Richard Linklater’s Slacker Film and a Public Space Analysis from Ancient Greek Perspective

The ancient Greek society, especially the Athenians, had a philosophy of life that was exactly the opposite of modern Western civilization. The ideal life definition of the privileged class of the society, especially the aristocrats and philosophers, was closely related to freedom. Freedom was the most important commodity of the city state. Freedom enabled citizens to realize intellectual activities that would elevate the quality of both humanity and citizenship. For this reason, work activities related to production and economics, which restrict freedom, have been removed from public sphere at least as ‘ideal’ and main subject of daily life. ‘Ideal’ was the production of thought and philosophy. Festivals or administrative meetings, mostly held on the public arena, were activities that did this. Public spaces in the city state were seen as a goal for citizens to organically communicate with each other. Today, public life is mostly shaped by the relations of production and consumption. In Ancient Greek, the economic relations of the private sphere have become the most important discussion of the contemporary public sphere. Public life in today’s modern states has undergone a completely different transformation from the ancient Greek that modern Western societies took as their model. This article aims to show that the idea of public life adopted in Ancient Greek is similarly included in Richard Linklater’s Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1990). First of all, public space approaches that are conceptualized in different ways will be discussed. Then, in terms of free time and freedom, the relationship between the site state and the public space will be revealed in Ancient Greek. In the last section of the article, Ancient Greek will be able to analyze Slacker film through items such as having leisure time required for the ideal public space, being free from labor relations, working contempt, thinking about public life