Is McConaughey’s hero-chasing really laudable?

Many before me (in the past 24 hours) have undertaken the task of deciphering the complexities of Matthew McConaughey’s 2014 Oscar-Acceptance speech. The actor, you will recall, won the award for his performance in “Dallas Buyer’s Club,” and perhaps, for the risk of playing a AIDS-afflicted transvestite, the formerly shirtless wonder of such flicks as “Failure to Launch,” “How to Lose A Guy in Ten Days” and “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” deserves all the accolades that we can muster.  Bravo!  Alright, alright, alright… Amen, amen, amen….

And yet, I cannot bring myself to leave McConaughey’s three-point sermon alone.  The many seem to appreciate the humility with one side of their mouths and then the sheer bravado with the other.  My sense, however, is that the 1993 graduate of the University of Texas at Austin never had a course in philosophy and/or theological studies, and if he did in fact have some exposure to existentialism or even a Methodist Church, that his former professors or preachers now hang their heads in shame.

First, let’s review the speech. McConaughey wakes up each day with these three dynamics at play in his vacuous cranium: 1. God and the science of gratitude (more on this later); 2. Family, including a deceased father, who currently lounges around the Platonic Heaven, wearing boxer-shorts and slurping Miller Lite, not to mention a bowl of Gumbo and some Lemon Meringue pie, which are set to the side for later… (Alright, go ahead and mention them both!); and 3. Someone — a hero — to chase after.  And, you see, it’s this last item that warrants a deeper and more incisive exploration.

All colloquialisms and all euphemisms aside, I fear that McConaughey’s remarks, as well as the sentiment behind them, are going to lauded next to the other great speeches of yesteryear. And to call what follows great would be like calling Spokane a great metropolitan mecca.  That is to say, to be quaint does not equate with great.  Plus, with all the hubbub over the heart-throb in drag, did you hear Lupita Nyong’o, who won for Best-Supporting Actress? To Steve McQueen, who put Solomon Northup’s experience of woe, to passionate and poignant expression, she said, “I’m certain the dead are standing about you and they are grateful and so am I.”  Now, given the African-American woman’s quivering, frail voice, that is great…  But I digress; McConaughey awaits with this little ditty: “My hero is always 10 years away…”  

Wow! That’s profound!  But who is it?  Whom do you emulate?  What qualities in this presumed male-macho-figure do you recommend to us?  How did this inspiring person come to your attention and now garner ours as well?  Does this hero have a name?  And that, of course, is the paradox.  McConaughey was and is and perhaps ever-will-be referring to himself.  Himself. He is his own hero. In 10 years.

Brilliant, eh? Narcissus, move over. There’s a new mythic figure in town, and he’s now got the gold with which to frame his reflections. The object of McConaughey’s most supreme aspiration is Himself at 25, but only when he was fifteen years old…  And then, from the perspective of himself at 25, the Icon of his Dreams is none other than Himself at 35…  And yes, Himself at 45… which means (think about it!) that he only has one more year before he overtakes his hero. But don’t you get it? Pay attention, class. Says the well-coiffed man in the tuxedo, “I’m never going to attain that. That keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.”

Yes, and Amen! And that always keeps you well within the bounds of your own large and expansive ego as well, doesn’t it?  That always keeps you chasing and never quite allows you to encounter one, like Ms. Nyong’o, who is truly Other-than-Yourself…

Hmmm…  Now’s the time for an intervention.

You relate yourself to yourself, but neglect to admit what Jean Paul Sartre once noted in his 1966 philosophical musings. Namely, “This means that in establishing a certain conduct as a possibility and precisely because it is my possibility, I am aware that nothing can compel me to adopt that conduct. Yet I am indeed already there in the future; it is for the sake of that being which I will be there at the turning of the path that I now exert all my strength, and in this sense there is already a relation between my future being and my present being.  But a nothingness has slipped into my heart of this relation; I am not the self which I will be.  First I am not that self because time separates me from it. Secondly, I am not that self because what I am is not the foundation of what I will be.  Finally I am not that self because no actual existent can determine strictly what I’m going to be.  Yet… I am the self which I will be, in the mode of not being it…” (Being and Nothingness, trans. by Hazel Barnes).

Mr. McConaughey?  You’ve clearly chosen one way to go.  But I want ferret out this idealized self which you laud with such sincerity. Your hero means Nothing to us.  Your hero — Yourself in 10 Years— recommends to us an insular, self-absorbed life, where gratitude is “a science” of reciprocity, and God is somehow chained to this mechanistic world-view like the maintenance man on a soda machine. Are you grateful for what you’ve been given but only because of what more may be given to you quid pro quo?  Does your humble thanks leverage the universe into granting you more Oscars in the decades to come?

Let me be clear:  what you’ve modeled so zealously to the young and impressionable, (along with the old and forlorn, who once were so young and impressionable), is not gratitude so much as the bartering of ego’s, which leads ostensibly to the enslavement of ego’s, which leads to a terrible despair.  As evidence for this claim I cite Philip Seymour Hoffman and yes, the late, great Judy Garland, who sang, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, with such angst, it still hurts.