“You Are All Going To Die” The Wesleyan University Commencement Address by Joss Whedon

Joss Whedon is a successful script writer with a strong cult following. His work in television includes the series Roseanne, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, as well as the Hollywood blockbusters Speed, Alien: Resurrection, and Toy Story. Graduating from Wesleyan University in ’87, Whedon was invited to give the commencement address to the class of 2013. Satirizing the hackneyed overuse of Robert Frost‘s poem “The Road Less Traveled”, Whedon began his speech by acknologing the rampant triteness and lackluster appeals in most commencement addresses. He then jarred the crowd of young, expectant graduates by boldly proclaiming, “You are all going to die.”

Since then, this video has gone viral – congesting Facebook streams and blog forums. What is its appeal to young audiences, and the source of its popularity? Are people simply amused by his audacious inversion of what is typically a rosy and light-hearted speech? Does reminding young people that they are going to eventually die, nay, that the process has already begun, an effective way to motivate and inspire hope? Whedon’s speech was far from bleak and gloomy, but it was realistic and confrontational.

He follows this bold statement with a reflection on death:

The weird thing is your body wants to die, on a cellular level that’s what it wants. And that’s probably not what you want. I’m confronted by a great deal of grand and worthy ambition from the student body, you want to be a politician, social worker… your body’s ambition: mulch! Your body wants to make some babies, and then go in the ground to fertilize things. That’s it. And that seems like a bit of a contradiction, that doesn’t seem fair. For one thing, we’re telling you “go out into the world,” exactly when you’re body is saying “let’s bring it down a notch…” And it is a contradiction.

After this honest, albeit slightly macabre, musing, Whedon relates the contradiction between body and mind, death and life, with the necessary tensions that propel one forward. Whedon filters these heavy reflections with a flippant irreverence, and encourages the audience to “Listen to the dissent in yourself – to accept duality is to earn identity. Identity is something you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are, it is a process.” Philosophically, Whedon’s speech acknowledges the tension between life and death as more of a flexing continuum than stark duality. He recognizes that through exercising paradoxes, one is closer to gleaning any real, universal truth than through taking black-and-white stances. “Don’t just live, be that other thing connected to death. Be life. Live all of your life.”

Related Articles:

• “You are all going to die” Joss Whedon’s Wesleyan Commencement Speech (io9.com)
• Joss Whedon’s Uplifting Commencement Address Notes “You Are All Going to Die” (geekosystem.com)
• Memorable 2013 Commencement Speeches: Joss Whedon (Wesleyan): ‘You Are All Going to Die’ (taxprof.typepad.com)