so, i watched the class tonight, hence my clever and original title.
this movie is a french film, one of those nominated for best foreign film in the oscars this year, about an urban french class in france. fluhfluhfluh! it has in the past been likened to a "french dangerous minds." i cannot speak to that comparison as i have never been blessed to sit through that michelle pfeiffer film. sadly. so sad. really.
it was painful. painful to watch this poor nice guy french teacher be bullied by his insolent students. during the film i totally sided with him. little brats! i thought as they talked back to him and to one another. attitude! as one girl refused to read in class when asked to. i kept waiting for the students to share sob stories (predictably) to explain why they were so awful and thought we had come to that point of the film when they are asked to create self portraits ala anne frank's diary. but no. nothing ever comes out to really explain why the students behave this way. no sad sob story in the background. at the end of the film when this is brought up in a teacher's conference as they discuss the possibility that a certain student's expulsion could mean he will be shipped back to mali, one teacher argues that they are not the parents and that their roles lie solely inside the school. the teachers were actually quite liberal and debated the merits of discipline versus reward, but i was all about discipline watching the film. it reminded me of the very first class i ta'ed as a grad student that totally ganged up on me. a room full of spoiled freshmen who, once they decided it was them against me, it seemed there was no going back. i tried to handle it like the teacher in the film, keep going regardless, meet their insubordination with jokes, etc. but man, it wears you down. it's hard to care at the end of the day if they learned anything if you made it out alive. and my students were EASY compared to the students in this film.
so, at the end of the movie, i was like, ok, this generation sucks and i never want to teach high school and no wonder teachers like the bottle. i wanted a cigarette just watching the thing, it was so stressful and painful, and i don't even smoke!
but but but. the genius of this film lies in its ambiguity. so, all those kids just suck, right? well, there is a bit of a curveball thrown at the end that kept me wondering. and the great thing is that this was no message movie in typical hollywood style. no thud thud thud in your face this is what you learned today at the end of it all. so, in the end all of the students are shown talking about what they learned that year and one of the most loudmouth girls in the class (she seems bright but acts like a dumbass and is a pain in the ass to teacher and peers alike) says i didn't learn anything here. the teacher challenges her, saying you can't be in school all year and not learn a thing. i'm living proof, she says, laughing. what about what we read? he asks. your books are shite, she replies. what about a book you read on your own? here it comes....she busts out that she read the republic and starts talking about socrates and what a riot he was.
that gave me pause. what is this movie critiquing? the out of control behavior of today's youth? OR the low standards that teachers have for "these kinds" of kids? a running theme throughout the film is respect, the students all insist that the teacher doesn't show them respect. i found this to be utter bullshit, i thought he was doing the best he could given how THEY treated HIM. but maybe the respect wasn't lacking in the way he treated them. maybe it was in the amount and type of work he gave them....his attitude that they couldn't or wouldn't do it anyway. their self-portrait involved them writing a one page essay about their likes/dislikes, etc. that originally didn't strike me as too easy. it seems like something i would have been asked to do in my eighth grade english class, where despite being in honors english we were still learning how to distinguish between nouns and verbs. but, on second thought, it wasn't really asking them to think all that much.
so, what if he was underestimating them? is that it? i don't know. from my experience i feel like i have given past students very challenging work and when it is challenging then they complain that it is too challenging. i don't know the right answer here.
at the very end of the film, a girl approaches the teacher after all the other students have filed out and says that she didn't learn anything. then she keeps repeating that she doesn't want to go to vocational school. the teacher tells her that is a long way off. (the students are probably in the equivalent of our 8th grade). she repeats herself. and the film pretty much ends. it left me wondering: does she want another type of school (i.e. college) or no school at all? similar to questions brought up by the whole republic exchange, is this school not enough for her or does she just not want to be in school? or is it just that what we are doing is total horse shit?
one thing that did strike me during the film was how involved the students were. they were constantly questioning the teacher, especially little miss republic, but this is considered insubordination. but it was, because it prevented him from teaching the curriculum. and yet, it was frustrating to watch because if they would direct that curiosity towards the material, it would have worked better for everyone.
so, the class did me in. it was painful to watch and, similar to actual education reform, it is so difficult to pinpoint the exact problems and provide solutions to what exactly was going wrong in the classroom. but it was all kinds of fucked up.
one more thing: i was wondering if there was an allegory between the classroom and france as a country since most of the students in the class were immigrants in a french classroom with a french teacher, being scolded for not fitting in more with the curriculum and for not respecting the teacher's rule. when they do not respect the teacher, they are kicked out. but the teacher was not always respectful of them either, at one point, exploding and calling two girls "skanks" and describing one student as being "limited" in his ability. i don't know enough about french society to be able to expound upon this but i think it was there. especially when you contrast the ways in which the teachers talked about two students who might potentially be deported: one, a good student and chinese, and the other, a bad student and african. they sent around a collection for the chinese student who would have been deported because his mother was illegal and they expelled the african student with the knowledge that his father might send him back to africa. the message here is play by our rules or get out. if you play nice, we'll help you; if not, consequences.
my problem with all of this is what is wrong with personal responsibility? and i felt like such a conservative watching this movie, but if you don't play by the rules, you should be punished. i had absolutely no sympathy for the kid who got expelled because he was a bad, disrespectful student. if expulsion will get him sent back and he knows that, then he better shape up. we have to have order, there have to be rules. right?
and on that note, i learned way more from this film about law and order and its role in society than i did from the supposed "brilliant" crime drama the dark knight. 2 hours in a classroom with these kids will teach you more about questioning authority than the joker ever could simply by declaring his "anarchist" tendencies.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
my karaoke song!
Your Karaoke Theme Song is "I'm Too Sexy" |
 You're a total goof ball and a bit of a nut job. You don't take yourself seriously at all. And while you may not be the greatest singer, you're the first to volunteer for karaoke. You have a wild and unpredictable sense of humor that always gets people cracking up. Irreverent and rebellious, your humor knows no bounds or limits. You enjoy shocking people. You might also sing: "Like a Virgin," "Ice Ice Baby," and "Hey Ya!" Stay away from people who sing: "Sweet Home Alabama" |
Sunday, January 4, 2009
the joker: president of the anarchy club
ok, so i finally just watched the dark knight. i was into it for about the first hour, suspending my disbelief and all. i had read the reviews and heard the hype about how it is a transcendent crime drama and blah blah blah and wanted to see if that was really true and if, unlike with the last batman movie, chris nolan had actually made a smart, engaging film.
i think it does alright in the beginning. while i've read some negative reviews about the scarecrow's early appearance (and i certainly do not begrudge cillian murphy any time on the screen) and how it was disjointed, i think it was meant to be a foreshadowing that the past villians were nothing compared to what batman would face this time in the joker. batman leaves the scarecrow and his buddies who were playing batman dress-up like little kids spanked and giggling. but the laughter we are to see later in the film comes out of a much more evil and unrestrained place.
so far, so good.
however, as i got further into the movie, i noticed a pattern. yes, yes, yes, the joker is an agent of chaos and isn't he so scary because he represents the id in all of us, violence for violence's sake alone? yes, i get that, we are told about it repeatedly through the movie by every major character, none so much as the joker himself. "do i look like a guy with a plan?" he yells out desperately to any character, major or minor, that will listen. well, um, hate to break it to you, but actually, yes, you do. beginning with the first scene, all of the joker's destructive "rampages" are meticulously planned and impeccably timed. down to the second. and not only that, but other characters realize this as well. gary oldman (looking a little old and pallid, but i guess it's been a long time since his dracula days) even yells out later in the movie, "it was all his plan! the joker wanted us to arrest him!" dude, that anarchist guy is really on the ball!
until the end. the ferry scene. oh, the ferry scene. i found it incredibly interesting as a sociologist, and this is going to sound crass and like i'm a big pessimist and i don't have faith in the human race, but give me a goddamn break. so, the premise is that the joker has made threats on tv about "wreaking havoc" (lord help us, what will he so wildly and unpredictably plan next?) on the city, everyone is freaking out and trying to leave. gary oldman (again, bless his old heart, why did he do this movie? i love him so, but why?) trying to out-PLAN the joker (who's crazy and chaotic, right? right, you guys? he is so wild! what will he do next?!?) thinks that those lousy criminals should be the first to get off the island because i'm sure they're just dying (get it? dying? ha!) to work for the joker. so, they get one ferry all to themselves and some regular folk get the other one. unbeknownst to the passengers of both, that crazy joker who just makes things up as he goes along has pre-rigged both ferries with bombs, even taking the time to gift wrap the controllers of each and present them as gifts to the opposite ferries. his distinctive voice magically appears on the intercom, announces that the members of each boat get to use the controller to blow up the other or both of them get it at midnight. (no rules, guys! chaos!) so what happens? neither boat blows the other up. they just can't do it! people are good and the superego really can triumph over that nasty id. sorry everyone, but i call bullshit.
i've seen other blogs allude to the milgram experiment as a reason for why this scene is so unbelievable. the trouble is that in the milgram experiment, people were listening to authority figures telling them to shock others, but they were free to go at any time during the experiment. the worst consequence they would receive if they refused to shock would have been the supposed disapproval of the researcher, who were study confederates anyway. alright, so compare that to this where the immediate choice is you live or that other boat over there full of people you don't know and even (gasp!) dirty criminals gets blowed up. what do you think would happen? it's nice to know that hollywood thinks so kindly of us.
while the joker is the mad one without a plan (no plan, really, none at all!), batman, who we're told repeatedly throughout the film is into rules and morality and all that, seems to be the one who really doesn't have a plan. he's responding to the chaos the joker just completely indiscriminately throws his way. he's the one on the fly, the true unpredictable actor. He shows up everywhere and then he's gone, poof, magic! Completely unpredictable. It left me wondering, is Chris Nolan trying to make a larger point here? That those who claim to be ruled by the id, who claim to be truly mad and unpredictable and out of control are really the ones who are more organized? That those who claim to enforce order in our world are really hanging on by a mere thread, not sure what the hell is really going on and just trying to keep everything as much in line as possible, including their own morally reprehensible urges? maybe. but i think that what is more likely is that the movie was trying to make a statement about the battle of the id vs. the superego, both on the individual and the societal level and got way too heavy-handed about making sure we knew who was who. in the process, shit got fucked up and the joker ended up looking like he should really be working for martha stewart (what with his skills, i'd hire him to organize my desk and write a dissertation timeline for me) and it was his adherence to order and planning, albeit "scary, chaotic" plans, that really took the bite out of the dark knight's bark.
i think it does alright in the beginning. while i've read some negative reviews about the scarecrow's early appearance (and i certainly do not begrudge cillian murphy any time on the screen) and how it was disjointed, i think it was meant to be a foreshadowing that the past villians were nothing compared to what batman would face this time in the joker. batman leaves the scarecrow and his buddies who were playing batman dress-up like little kids spanked and giggling. but the laughter we are to see later in the film comes out of a much more evil and unrestrained place.
so far, so good.
however, as i got further into the movie, i noticed a pattern. yes, yes, yes, the joker is an agent of chaos and isn't he so scary because he represents the id in all of us, violence for violence's sake alone? yes, i get that, we are told about it repeatedly through the movie by every major character, none so much as the joker himself. "do i look like a guy with a plan?" he yells out desperately to any character, major or minor, that will listen. well, um, hate to break it to you, but actually, yes, you do. beginning with the first scene, all of the joker's destructive "rampages" are meticulously planned and impeccably timed. down to the second. and not only that, but other characters realize this as well. gary oldman (looking a little old and pallid, but i guess it's been a long time since his dracula days) even yells out later in the movie, "it was all his plan! the joker wanted us to arrest him!" dude, that anarchist guy is really on the ball!
until the end. the ferry scene. oh, the ferry scene. i found it incredibly interesting as a sociologist, and this is going to sound crass and like i'm a big pessimist and i don't have faith in the human race, but give me a goddamn break. so, the premise is that the joker has made threats on tv about "wreaking havoc" (lord help us, what will he so wildly and unpredictably plan next?) on the city, everyone is freaking out and trying to leave. gary oldman (again, bless his old heart, why did he do this movie? i love him so, but why?) trying to out-PLAN the joker (who's crazy and chaotic, right? right, you guys? he is so wild! what will he do next?!?) thinks that those lousy criminals should be the first to get off the island because i'm sure they're just dying (get it? dying? ha!) to work for the joker. so, they get one ferry all to themselves and some regular folk get the other one. unbeknownst to the passengers of both, that crazy joker who just makes things up as he goes along has pre-rigged both ferries with bombs, even taking the time to gift wrap the controllers of each and present them as gifts to the opposite ferries. his distinctive voice magically appears on the intercom, announces that the members of each boat get to use the controller to blow up the other or both of them get it at midnight. (no rules, guys! chaos!) so what happens? neither boat blows the other up. they just can't do it! people are good and the superego really can triumph over that nasty id. sorry everyone, but i call bullshit.
i've seen other blogs allude to the milgram experiment as a reason for why this scene is so unbelievable. the trouble is that in the milgram experiment, people were listening to authority figures telling them to shock others, but they were free to go at any time during the experiment. the worst consequence they would receive if they refused to shock would have been the supposed disapproval of the researcher, who were study confederates anyway. alright, so compare that to this where the immediate choice is you live or that other boat over there full of people you don't know and even (gasp!) dirty criminals gets blowed up. what do you think would happen? it's nice to know that hollywood thinks so kindly of us.
while the joker is the mad one without a plan (no plan, really, none at all!), batman, who we're told repeatedly throughout the film is into rules and morality and all that, seems to be the one who really doesn't have a plan. he's responding to the chaos the joker just completely indiscriminately throws his way. he's the one on the fly, the true unpredictable actor. He shows up everywhere and then he's gone, poof, magic! Completely unpredictable. It left me wondering, is Chris Nolan trying to make a larger point here? That those who claim to be ruled by the id, who claim to be truly mad and unpredictable and out of control are really the ones who are more organized? That those who claim to enforce order in our world are really hanging on by a mere thread, not sure what the hell is really going on and just trying to keep everything as much in line as possible, including their own morally reprehensible urges? maybe. but i think that what is more likely is that the movie was trying to make a statement about the battle of the id vs. the superego, both on the individual and the societal level and got way too heavy-handed about making sure we knew who was who. in the process, shit got fucked up and the joker ended up looking like he should really be working for martha stewart (what with his skills, i'd hire him to organize my desk and write a dissertation timeline for me) and it was his adherence to order and planning, albeit "scary, chaotic" plans, that really took the bite out of the dark knight's bark.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
movie musicals
what has happened to the quality of movie musicals? why are they all crap now? what happened to movies like sound of music and singin' in the rain and annie? now we just get drivel like chicago and mamma mia! which i think should be renamed mamma mia? as in, really?
i do not understand the casting choices at all. pierce brosnan sounds like he is trying to be david bowie and looks like he's choking whenever he sings. meryl streep sounds like a cat in heat and everyone else is painful, too. good casting couldn't have saved the movie but it could have made it a lot more tolerable. ugh. just because you cast a big name actor, or just because meryl fucking streep wanted to do mamma mia does not mean that she would be the best choice or should even be a choice. it just sucks when there are so many talented actors with no work who really can sing and they chose name actors that just didn't fit.
not like the script was all that great. or the music for that matter. and i even like abba but god, what a chopjob. it was so bad.
oh well. i just miss the gold old days when actors could actually sing, dance, and act and people knew how to write stories and put them to music.
i do not understand the casting choices at all. pierce brosnan sounds like he is trying to be david bowie and looks like he's choking whenever he sings. meryl streep sounds like a cat in heat and everyone else is painful, too. good casting couldn't have saved the movie but it could have made it a lot more tolerable. ugh. just because you cast a big name actor, or just because meryl fucking streep wanted to do mamma mia does not mean that she would be the best choice or should even be a choice. it just sucks when there are so many talented actors with no work who really can sing and they chose name actors that just didn't fit.
not like the script was all that great. or the music for that matter. and i even like abba but god, what a chopjob. it was so bad.
oh well. i just miss the gold old days when actors could actually sing, dance, and act and people knew how to write stories and put them to music.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Little Me
So, I just watched Drama High on ABC and my heart just blossomed. It followed a high school musical from auditions to fruition. It was beautiful.
I especially related to the piece because I so saw myself in the girl who got the lead. The play was The Wiz and naturally, every girl wanted to be Dorothy. I don't really understand why. When I was in high school we staged a small scale Wizard of Oz and I really, really, really wanted to be the Wicked Witch, which is THE best part in that play. Dorothy is so boring, so fa-la-la. Anyone could be Dorothy. I actually felt like I had an uphill battle to NOT be Dorothy because I had played the ingenue in every other thing since I had started doing drama. But thank god, they believed in me and I got to be the Wicked Witch, which I to this day believe is the best role I ever got to play. Green face? Prosthetic nose? Cackling and screaming? Scaring children? The best. Anyway, that is not why I related to Drama High so strongly.
So, everyone wanted to be Dorothy. And especially little Martina who had never been in a play before. So everyone was shocked when Martina got the role, especially the girl that everyone thought would get it, Ms. Claire "I've gotten the female lead in everything else so naturally I should get this one too and if I don't then it's cause I'm white." I don't think so. I saw a beauty and freshness in Martina that shone through, something quite lacking in Claire. Anyway, I really really related to Martina because she struggled through that show after getting the part. Not because she wasn't good enough but because she was full of doubt. It didn't help that Claire was cast as her understudy. I felt for Martina every step of the way, as she struggled and wondered if she could actually pull this off to the end when she beamed after the performance. I think I know what she was feeling.
As a junior I auditioned for my first high school play. I had never been in anything else before and was hoping to be cast as one of the "dancing girls." I got the lead of Little Me. Cast as my understudy was Beth, who had been the lead in the last musical and was a card carrying member of the drama clique. I was so intimidated. I did feel that I was the best for the part, I believed that I deserved it, but it was so hard to remember that during rehearsals, during Halloween when my leading man and Beth showed up at school dressed as the two main characters, during every time that someone else insinuated that I didn't deserve it for whatever reason. It was one of the best times of my life but it was terribly bittersweet because I was not a part of that crowd and did not feel accepted.
I forgot all of that on opening night. After the play was over, I ran around the auditorium several times just screaming with joy. It's a feeling unlike any I'd ever had before or since. I had done it. Nothing is like the high I get when I'm on stage.
So, now that I am rarely ever on stage, except for that rare moment when I can drag people to karaoke with me here in downer Seattle, I feel so far from that feeling. Drama High really brought it across. I loved watching every minute of it and feeling like I was reliving my high school drama days.
I was Belle in Little Me. In so many different ways, I still am. My opening number was "On the Other Side of the Tracks" a song about social mobility. I didn't have to act much to play the poor girl in rags, hoping for a better life. That part was me. Just like Martina was Dorothy. It was just amazing watching those kids on stage and knowing that they are having the time of their lives, whether they know it or not.
It made me wish that I was still involved with drama. Like I often wish. Maybe one day. It gives me hope that my AP English teacher was in a community theater play during our senior year. I like to picture being a professor and acting at night in the local theater. I don't know if it will ever happen. But maybe I could help out in the Drama dept or something. Ah, the magic of the stage. I know everyone wants to get to Broadway but how many do? We can all be stars in our high school musicals.
I especially related to the piece because I so saw myself in the girl who got the lead. The play was The Wiz and naturally, every girl wanted to be Dorothy. I don't really understand why. When I was in high school we staged a small scale Wizard of Oz and I really, really, really wanted to be the Wicked Witch, which is THE best part in that play. Dorothy is so boring, so fa-la-la. Anyone could be Dorothy. I actually felt like I had an uphill battle to NOT be Dorothy because I had played the ingenue in every other thing since I had started doing drama. But thank god, they believed in me and I got to be the Wicked Witch, which I to this day believe is the best role I ever got to play. Green face? Prosthetic nose? Cackling and screaming? Scaring children? The best. Anyway, that is not why I related to Drama High so strongly.
So, everyone wanted to be Dorothy. And especially little Martina who had never been in a play before. So everyone was shocked when Martina got the role, especially the girl that everyone thought would get it, Ms. Claire "I've gotten the female lead in everything else so naturally I should get this one too and if I don't then it's cause I'm white." I don't think so. I saw a beauty and freshness in Martina that shone through, something quite lacking in Claire. Anyway, I really really related to Martina because she struggled through that show after getting the part. Not because she wasn't good enough but because she was full of doubt. It didn't help that Claire was cast as her understudy. I felt for Martina every step of the way, as she struggled and wondered if she could actually pull this off to the end when she beamed after the performance. I think I know what she was feeling.
As a junior I auditioned for my first high school play. I had never been in anything else before and was hoping to be cast as one of the "dancing girls." I got the lead of Little Me. Cast as my understudy was Beth, who had been the lead in the last musical and was a card carrying member of the drama clique. I was so intimidated. I did feel that I was the best for the part, I believed that I deserved it, but it was so hard to remember that during rehearsals, during Halloween when my leading man and Beth showed up at school dressed as the two main characters, during every time that someone else insinuated that I didn't deserve it for whatever reason. It was one of the best times of my life but it was terribly bittersweet because I was not a part of that crowd and did not feel accepted.
I forgot all of that on opening night. After the play was over, I ran around the auditorium several times just screaming with joy. It's a feeling unlike any I'd ever had before or since. I had done it. Nothing is like the high I get when I'm on stage.
So, now that I am rarely ever on stage, except for that rare moment when I can drag people to karaoke with me here in downer Seattle, I feel so far from that feeling. Drama High really brought it across. I loved watching every minute of it and feeling like I was reliving my high school drama days.
I was Belle in Little Me. In so many different ways, I still am. My opening number was "On the Other Side of the Tracks" a song about social mobility. I didn't have to act much to play the poor girl in rags, hoping for a better life. That part was me. Just like Martina was Dorothy. It was just amazing watching those kids on stage and knowing that they are having the time of their lives, whether they know it or not.
It made me wish that I was still involved with drama. Like I often wish. Maybe one day. It gives me hope that my AP English teacher was in a community theater play during our senior year. I like to picture being a professor and acting at night in the local theater. I don't know if it will ever happen. But maybe I could help out in the Drama dept or something. Ah, the magic of the stage. I know everyone wants to get to Broadway but how many do? We can all be stars in our high school musicals.
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