Just about ten years ago, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was released, starring Ben Stiller in the lead role, Kristin Wiig, Sean Penn and the great Shirley MacLaine. I can't remember when I first watched it, but just watched it again last week.
If you have never seen the film, and plan on doing so, it may be best not to continue reading as the main point of this post is the meaning, to me, of the last scene.
As a quick summary, Walter is a negative asset manager at Life Magazine. As an asset manager, Walter handles the negatives sent in by the Sean Penn character, Sean O'Connell, a world renowned photo-journalist who still sends in actual rolls of film to Walter for him to process. Old school.
The antagonist of the movie is that the last issue of Life Magazine is set to be published in the coming week, and Sean has sent in what he has described as the quintessential picture which he would like to be on the last cover. Unfortunately, the negative seems to be missing from the roll that Sean sent, which sends Walter on an outrageous adventure to track down Sean to find out where the negative might have gone.
Originally, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was a short story published by James Thurber in 1939, in which Thurber describes, and revolves the life of Walter Mitty, around his daydreams. Some interpret the story as a way of demonstrating how the ordinary can be extraordinary, how the everyday life of even the most meek person, can become exciting, dangerous, meaningful when imagination is added.
Stiller takes this concept and creates a much more visual version, sending Walter in search of Sean to Greenland, Iceland and "ungoverned" Afghanistan during which he jumps into the Arctic and fights off a shark with a suitcase, and barely escapes a volcanic eruption, among other instances of adventure.
In essence, Walter lives, for a few days, experiences that he has only imagined before, when he would "zone out" as his mother and sister call it. In fact, right after the shark incident he palms the face of one of the sailors who rescues him, just to make sure what has just occurred was real. That is the extent of his past life's exploits, that he doubts, for a second, the reality of the episode.
In the end, Walter finds Sean on a mountaintop in Afghanistan, where he finds out that the missing negative was inserted into the slot in the wallet that Sean had gifted him, and which Walter had thrown out after being frustrated by getting fired from work due to the missing negative.
Fortunately, in a scene after this revelation, Edna Mitty, Walter's mom played by Shirley MacLaine, offhandedly suggests for Walter to put something in his wallet, to which Walter responds that he doesn't have anymore, which leads to Edna handing the gifted wallet to Walter, in the most casual of ways, because (and I am paraphrasing here) "I always keep your nick-nacks."
And so, Walter, despite already having been fired, returns to the transition team at Life and hands them the negative, thereby completing his last task at Life, the magazine's interests and the loyalty to Sean's photographic work, having been placed ahead of his own.
Pretty relevant, when we consider how phrases like make America great again mistake selfishness for patriotism.
But ultimately, and perhaps a bit unrealistic if I am to be honest, is the scene when asked, what was it, by a fellow recently terminated co-worker, a unicorn, Sasquatch, Walter causally answers that he never looked. And, when I think about it, this loyalty was not just for Sean's work, not just for the concept of what Life Magazine meant to Walter, and all those faceless and innumerable employees who made Life the iconic magazine it was, but also loyalty to what being a negative asset manager meant to Walter, and the understanding that being the best negative asset manager he could be was his contribution to Life's success, his way of making his own much less interesting life (to him), meaningful.
I warned you earlier that if you planned to see the movie, you might want to not read this post. If you are reading it anyway, you still might enjoy the movie despite what you have learned so far, but I recommend you stop reading here as I am about to reveal what that last cover picture depicted, and why it is important.
For those still reading, who have seen and recollect the film, you know that the final cover of Life Magazine was an homage to all the everyday employees who made Life successful over the years, and enshrined Walter Mitty as one of those unsung workers, presenting him, unaware that he was being photographed, deep in thought while examining one of the thousands of negatives he had processed over the years.
I had a conversation with an acquaintance at my niece's graduation party this past weekend, during which I repeated my oft stated belief that paying a livable wage to everyone who works, is being disabused as one of the causes of inflation.
I asked him why someone who gets up at 4:00 AM to go to work, perhaps working outside in the heat of summer or in the freezing temps of winter, regardless of the task, or who takes care of our children at day care centers, or works in the hot and steamy kitchens of our restaurants, why they shouldn't receive a livable wage? Especially in light of the tens of millions dollars a year that certain other people in America earn. And, to boot, why so many of those very same people don't have health care insurance, perhaps because their particular employment is in retail, or fast food, or day care, or maybe because their employer only offers health care coverage to 40 hour employees and, just coincidentally, they can only get 32 or 35 hours a week? And yet, despite the fact that most of us would agree that, yes, everyone should receive a livable wage, we also believe with little evidence, that giving everyday people higher wages creates inflation so we shouldn't do it?
Of course, there was no answer, my friend knew that too many everyday workers were treated poorly, but too easily assumed that those people just couldn't, or didn't want to pursue a job in which they were valued more. And that hey, inflation sucks so if higher wages (to the lower and middle class workers) creates inflation, then let's not do it, even though, somehow, the rich are getting richer, and that more income is flowing to their coffers, yet no one seems upset at their ever increasing salaries.
Which meant that, like most people, he was missing the point.
In the Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Sean, the photographer, took the time to point out that it was the everyday workers at Life who made the magazine what is was, but in the end, Sean would get other assignments, another job, due to his specialty and his proficiency in performing that job while so many of those he honored in his quintessential picture might not, not because they weren't just as good at their job as he was at his, but because we fail to properly value the people who keep everything working.
We allow the masters to set the terms, all the while calling those masters good businessmen, as we accept their definition and valuation of our contributions.
My goodness, we even accept that on the one day a year when we are supposed to celebrate the everyday laborers of our society, millions of us still have to work!
I don't expect the workers of the world to unite any time soon. When it has worked, when workers in some industries fought for unions, for better wages, for the 8 hour work day, for paid sick and vacation time, for health benefits, for safer working conditions, and compensation when on the job injuries occurred, there was mass push back from the owners and masters. And, eventually, laws passed that allowed workers to opt out of union dues even when they were receiving benefits from union negotiations, and other legal rules that the masters employed to negate the strength of unions and the everyday workers who benefit from collective bargaining.
Perhaps the real secret of Walter Mitty is no secret at all. That the men and women who make America great, the Walter Mittys that work and live and die in our country, those that make all the goods, provide all the services, then turn around and make use of those goods and services thereby keeping the economy vibrant, are the very people that the masters prefer stay in the shadows, stay unknown, labor in silence, accepting the scraps that they deign to allow to trickle down.
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