#yawping

by your hand - los campesinos!

closeups under the cut!

So, my friend and I watched DPS and it was her first time and we talked a bit about the YAWP. Her point came down to one thing, Todd's yawp is NEIL.

Now, I wanted to pull apart and actually look at this. There's dictionary definition I wanted to attach to this argument.

A yawp according to Merriam Webster is 'a raucous noise'. This doesn't scratch the surface enough. So, I needed to put it into the context of the actual film. In DPS a Barbaric Yawp is this cry of freedom, and in the film it is pulled out from the Whitman poem. Now, the first time we hear a yawp, it comes from Todd. Yes, that first Yawp in Keating's class. It's frustration. Annoyance even...

We hear a few yawps on and off or what we can think of as metaphorical yawps. Knox yawps. I think we get moments that evoke the sentiment of a yawp; Meeks and Pitts dancing, Charlie's call from god, Cameron's monologue towards the end...The only one who get something close to an actual yawp is Knox and it's yelled out into the school hallway...Todd's YAWP is something else

Now, Todd in DPS is, 1) The first to Yawp 2) The yawp marks a transition 3) The Yawp puts a spotlight on him

The poem by Whitman specifies that it's a yawp that's shouted out 'over the rooftops of the world'. And if we put the pieces together, I think Todd's yawp isn't the one in the classroom. It's the yawp he yells out in the snow, it's the name of the boy that changed his life and the boy that was in every way his soulmate...Neil's name and Neil's spirit and Neil was his YAWP. Neil changed his world, freed him and Neil pushed him to seize the day...Neil reached out to him when he needed someone...

This just about proves that they had something unlike most other relationships and friendships in the film. Neil's death caused unimaginable pain...and this was Todd's reaction...A YAWP. HIS YAWP.

We aren’t friends anymore <33

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute, we read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion.

"Dead poets society" 1989