Notes addressed for those who watched: "Birdman"

Rating: 7/10 (9 February 2015)

Beginning by what the film has plainly to tell us (what's to say: by some quotes):
"Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige";
"The unexpected virtue of ignorance";
"A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing";
"Truth is always more interesting";
Let's treat "birdman" as a clay concept that we can manage its meaning along the text.
So, a first consideration: "birdman" is about being OVER society, like flying over it, or is about been OUT OF society, as it was possible to be away from what society produces in terms of concepts, expectations, responsibilities, consuming behaviors, etc?
Now, does a "birdman" still a man, although half man/half bird? Or the fusion mischaracterizes both the concept of "man" and "bird" in a way that "birdman" doesn't keep any correspondence with the two others?
When we get to this considerations, it automatically comes to mind the following: "birdman" as a hollywoodean character is something far different from Riggan-the-actor? Does the stage and the behind-spotlights share anything in common? Real life and its opposite — whatever it may imply — shares anything in common?
The unjustified search of fame, socially described as an indicator of a successful career, are more likely to refer to a "birdman" OVER society, meaning that the efforts by Riggan of getting the critique and also the general acclaim with his play go all in the intention of separate him of the normal people and the normal life, get him — once again, and who watched will understand — in the spot regardless of the play. Continuing, all go in the intention of transforming him in some "idol" that stands over society, but logically demands its existence, even better if all of its attention points to the idol — than comes to stage the social medias, the cultural industry and so on.
However, if "the popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige", in what the search for fame differs from the search for making an oeuvre d'art? Woudn't this two have the same roots, if we agree with the fact that the "real" artist searches recognition for the posterity (prestige?), searches for being an idol as well? And the "real" qualifier is a trick here 'cause the one-take- that-goes-beyond-days film is always joking with our conceptions of "real" and "unreal", "truth" and "lie", "play" and "reality", mixing and confounding it all, in an exercise of dialectics.
And that "remember note" in Riggan's mirror which says "a thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing" could be a provocation: who would be able to say what is and what is not art? What is worth of been played at Broadway — doubtless an idol in our society — and what is not? Maybe no one and, at the same time, we all. Because "art" is "art" and not what we say about it, we should trace the path to its "truth", its "essence" in order to state what it is, but this task is so contaminated and determined by the social language we were taught to speak that we could never reach any "truth" of anything, as it doesn't actually exist, as "real" and "unreal", "truth" and "lie", "play" and "reality", again, was really different perspectives of seen things — like a method of looking to world and describing it — and not just some mess up of the director (Riggan or Inirratu?).
So, we are all allowed to build our parameters of "truth". And "truth is always more interesting" right because it ins't something solid and fixed, but fluid — as the film is, thanks to the production's techniques choices — and dialectical.
And this is how "the unexpected virtue of ignorance" could be meaning: different from what our traditional philosophical standards says, we could revolutionize all the constellation of concepts socially built and that are all around us, determining us all the time; we could give any sense to any word according to our will — we could give a scientific status to "ignorance", crystallizing it as a virtue. Cultural industry — Hollywood, Broadway ... — has been always creating meanings and idols according to is own purposes. We could create our own world too, maybe even against what is given to us already built up and maybe this act would be an "real" act of "art" from somebody's perspective.
Lastly, maybe the "birdman" that stands inside us and that is quite opposite to all this media things and fame and so on, is that one flying OUT OF society, society in terms of a bunch of concepts, the source of a language the allows us to communicate within objective symbols, a language sometimes oppressive and despotic which works to the establishment (Foucault?), but flying out to an another society — or, more precisely, an another language — in which even some physical laws are reinterpreted — as the theater does —, in which even some reactions are reinterpreted — to which Emma's smile at the last act of the film is so expressive of (relief, happiness ...?).