Captain Fantastic: An Annoyingly Relatable Caricature of the Homeschool Experience
What comes to mind when you think of homeschoolers? Hippies? Loners? Socially stunted geniuses? If so, I’d like to tell you that you’re wrong. Homeschoolers are the same as all the rest. However, like most stereotypes, homeschool stereotypes hold a kernel of truth. The 2016 comedy film Captain Fantastic takes these generalizations surrounding homeschoolers and stretches them to their limit, crafting humorous yet awkwardly relatable extremes.
In Captain Fantastic, a single-parent father (Viggo Mortensen) homeschools his six kids.
You might be thinking, Six kids? Wow, what a huge family.
Ha. Jokes on you, I myself have five younger siblings. And six is considered small in the homeschooling community.
The kids of Captain Fantastic spend their days working in the family garden, living in a woodland camp, and learning to survive in the wilderness. At night, their work is hardly over, as they all gather around a campfire to study philosophy, literature, and advanced physics.
Ok, I’ll admit I lived in an ordinary suburban house in an average town growing up. But Captain Fantastic’s portrayal of the homeschooler’s family garden was humorously close to my reality. My family’s one-acre backyard is jammed with an enormous 3-aisle fenced garden, multiple fruit trees, a mini flower farm, and a coop of chickens. And in regards to surviving in the wilderness? While my parents never forced us to sprint through the forest and complete dangerous obstacle courses, my siblings and I were more than happy to provide this training ourselves. Right up to the day I arrived at Brown, I was running down trails in my town’s conservation land, fighting my sisters with sticks, and wading through swamps while chasing my little brothers. Trust me, my siblings and I met the Captain Fantastic standards.
Jokes aside, while the comedic aspects of Captain Fantastic had me chuckling, the scenes that showcased the equally relatable trials of homeschooling were more emotionally impactful than I expected from an ostensibly goofy family drama.
I closely related to Bodevan, the eldest of the six homeschoolers in the story. While everything in Captain Fantastic is highly stylized, the film manages to perfectly encapsulate the feeling of trying to transition into society as a homeschooler. In one scene, Bodevan shows off his many college acceptance letters to his father, anticipating a proud reaction. (Side note: Bodevan is admitted to Brown, but tragically ends up choosing Harvard). Instead, his father is annoyed and confused that Bodevan would even want to go to college when he is already so intellectually accomplished. And that’s when Bodevan explodes, declaring,
“I know nothing! I am a freak because of you! Unless it comes out of a fucking book, I don’t know anything about anything!”
While I am no Bodevan-style super genius who studied quantum physics at fourteen, the highly personalized nature of homeschooling always allowed me to be a few steps ahead of my peers as a child (academically speaking). But talking to people? Dealing with society? It was as though I didn’t speak the language. Like Bodevan, I didn’t understand basic standards of social etiquette and conversation. I didn’t know anything whatsoever about pop culture. When I interacted with people outside of my family, it was either the worst thing in the world or the greatest thing to ever happen to me, as my inexperienced brain overreacted to the most mundane social situations. For years, I had no clue what I was doing.
After all, the inevitable downside of homeschooling is that you end up living in relative isolation the majority of the time. It is only now, as a college freshman, that I think I’m finally getting the hang of it. I now know slang terms and swear words. I know how to use a credit card. I know who Lady Gaga is. I can enter a conversation without it becoming the focal point of my life for months afterward. I have a cell phone, and I’ve learned how to use “lol.” But like Bodevan, I spent my teenage years desperately struggling to understand, and longing to possess this “normal” lifestyle.
In the end, Captain Fantastic is truly made for homeschoolers. Sure, it’s not the greatest of films. The over-extended plot runs dry many times. The gags get old quickly. But what the film does offer is a touching emotional journey for those of us who grew up homeschooled. While there are plenty of coming-of-age and family dramas about public and private school experiences, few stories center on the perspective of homeschooling families. Captain Fantastic one of those rare films that offer an exaggerated but sincere portrayal of what my life (and the lives of many other homeschoolers) felt like for over fifteen years – addressing the stereotypes we’re rightly proud of, as well as the alienation that spawned our greatest struggles.