Culture

Robert De Niro Kind Of Shat On Everyone’s Dreams At This Prestigious Art School Graduation

"You're fucked."

by Meg Watson  24 May 2015

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In 2005, the legendary American author David Foster Wallace delivered a commencement speech at a liberal arts college in Ohio that’s widely regarded as one of the most inspiring graduation addresses of all time. The speech, entitled ‘This Is Water’, told students the real value of their artistic education is about finding a noble and empathetic way to live their lives. It’s about “how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out,” he said.

Today, Academy Award-winning actor Robert De Niro has given his own commencement speech to graduates from New York’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. In the end, it has the same noble intentions of DFW’s remarks and it may well be as memorable, but it’s definitely a little less eloquent.

“Tisch graduates: you made it,” he says. “And, you’re fucked.”

Throughout the full 16-minute address, it’s difficult to tell exactly where De Niro stands. At one point he’s an inspiring role model praising the young graduates for their creativity and strength; at another he’s your uncle at Christmas dinner chewing them out for not getting a “real job”.

“The graduates from the College of Nursing — they all have jobs,” he says. “The graduates from the College of Dentistry — fully employed. The Leonard M Stern School of Business Graduates — they’re covered. The school of Medicine graduates — each one will get a job. The proud graduates of the NY school of Law — they’re covered.”

It goes on like this for awhile.

“Where does that leave you? Envious of accountants? I doubt it. They had a choice. Maybe they were passionate about accounting, but I think it’s more likely they used reason and logic and common sense to reach for a career that could give them the expectation of success and stability. Reason. Logic. Common Sense. At the Tisch School of Arts? Are you kidding me? But you didn’t have that choice, did you? … When it comes to the arts, passion should always trump common sense.”

WOO, UNEMPLOYMENT!

Things go a similar way when he talks about the arts industry itself:

“A new door is opening for you — a door to a lifetime of rejection. It’s inevitable. It’s what graduates call the real world … There will be times when your best isn’t good enough. There can be many reasons for this, but as long as you give your best, it’s okay. Did you get straight A’s in school? If you did, good for you, congratulations. But in the real world, you’ll never get straight A’s again.”

In related news: the government’s cuts to the Australian arts sector have sent a huge number of people from of our creative communities into all-out revolt. The first results of this change have already been seen as the Australia Council suspended its June funding round and cancelled programs that previously helped young creatives such as ArtStart.

On Friday, thousands across the country gathered to protest these cuts. However, the fact that they did this through the medium of dance in the middle of a weekday is probably indicative of the fact we too are pretty fucked.