Captain Fantastic

Ramiro Butvilofsky
Captain fantastic tell us the story about a family living in the forest and their

particularities. This movie is very useful to analyse diverse aspects seen in class. To

put us in context, I have to clarify some details of the movie. This family is made up

of six members, the father (Ben), two boys and three girls, who have an anormal way

of living compared to the rest of the American society. This leads us to the first topic

to analyse: belief systems.

The case of this story is a good example of how having a belief system can make us

totally different from others. This family follows a totally unique way of seeing the

society and their people. They follow no religions and have their own perspective of

the world. What I mean with this is that, for example, there are several scenes in

which they criticize the way normal people live in the cities (working all day long,

having obesity, making fun of others who believe in religions) because they say,

especially the father who implanted the way of thinking to the children, that the

lifestyle of what we call “normal people” is meaningless and full of ignorance. The

situation here is that the movie in the beginning shows us how intelligent this family

is and try to convince us that they have a kind of “perfect healthy lifestyle”. But when

it comes to reality, the society sees the family as a weird thing, or even as

dangerous. For example, there is a scene in which the family is invited to the house

of the aunt, and while eating, Ben and the children talk openly about how the mother

took his life due to her mental illness, and all this in front of the children of the aunt

who were still kids. From the system of belief of Ben’s family, talking about dead is

something normal, while from the traditional system of belief, being so explicit with

the details doesn’t feel correct.

Another aspect that we could analyse is the methods of socialization. Creating

relations with others is something really common in our life. We learned how to do it

since we entered the kindergarten because we wanted friends to play with. But this

is not the same case for the family on “Captain Fantastic”. As the kids did not go to

any educational institution, they were always by their own. Even though they were

raised and educated by his father who made them extremely intelligent in relation to

numbers or history, when they have to meet new people things get weird to them.

There is this scene in which Bo, the oldest son of the family, come across with a girl.

At first, he struggles to interact with the girl but finally he opens up to her. But

because his lack of experience to interact with others he imagined a future with that

girl, making her feel weird and overwhelmed. Then she leaves and he never sees

her back again.

Finally, we can analyse the classification system that is strongly rooted in to the

belief system. The classification system of Mary Douglas tells us about how we

consider certain things as trash if they are not in their place. For example, the case

of the leaf of a tree. When it is on the floor, we usually say is rubbish, but when it is

on the branches of the tree, we say it is pretty. There is this scene in the movie

which the family goes to pass the night at a camping centre. The following day, the

father Ben appears naked in front of other random people. From his view this is not a

problem because being naked is natural and something we shouldn’t be scared of.

But from the point of view of others, this situation is totally awkward. Being naked in

front of people that you not even know is not correct due to certain beliefs in the

society. What I'm trying to say with this example is that being naked in the open is as

normal as drinking water (for the family). But for the others, that is not the place to
show your naked body, instead we could say it’s the toilet or even your house, but

not outside.