Will Success Spoil Our Lives?

The issues we experience today in relation with depression and lack of purpose in our lives are not new or sudden. With the increase of economic “development” we always believe that our lives will be better by inertia. However, in our way to what we call “success,” we forget about the simple but most important things in our lives. Just as the movie “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” warned us about the way economic gain can make us forget other more important aspects of our lives, we can see the signs of depression and mental instability all around us. We live in search of a better job or a nicer car, but fail to recognize that the relations with others, as well as staying connected to our real passions is more important.

I also found interesting the way the movie highlighted the instability of jobs. At the beginning of the movie, Rock Hunter almost lost his job after having worked so hard to keep it. I believe this is relevant even more than when the movie came out. Many of us work in constant fear of loosing our jobs, and with the versatility of today’s economic system, jobs are created and lost in a matter of days.

In addition providing a comic view of how we work in fear of loosing our jobs, “Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” also shows how the fear of staying true to our passions can be the rout to fake success. The 1950’s film represents how even people who we believe are already successful are not contempt with their lives. For example, the character of the movie whom was the owner of the marketing company was not happy with working as the President or doing anything else besides working in horticulture.   

“Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?” not only exposes some realities of our society in a very clear way, but also uses comedy to bring a positive side to the daunting process of finding out what we will do to survive as adults while staying connected to our passions. I think that depression will be lowered tremendously in the United States if we were able to study for free what really makes us happy instead of making decisions based on fear of economic loss.