams. The film, despite its overuse of sentimentality, tells the story of a man who truly comes to understand the beauty of the world, but only at the height of his suffering.

  The film is a loose semi-biographical account about a man who manages to restrengthen his will to live after realizing that he could give his life meaning by helping people heal. In the beginning of the film, Adams- played by the late Robin Williams- has checked himself into a mental institution after a suicide attempt. While he is there, he finds he actually enjoys the company of his fellow patients and has a revelation: Perhaps, he thinks, he could become a doctor and use his charisma to connect with people who were suffering. Adams felt that since he could relate to his patients’ feelings of isolation and depression, he could help alleviate their pain with his ability to make them laugh. He enrolls himself into medical school, determined to make a difference. He is met with a world of indifferent doctors, people referred to as their diseases and case numbers, and the frigid Dean Walcott who disapproves of Patch’s personal touch. Nevertheless, the hospital staff and patients come to adore him. Over time, his passion even convinces some of his fellow medical students, such as Carin Fisher and Truman Schiff, to help him in his elaborate pranks and gifts.

  Unfortunately, tragedy dogs Patch persistently. While Adams is doing his best to combat the Dean’s impersonal medical regulations while operating an unlicensed medical clinic, Carin, now his girlfriend, is killed in a murder-suicide by one of their patients. For the second time in his life, Patch weighs his life against his misery.  He drives out to a cliff in a heavily wooded area, and after setting his bag of belongings down behind him, stands at the precipice to question God himself:

  So what now, huh? What do you want from me?” Patch pauses as he looks over the cliff. “Yeah, I could do it. We both know you wouldn't stop me. So answer me please. Tell me what you're doing. Okay, let's look at the logic. You create man. Man suffers enormous amounts of pain. Man dies. Maybe you should have had just a few more brainstorming sessions prior to creation. You rested on the seventh day. Maybe you should've spent that day on compassion.” He looks over the edge once more, then backs up and turns away. “You know what? You're not worth it.” (Shadyac, 1998)

  In this moment, Patch stands and looks across the rolling green hills of the valley below to a vast waterfall on the mountainside and waits for an answer. When he turns away from the view and back to his belongings, a small monarch butterfly sits on his bag. It flutters towards him and lands on his shirt. For Patch, it seemed to be a message not from God, but from his girlfriend, Carin, who had once likened herself to a caterpillar wishing to change into a butterfly. In this short scene, the natural wonders and beauty of North Carolina are captured extensively, at first contrasting sharply, are almost mocking Adams’ torment. Hume writes about such an employment of an emotional turn in his essay, "On Tragedy." In Shadyac's case, he takes Adam's moment of near-suicide and converts it into a noble and courageous despair that leads to his success and devotion to holistic medicine (Hume). When turns from the face and the brightly colored butterfly lands on Patch’s Hawaiian shirt, we are almost grateful to have watched Patch Adams suffer if only to have one final scene of contentment.

     
  
  
  
   

  Works Cited
  
  Adams, "Patch" Hunter, MD. "Me: A Short Autobiography." Gesundheit! Institute, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.
  Hume, David. "ESSAY XXII: OF TRAGEDY." Department of English. UPenn, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2016.
  Patch Adams. Dir. Tom Shadyac. Perf. Robin Williams. Universal, 1998. DVD.
  Schaper, Eva. “Aristotle's Catharsis and Aesthetic Pleasure.” The Philosophical Quarterly (1950-) vol. 18, no. 71, 1968, pp. 131–143. www.jstor.org/stable/2217511.