Speed Levitch on Existentialism in “Waking Life.”

                                    

In his monologue, Speed Levitch emphasizes the importance to live life in the moment without hindering oneself with the past or hardships through ethos; quoting famous writers, poets, and artists to emphasize his point, pathos; Speed Levitch uses passionate language to engage the audience, and logos; sharing philosophical ideas. The movie itself deals with very philosophical subjects on dreaming, existentialism, consciousness, love, etc. . . .  And there seems to be a need to express the confusion and haziness those subjects bring to mind (for instance, the usage of rotoscoped animation) while still wanting to be taken seriously (for instance, using scientists, or acclaimed thinkers to speak in the movie.)

Speed Levitch is engaging because of his voice, vocabulary and sentence structure. He has a passion for what he is speaking of, “the ongoing wow” that is life, and a desire to share with the audience and teach. If one is a listening audience, meaning if the audience is watching the clip, his passion can be detected through the enthusiasm in the tone of his voice and one can observe the grand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions he makes. But, if the audience is reading the monologue, the passion is not lost. Speed Levitch uses words such as “dream,” “wow,” “exuberance,” “exciting,” “flabbergasted,” “vitality,” etc. . .  which can all be considered to be synonymous with passion and awe. Through this, he is luring the audience to feel exactly how he wants them to feel about life, how he says he feels about life “[a]nd on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.” To live in an “ongoing wow.”