The Best and Worst Teacher in Film Pt. 4

The Good:
Avery Brooks in American History X

American History X is, admittedly, an odd choice to highlight excellent teaching. The film is less about student-teacher bonding than it is about racism, prison, and family.

And goatees. Immaculately trimmed goatees.

Still, of all the teachers in film, Avery Brooks’ Dr. Bob Sweeney is probably the most determined, without being sappy. In the timeline set up in the film he begins mentoring a bright, impressionable young man named Derek, only to see him become a die-hard skinhead after the death of his slightly more subtly racist father.

Derek‘s father in happier times.

Many educators would consider Derek a lost cause and move on to other, less swastika-covered students. But not Sweeney. Besides determination, Dr. Sweeney has another vital skill for teaching: knowing when your student is ready to learn.

Although it’s implied that they have little if any relationship over the next three years, when Derek is violently raped by fellow skinheads in the prison showers, Dr. Sweeney shows up in the infirmary, ready to pick right up where he left off mentoring Derek. That takes balls. Being a black man trying to turn a skinhead’s life around is tough on its own, but opening things up right after a shower rape, before the attackers have even toweled off? That is one insistent high school principal.

Avery James also played Captain Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In case you haven’t guessed, this film is filled with distracting casting choices.

The main reason Dr. Sweeney doesn’t get more credit for his role in this film is probably because for such a stirring indictment of neo-Nazism, American History X has a pretty ambiguous ending. One could be left with the message that the cycle of racism and violence is too entrenched, and for all of Dr. Sweeney’s good intentions, humanity is too flawed to ever live up to his teachings. Still, his character shows the kind of passion and emotion that is so lacking in real teachers, and so often comically overdone in film teachers. For that, I salute you, Dr. Sweeney.

I also salute Fairuza Balk’s Character Stacey, but for significantly less honorable reasons.

The Bad:
Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver

Wait a minute, the movie about neo-Nazis played by the cast of Boy Meets World gets a thumbs up and the true story of inner city youths learning calculus from Edward James Olmos, the lord of inspirational Latino filmmaking, gets criticized? Well, yes. And here’s why: While Stand and Deliver is inspiring and is based very closely on the factual events of Jaime Escalante teaching math in East Los Angeles, this film is the basis for every similar hackneyed story since. A teacher who doesn’t play by the rules? Check. Intellectually comatose, “slipped through the cracks” students? Check. An all-or-nothing climax? Check.

A poster that couldn’t be more ‘80s if it were wearing Zubaz? Double check.

This movie is sincere, and stuck to the truth, and was, at the time, original. But you know who else was sincere, factual, and original? Woodrow Wilson.

Poor Woodrow Wilson. He tried so hard and meant so much good, but ultimately all of his thoughtful ideas and passionate progressive beliefs led the way to World War II. Could Wilson have known the complications inherent to his ideas would create a place for someone as terrible as Adolf Hitler? Of course not. But the fact remains that but for the Wilson presidency many of the worst events in world history may well have never happened. Stand and Deliver is Woodrow Wilson.

Sure, Stand and Deliver never meant for cinematic tragedies like Precious, Dead Poets Society, and Dangerous Minds to spring from its mold. But that fact remains that but for Stand and Deliver’s example, these films and many others like them would never have existed and the world would be a less terrible place.

Also, I wouldn’t have just shat myself upon finding this picture.

Sadly, the only thing damning Stand and Deliver is its legacy. Of all the terrible films recommended to my Facebook friend, this was the only one she immediately and violently shot down.

I quote:
“omg no Stand and Deliver, I was always angry when we had a sub in math and we had to watch it.”

This sentiment has been echoed by several people who had similar experiences with this film, over and over again. This means not only did Stand and Deliver lead to countless unoriginal, false-expectation inflating, saccharin knock-offs, but it actually made real life math teachers worse at their job.

Stand and Deliver: Teaching calculus and irony since 1988.

That’s all for this list. Agree? Disagree? Something I missed? Let me know in the comments below and come back next week when I’ll be starting a new topic: Bodily Injuries I’ve Suffered and the Embarrassing Stories Behind Them. Hopefully it will be a learning experience for us all.

The Best and Worst Teacher in Film Pt. 3

The Good:
Tina Fey and Tim Meadows in Mean Girls

Like Finding Forrester, Mean Girls really walked a fine line. On the one hand, it had Lindsay Lohan in it, but on the other hand, it didn’t suck.

The poster also implied that Lindsay Lohan’s character would be 8 feet tall.

This is mostly thanks to Tina Fey, who adapted a depressing expose on how bitchy teenage girls are into a genuinely funny and poignant screenplay that almost makes you forget that Lohan couldn’t out act a bag of potatoes.

Almost.

Fey also makes this movie work through her portrayal of Ms. Norbury, a math teacher who has lived a sad, sad life. Fey follows the Ricky Gervais method by writing the saddest, most cringe-inducing character and then playing that character herself.

Make no mistake, if this movie had been solely about Ms. Norbury, it would have made The Hours look like a feel good romantic comedy. But Ms. Norbury’s pathetic characteristics are exactly what make her such a great teacher. She wants to inspire you, and she does it by showing you what your life will be like if you fuck it up.

Taking her shirt off helps also.

Tina Fey gets a lot of credit for this movie and it is well deserved, but hands down my favorite example from this film is the school principal, Mr. Duvall, played by Tim Meadows.

I feel bad for Meadows. He was always funny on Saturday Night Live, but the only movie he got out of it was The Ladies Man. He was apparently on The Bill Engvall Show, but every time I tried to watch that show my television killed itself.

Really, when you look at it, Mean Girls has been the highlight of Meadows' career and if not for Tina Fey stealing all the thunder he would have gotten a lot more props for his role. This is because Mr. Duvall is the best principal I’ve ever seen, in real life, or film. He possesses the two most important skills for a principal. First, he knows when to delegate. He is not prepared to handle teenage girl drama and he knows it. So he gathers all girls into the gym with baseball bat in hand and makes someone else do it. Just as a good leader should.

Taking his shirt off helps also.

Second, he’s visible and active in the school. In the 9th grade I went to a school with 70 students. 70 students. The entire campus wasn’t more than four prefab structures, and I still didn’t see my principal more than three times a semester. From what I know of more advanced schools through friends and whispered tales of legend, principals are just as rarely seen everywhere. Besides school assemblies, fire drills, and getting in trouble, the school principal might as well be the goddamn Wizard of Oz.

When you go onto a battlefield, every soldier knows who their general is. This keeps the soldiers from forgetting who’s in charge and maintains some sense of order. Mr. Duvall knows this, and more importantly he also knows that high school is most definitely a battlefield.

This is on the top row of the second page when you Google image search “Tim Meadows Mean Girls.” Google knows what I’m talking about.

The Bad:
Paula Patton in Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire

I have to admit, I haven’t seen Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire. Normally that would preclude me from criticizing it, but I did read the book for a gender studies class once and I still haven’t recovered. Also, since this movie is so recent, it’s not really widely hailed as part of the inspirational teaching genre. But worry not, it will be. It’s received tons of accolades from the pretentious art house sect, including multiple awards and nominations from Cannes, Sundance, the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes, and the Oscars.

Including one nomination for “Poster Most Closely Resembling A Polish Expressionist Painting From The ‘50s.”

Another reason Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire will be applauded for decades to come? It was post-produced by both Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, and if anybody knows how to make depressing films about black people that people insist are inspirational, it’s Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry.

Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire had a pretty limited release, and its not yet out on dvd, so you probably haven’t seen it. Allow me to give you a quick rundown: Precious is a morbidly obese, borderline-retarded, inner city teenager. Her illegitimate father routinely raped her, giving her HIV in the process, and getting her pregnant twice. One of those pregnancies was born with Down’s syndrome. Her high school finds her too depressing so they put her in a special program where she learns to almost put together a coherent sentence. But not quite. The End. There, I just saved you four bucks.

I blame Sapphire for my long history of depression. Expect some big medical bills, lady.

Ok, so obviously this is not a pleasant movie, but that’s not what this list is about. The reason I’m including this film is because not only is it a pretentious collection of every Lifetime movie scenario, but it’s fed to you as though in the end it will be uplifting. Precious is taken under the wing of her English teacher, Ms. Rain, who really cares about her students, all of whom are in roughly equally hopeless circumstances as the title character. And this would be fantastic if anything came of it, but nothing does. At the end Precious’ accomplishments are that she’s managed to get her mother to stop molesting her and instead of writing at a 3rd grade level she writes at a 4th grade level. That’s not an inspirational message. That’s not even good teaching. That’s the kind of story a politician tells while campaigning for education reforms.

The story would’ve been a lot more uplifting if Ms. Rain had taught a jazzercise class.

Oh, I did forget one more thing Ms. Rain did for Precious. At the beginning of the story Precious is vehemently homophobic, but through her friendship with Ms. Rain, who’s proud of her sexuality, Precious realizes that lesbianism isn’t evil. But given Precious' previous experience with men, this probably wasn’t a very tough sell.

Be sure to come back next week when I'll be comparing American Histroy X and Stand and Deliver. If you think that's an odd pairing, then clearly you've never read my slash fiction.

The Best and Worst Teacher in Film Pt. 2

Alright, kids, best pack light ‘cause this is a long one.

The Good:
Sean Connery in Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester really walks the razors edge when it comes to good teachers in film. It’s got all of the staples of sappy teacher movies: Urban youth at risk, the Caucasian mentor, an all-or-nothing cinematic climax, and sweet, sweet, interracial jailbait.

Speaking of interracial love, how much does this look like a romantic comedy poster?

There are two things that keep Finding Forrester from going from realistically sweet to movie-diabetes and that’s the complexity of the characters relationship and good acting.

The best real life student-teacher relationships are two-way streets. Almost every film about teaching forgets this, but Finding Forrester doesn’t. Sean Connery’s character is an old bastard, but he’s bored and watching the main character, Jamal, develop as a writer entertains him. Unlike a lot of movie teachers, Connery didn’t set out to change the world through teaching, he just stumbled across a kid who happens to be really good at something Connery knows a lot about. Similarly, Jamal gets a kick out of being a pain in whitey’s ass just as much as he likes having him as a mentor. This is the kind of depth of human experience that a lot films gloss over or forget entirely, but it makes or breaks this movie.

No, Dog, it is you who are the man now.

The complexity and depth of their relationship wouldn’t work without good actors, though. I can’t imagine anyone but Sean Connery in this role. He’s one of the few actors who can play both racist asshole and nurturing tutor in the same breath. Anyone else would either come off as too condescending or too eager, but Connery is neither. Rob Brown has only been in a few films, but just like Connery he plays a sweet spot that few can pull off. It’s the subtle ways that you see Jamal as a three-dimensional person that keeps his character from being the kind of interchangeable street toughs you see in similar movies.

That said, every still shot makes it look like they’re about to kiss.

The Bad:
Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society is such a staple of the “inspiring teaching” genre that no one even questions what’s supposed to be so inspiring about it.

Oddly, “giggling while schoolboys cup your balls” is not one of this film’s IMDB tags. But it really should be.

Don’t get me wrong, Robin Williams is a fantastic actor when the director remembers to hide the cocaine. Unfortunately, in this case Peter Weir didn’t remember that in an “inspiring” film it’s usually a good idea for the characters to actually be inspired somehow.

Robin Williams renegade literature teacher sticks it to the uptight, conservative administration primarily by being slightly less uptight and conservative in comparison. He shocks the authority of the school by referencing Walt Whitman, flouts the rules by taking students outside and teaching them Latin, and spits in the eye of God by encouraging his pupils to form a literary society.

Now, Williams does have his kids rip a chapter out of their textbooks, and we get it, the setting is literally old school, but it takes place in 1959, not the Dark Ages.

Standing on desks? He’s a witch!

This film takes place in the same year the Vietnam War started, four years before JFK is assassinated, nine years before the slayings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy and a mere decade before Woodstock, and you’re telling me a prep school student’s dad is flipping a shit over his son performing Shakespeare?

Granted, I was not alive in the 1950s and cannot truly know the prevailing zeitgeist, but if Robin Williams got fired for advocating Walt Whitman, Latin, and Shakespeare, what was he supposed to be teaching? The most efficient method for torturing a confession from a suspected heretic? The proper method for balancing the humors? How to prevent the rusting of chastity belts?

This is the ultimate inspiration letdown because not only does the audience not understand what the big deal is, but neither do the characters. One student kills himself, another helps fire Williams and the others don’t really do anything, until the very end when some of them stand on their desks and recite Walt Whitman again.

In other movies borderline-retarded inner city kids get into Harvard and the best these silver spoons can do is get off their asses and remember what their teacher liked to be called. That’s either the least inspiring message ever put to celluloid or it’s the most mind-blowingly complex biblical allegory in history. You be the judge.

Any guesses which one is supposed to represent Mary Magdalene?

Next time around we’ll be looking at a couple of more recent films, Mean Girls and Precious, so get ready for me to make fun of obesity, incest, and HIV. It’ll be like if Family Guy was a blog!

The Best and Worst Teacher in Film Pt. 1

Some time ago a friend of mine, Katie, requested suggestions from her Facebook friends for examples of teachers in film being good at their job. She also specifically said she didn’t want “cheesy” examples like Michel Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds and the like.

As the child of teachers (and as a critical bastard when it comes to education in general) I was inspired, and with the help of http://www.movieteacher46.com/ I compiled a list of what I think are the best moments of teaching ever seen in film.

For each good example I’m going to include a bad one to illustrate the kind of cheesy fuckery that passes for “inspirational teaching” in most movies.

So, in no particular order, here are my best and worst examples of teaching on film:

The Good:

Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle in Donnie Darko

Writer/director Richard Kelly may not be able to string together a coherent plot to save his life, but one thing he can do is show what good teaching really looks like.

Look at this poster. Congratulations, you now understand the plot as much as anyone who has seen this film.

Both Noah Wyle and Drew Barrymore’s characters are perfect exemplifications of the kind of teachers who have meant the most to me. They’re a bittersweet blend of respect, irresponsibility, honesty, and “off the record” conversations. I once had a psych teacher tell me the best way for me to deal with my problems was to “stop being such a pussy” and she was dead on and she knew it. A really good teacher has enough respect and intelligence to read when a student is mature enough to handle harsh truths and complex ideas and these characters are perfect examples of that.

Donnie Darko: A scathing critique of the Furry-lifestyle.

The Bad:

Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds

I figured I might as well start with my friend’s previously mentioned example of teacher cheese, since it illustrates so many things that make for a shit teacher in film.

The school dress code emphasized leather jackets and flannel.

First of all, a bad movie teacher would be a very good real life teacher. This is perfectly true of Michelle Pfeiffer’s character in Dangerous Minds. If someone in real life could really confront the system and get through to a bunch of undereducated street toughs, they would change the world. The problem is, as Hamlet 2 parodies, that’s a laughably unrealistic interpretation of education and it gives people unrealistic expectations of the roles of teacher and student.

In the real world putting on a leather jacket and being a badass Marine will not let you “get through” to an entire class that’s been slipping through the cracks of education for the past 12 years. It’s possible to show really inspirational teaching without going into the realm of the impossible and Dangerous Minds fails at that.

What is that, a Go-Gurt? She is so not prepared for the Gangsta Paradise.

On another point, it’s pretty racially insensitive to suggest that a white person can completely “fix” blacks and Latinos. The idea that any teacher can have an all-encompassing impact on their entire class is unrealistic, but when that class is strictly comprised of minorities and that teacher looks like a successful S.S. coupling, we enter a whole new, more troubling, realm. This is why every “teacher inspires a dysfunctional class” movie since has A) tried to toss in a white kid with the “urban youth,” and B) Had the teacher be played by either Denzel Washington or the living death mask that is Edward James Olmos.*

*I would have included Samuel L. Jackson for Coach Carter, but I refuse to call a basketball coach a “teacher.” Sorry coaches, but Craig T. Nelson and Gil Thorp ruined whatever esteem your position once had.

Comments? Frothy, bile-fueled disagreement? Let me know and come back next time for Finding Forrester and Dead Poets Society. Which will I applaud and which will I teabag via teh internetz? Tune in to find out.