Max Ames
Mr. Motter
Philosophy
12 April 2011
A Rose, A Rouse, A Republic
Philosophy, like the film The Purple Rose of Cairo, is eludes the confines of black and white;
there are rarely clear answers to the simple questions that man has been asking himself since the times
of Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher. In The Purple Rose of Cairo, the fictitious black and white
Tom Baxter jumps off the big screen and into the real world of color, carrying with him endless
connections to the philosophy of Plato as he is affronted with criticism from both his peers and
creators and is provided with a chance at true love. The Purple Rose of Cairo offers numerous
examples of Plato’s “The state is the individual writ large” as well as Divided Line concepts from
Plato’s The Republic.
In The Purple Rose of Cairo, each of the central characters including Cecilia, the actor Gil
Shepherd and his doppelganger Tom Baxter portray archetypal characteristics of the society and time
that they were a part of. Cecilia represents the part of society that was faced with desperation, poverty,
and disillusionment during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cecilia, like the society around her, has
difficulty in keeping and finding jobs. Cecilia struggles as many others struggled in her time, to make
enough just to live off of. Her society was one of tremendous stress and required an outlet and means
of escapism. Cecilia and her husband Monk offer up two examples of escapism that were extremely
prevalent during the Great Depression; Cecilia frequents the cinema to escape into the fantasies and
hopeful stories of Hollywood while Monk gambles and drinks excessively. Just as Cecilia and Monk
express characteristics of a huge part of society, Gil Shepherd exposes within himself the cruel,
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greedy, and corrupt portion of society through his underhanded techniques he uses in manipulating
Cecilia to get at Baxter. Shepherd, a struggling film actor who wishes to keep his rising career in the
movies afloat, shows the corruption of Hollywood and the individuals that it is composed of. Shepherd
is willing to do anything to sustain the small bit of fame he has and to continue in his profession, even
at the expense of others. Cecilia foolishly falls in love with Shepherd and, because he is manipulating
her, convinces Baxter to go back into the movie that he had escaped. After Shepherd has used Cecilia
for that single purpose, he leaves her and returns to Hollywood. The movie industry that Shepherd
works for is full of individuals who, like Shepherd, are willing to crush those around them in order to
make a profit and in fact Shepherd nearly becomes one of their victims when the creators of The
Purple Rose of Cairo coerce him into doing whatever it takes to get Baxter back into the movie he
came from. Baxter is the embodiment of the desires and curiosities that are particular to the black and
white community that exist within the fictional realm of the film. For one thing, Tom Baxter is an ideal
individual, which only exists in the movies, and cannot act out of character. He, like every other movie
character, has a scripted personality. Cecilia and her husband, Gil Shepherd, and Tom Baxter are each
individuals that can be viewed as case studies for the larger society that they belong to.
Plato’s Divided Line concept manifests itself strong in The Purple Rose of Cairo through the
character of Tom Baxter. The concept states that things rank from less real to more real. An image of
an object is the least real. More real than the image is the object itself. However, the object itself is less
real than the blueprint and designated makeup and function of the object. The most real is the perfect
or ideal form of the object. Tom Baxter starts off in the film as nothing but a project image in a movie
theatre. Baxter himself, evoking imagery of Plato’s myth of the cave, refers to the world of projections
as “flickering shadows”. To a similar effect, the projections are also referred to in the film as a “world
of illusion and shadow”. There are degrees within each subcategory of the divided line; for example,
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there can be some images that are less real than other images. In the context of the movie, the
projected Tom Baxter is less real than the image of Baxter on the film itself, which is where the
projection comes from in the first place. Tom Baxter becomes more real when he exits the realm of the
projection and becomes a concrete object. However, it may be questioned whether or not he truly
became more real, since he became an object derived from an image. Since it is fictitious and such an
instance could not occur in the real world, it does not warrant deep speculation. Baxter begins to
outline his “blueprint” stage on the Divided Line by discussing the fact that he is a written character
who is bound by certain traits and certain clothes. Everything that defines who he is and what he does
is dictated by the blueprint created by the writers of the movie when they devised the character as well
as the actor Gil Shepherd when he fleshed out the character. It may be the case that the Tom Baxter
who has escaped from the projection is, besides for the concrete object, the ideal form as well. Baxter
himself speaks about how he has to act a certain way because it is in his character. The projection-born
Baxter acts and lives as his writers defined him and as Shepherd portrayed him and is the perfect
manifestation of the idea of Tom Baxter. Through Tom Baxter, the object half of Plato’s Divided Line
is demonstrated in The Purple Rose of Cairo.
Throughout the course of The Purple Rose of Cairo, Tom Baxter crosses from the realm of
black-and-white into the realm of reality and color and then back again, while also ascending the
ladder of Plato’s divided line. Baxter also, along with Cecilia and her husband, and Gil Shepherd
offers examples of Plato’s “the state is the individual writ large” by reflecting the world around
them. Plato’s ideas from The Republic, as shown by The Purple Rose of Cairo, are universal
concepts, which easily manifest themselves in this world (especially within an essay about a
movie, which in turn is about a movie where every tendril of being ties into the ancient Greek
philosopher’s model of reality).