Finding the Visionary Yogi in John Candy

Ever seen the movie Delirious, starring John Candy? Well, up until recently neither had I. And, if I’m being completely honest, I still haven’t.  But you know what I have seen? The trailer. And I’ve embedded it below so you can see it as well.

From what I’ve been able to gather scanning the trailer and the first few Google search results, the movie has something to do with a soap writer (played, I think, by Candy) who gets hit on the head and wakes up as a character in his own show, allowing him to manipulate characters….making people fall in love with him, fall out of love with each other, etc.

The films was a commercial and critical failure…..but the public and critics sadly don’t know the meaning of namaste….and profundity of this brilliant piece of work is lost on them. Sadly, this work has aged better than those pretentious newspaper mouth-breathers could ever have hoped to. They are so far from Samadhi (the state of complete Self-actualization for you non-Yoga folks), that I shutter to think of how poorly aligned their chakras are.

Many great works are not appreciated when they first come out and this could be one of them. Yet the digital age forces us to confront many of the ugly realities Candy’s character was presciently battling in 1991 (or was it really set in a not so distant future envisioned by Candy? If it was not for the typewriter, this could be a timeless classic). Our current social media addiction and the viralizing of everything makes us all, in many ways, characters in our own self-selected soap opera, of "selfie opera."  We take selfie after selfie that may (or may not) depict the reality of our lives. In this manner we become the directors of a subtly (and sometimes not so subtly – @richkidsofinstagram) visual documentary about our own life. A life we project to others through various forms of social media. CNN reported in 2015 that teens were spending 9hrs a day using social media. The Daily Mail reports that only a year later teens are now spending more than 9hrs per day on social media, and “In a startling testament to the rise of 'selfie' culture, they also spend 15 minutes a day taking pictures of themselves to send to their friends or post online.” I can’t imagine the state of their Ayurveda.

When I see Candy’s face in the movie poster, I see a gentle giant of a soul, contemplating the immense gravity of social media and selfie culture that humankind would soon be grappling with. I’m not sure, from the photo, if Candy knew his life would be cut short so soon…but the piercing blue all-knowing nature of his stare tells me he strongly suspected that these problems were ones that he would (perhaps thankfully) not be around to see….thanks for the warning John. I was only a kid, but I only wish we’d listened to the obvious message contained in that bottle you so generously sent out to sea in 1991 sooner….take this selfie as my way of trying to step into your shoes to see, as you so obviously did, what the future holds….I hope more of my contemporaries have the courage to do the same…whether it be your cherished Hush Puppies or the red hot sneakers of Harrison Ford as he revisits his role as Rick Deckard in the speculative science fiction film Blade Runner 2049.  

Note: This work is a piece of satire, take nothing posted here seriously, unless of course you are seriously laughing - in which case, continue.

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