In a very apparent sense, Wregas Bhanuteja-written and directed Andragogy is a cautionary tale. Following the trials and tribulations of much respected guidance counselor Prani (Sha Ine Febriyanti), who faces online cancellation and the jeopardization of career aspirations after a passerby films her angry reaction to a mundane injustice, Andragogy has many profound points to make about our own culpability in upholding a surveillance state that demands an ethical puritanism that is unilaterally impossible to achieve in the real world.
But in another, more irony-laden and jubilant sense, the film empathetically rejoices in the ridiculous. Without passing negative judgment on those who do subscribe to social media’s rigorous morals, Bhanuteja brilliantly and sweetly lays bare not only how ridiculous we become for the sake of upholding appearances online, but also suggests that perhaps we have always been ridiculous, especially in love, ultimately teaching that maybe we ought to lean into the latter so as to lessen our missteps online. As it presents a dynamic look at the work we put into manufacturing personalities for the online world, the film also finds our sweet, raw humanity, the goodness we accomplish in the real world.
The film opens with Prani sitting on the beach speaking to a student over video chat. The student was caught calling another child in school bad names, and to help the kid learn why this isn’t a nice thing to do, Prani gives him a task. The task she assigns is a part of her philosophy that for a student to truly understand the error of their ways and correct them, they need to meaningfully reflect on their actions; more nuanced than punishments, Prani calls these tasks “reflections.” Prani tells the student to plant two seeds and to spend the following couple of weeks swearing at one seed, while caring for the other, documenting how each seed grows. A few steps away, Prani’s son, an influencer, films a TikTok incorporating a paid sponsorship. When Prani’s anger at a man cutting in line at a famous coconut-cake stand is posted to social media, her son is most distraught, seeing the incident as negatively impacting his career. The film follows Prani’s and her family’s response to the outrage against her filmed outrage, and a hilarious and endless series of response and apology videos.
Andragogy understands that it would be hypocritical for it to take a staunch and superior stance above and against social media users. Accordingly, Bhanuteja employs Prani as a sort of foil for herself; time and again, she jeopardizes her standing, doing damage control for videos that were meant as damage control. The dialogue is sharp and dry in its humor, and each member of the cast shines with their comedic timing, both verbal and physical. The ridiculous demands of the online world are portrayed in vibrant and stark relief as Prani and her family are shown sitting before a ring light making apology video after apology video, vying for the online tides to turn in their favor.
This film offers unique and endlessly loveable (for how fallible they are) characters who rush about dealing with the real-world consequences of the mercurial online realm. Bhanuteja is nimble as he contextualizes the online within the lived, in terms of importance and power, while also revealing the absurdity of the online by, for example, demonstrating the goofiness of translating online therapy speak to the real world, or by showing how alien the act of filming a TikTok seems, how funny it can look to someone watching from across the way as we perform the labor of making internet content, which labour might look effortless and even compelling on a flat, myopic feed online.
Andragogy never mocks, rather allows for the ridiculous to settle over not just viewers, but also the characters, gently prompting them to a crucial reckoning of what is more important: likability online or a life well lived with family and friends. As it shows us how ruinous though ridiculous we are on the internet, the film also is kind toward the people at its core who have a tendency to be ridiculous, showing them with a cheeky grace in all their zany vulnerability, in their weird but still kind humanness as they work to secure Prani the pristine image she had before the absurd scandal for the sake of her promotion. The story excels at fleshing its characters out through moments of remarkable tenderness. The film takes Prani’s problem seriously as it follows the absurd turns the aftermath takes; but it also takes seriously the moments of tenderness and love, which tend to be just as irrational, and in allowing both the absurd and the genuine equal attention and care, Bhanuteja easily makes evident which is more important, more viable, better for ourselves and the world.
Near the film’s end, Prani helps a former student, who has unwittingly become mired in Prani’s mess, come down from a panic attack. It’s a sweet scene but it is also ridiculous, for it takes place in the boys’ washroom at the school Prani works at. There is a pond in the washroom, and Prani lies in it with the student and helps him breathe. It’s a scene of immense kindness, one of Prani’s moments of reflection in action, but it’s also funny, two adults taking therapeutic breaths submerged in a pond as big as they are in a bathroom. Here, Bhanuteja shows us the labor involved in feeling okay and safe, especially after a blow suffered online, which the online realm isn’t able to capture.
In one beautiful, spirited, quirky sweep, Andragogy is able to capture both the absurd artifice the online world requires, and the sweet and ridiculous work we do to survive the constraints we place on ourselves online. Deep breaths can’t be captured online; our small gestures of kindness as effortless as making sure everyone in the family gets a meatball, these are the kind of reflexive and immediate and intimate efforts that the internet, with all its mediatory requirements such as opening up apps or typing or spell checking, will never be witness to. Andragogy is a triumph for the way in which it reminds us that we are full beyond our social media page, full and funny and fallible, and for this reason loveable, despite everything.
