One Way Or Another, Robin Williams’ Artistry Touched The Souls Of Many Of Us

 By Doug Draper

“There’s some sad things known to man,
but ain’t too much sadder than,
the tears of a clown,
When there’s no one around.”

 Those lyrics from an old Motown song by Smokey Robinson came to mind after I was blown away with the news this August 11^th that actor/comedian Robin Williams was found dead in his California home – a victim of apparent suicide following what people close to him described as bouts of severe depression.

Robin Williams as the English teacher in Dead Poets Society, one of many engaging roles in film that touched so many of us.

Regular visitors to Niagara At Large know that I’m a bit of a pop culture junkie who has posted pieces on some milestone happenings in that culture before. And in that spirit, I can’t help but join multiple millions of others across this continent in expressing sadness over the death, at age 63, of Robin Williams – one of the more brilliant and engaging pop culture figures of our time of our times who, according to the latest reports, fell victim to suicide following severe bouts of depression.

Joe Scarborough, host of an MSNBC Cable program called ‘Morning Joe’, put it well during the August 12^th edition of his show when he said Robin Williams was the acting and comedic equivalent of the legendary late guitar player/vocalist/songwriter Jimi Hendrix. It was, in my view, a perfect comparison since both seemed to draw way down deep, to wells of mysterious resources of artistry and genius most of the rest of us can only imagine tapping in to.

Many of us have our favourite television and movie moments with this talented man. I have many of my own, and among the ones that touched me the most was his role as an English teacher in the 1989 movie ‘Dead Poets Society’. In that film, he played an unorthodox teacher in a very stuffy and strict military academy for boys who had these magical ways of making the poems of Walt Whitman and others come alive with such soul that the students in his class, so bored with the rest of the academy, felt warmer streams of  blood coursing through their veins. .

I had a teacher like that at the Centennial high school I attended in Welland, Ontario the late 1960s and he happened to teach English. He also through the orthodox curriculum of the day away when he felt it was a good idea of finding some other way to get a young kid you never read a book, interested in reading a book for the first times in their lives. He would have us engage in exercises he conjured up and involving writing – one of them had us playing the role of a doctor or plumber or farmer or someone else, and argue why we should be one of the few that should be allowed in a fallout shelter that could only hold eight during a nuclear war – that excited every student in the class in a way I never saw every student in a public school room excited before.

This English teacher’s year at our high school did nothing but infuriate many of the other teachers on staff to a point that at the end of our school year with him, he decided to leave our school, which is one of the many reasons I still have little use for the usual bullshit that goes on at our public schools. 

And just as one of my favourite teachers was pressed to leave our school – by some poetic justice, a textbook of exercises he used in our class was approved by the province years later for use by teachers who had once crapped on him – the teacher Robin Williams played in ‘Dead Poets Society’ was forced to leave at the end of the year.

Robin Williams was one of the best comedians of our time, but he never let comedy mask an edgy, rebellious streak against oppressive orthodoxy and for inspiring people to look into their souls and reach for higher goals. 

We should most surely miss him because there is no one – absolutely no one around today – who comes close to taking his place. Share your thoughts below.

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