OPINION: Lesson from the Oscar-nominated film “The Holdovers”: Hollywood hates tough teachers
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for the Oscar-nominated film “The Holdovers.”
Paul Giamatti He is considered among the most talented actors of his generation. He has a special talent for portraying loners, losers and eccentrics such as cartoonist Harvey Pekar American splendor and an anxiety-ridden wine snob in 2004 Sideways. His distinctive, drooping face features expressive eyes and a receding hairline that radiates a world-weary disappointment.
He was born to play the role of teacher.
I am waiting. What!? But Hollywood loves teachers, she thinks. Yes, but only a certain kind of teacher: mavericks and rule breakers who ally themselves with students against authority, conformity, structure, and order. System, man! He thinks Dead Poets Society, Freedom Writers, School of Rock, Mr. Holland’s works. Hollywood’s heroic teachers are always iconoclasts, and they barely teach. They inspire students, unleashing hidden natural talents tightly guarded by schools.
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Standards? Accuracy? Hard work and high expectations? Box office cm. Teachers who love their subject and make demands of their students are at best fun characters in movies. At worst, they are tyrants.
Retainers The film is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Giamatti received a Best Actor nomination for his role as teacher Paul Hunham, a character who draws scorn and ridicule at Barton, a boys’ boarding school in New England. Hunham is a pathetic loner, sour and outdated, with no friends or close colleagues. He teaches ancient civilizations (of course). His students hate him, and one feels that he is only kept on staff out of a sense of obligation by the headmaster, one of his former students. Hunham is the only character who speaks unironically about the qualities the school is trying to instill in the “Barton man.” He refuses to pass the failing student, who is the son of a senator and one of the school’s beneficiaries. “We cannot sacrifice our integrity on the altar of their entitlement,” he said, cursing the school principal. “I’m just trying to instill basic academic discipline. That’s my duty. Aren’t you?”
Usually, this refusal to submit to authority and privilege was portrayed sympathetically, even heroically. but Retainers It is the latest in a long line of films that ignore tradition, character, and high standards. While returning home, the headmaster described Hunham as “hiding” to his face. Even the setting – boarding school! Single-sex education! 1970! – He subtly sums up the anachronism of the entire education model. The film takes place during the Christmas holidays. The title refers to the students unable to return home for the holiday, to whom Giamatti’s character is reluctantly assigned. Five remains are quickly winnowed down to one, a defiant and rebellious kid (another school movie archetype) named Angus Tully.
The latest artist nominated for Best Actor for the role of a teacher is Robin Williams Dead Poets Society (1989), which formalized the trope of the maverick teacher (and convinced a generation of gullible Faculty for America members that the key to engaging apathetic students lay in your office). Poetry teacher John Keating orders his students to tear pages out of their textbooks and encourages them to think for themselves and live their best lives. Convention dictates that where there is a champion teacher, there must also be an antagonist. Keating’s the headmaster, former English teacher and (naturally) a strict traditionalist who opposes his methods. The school’s four pillars – Tradition, Honor, Discipline and Excellence – are invoked not as worthy ends or aspirations, but as constraints. carpe diemTo all of you.
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The list of film teachers and administrators who are autocrats, tyrants, martinettes or simply print foils to maverick teachers and their free-spirited students would fill volumes, and extends back to John Houseman’s Oscar-winning turn as a demanding law school professor in Paper chase (1973). There’s Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter Miss Trunchbull in Roald Dahl’s film series MatildaFerris Bueller High School’s principal Ed Rooney and assistant principal who tortures students serving detention in Breakfast Club. if Retainers Breaking new ground, he made such a teacher the central role, rather than a ridiculous supporting character.
Here’s how much Hollywood believes in and rewards the tyrannical teacher archetype: The last actor to win an Oscar for playing a teacher was J.K. Simmons, who won 2014’s Best Supporting Actor award. injury Portraying a music teacher so demanding that he literally drives the students crazy and suicidal. Giamatti retained Hunham’s character is no less flexible, and seems to take great delight in failing students. Interestingly, he only becomes a sympathetic character when he takes Tully to Boston in violation of school rules, and in front of the kid tells outright lies about his life and career to a former Harvard classmate, for which we learn he was expelled. Charge of plagiarism. So, you see, it’s all a sham: high standards, academic discipline, personal integrity, “Barton men never lie.” Teacher and student are now (naturally) free to form a close personal bond for the rest of the film.
Schools in films are always oppressive places that limit students’ potential and deprive them of their talents. The one notable exception to the rule that powerful teachers must be evil, Stand up and deliver (1988), paints a picture of a high school where math teacher Jaime Escalante, played by Edward James Olmos in another Oscar-nominated role, is viewed with suspicion by other faculty members. AP Calculus? These kids?!
There is a consistent exception to the Hollywood rule that good teachers must be rebels and rule breakers. Show me a sympathetic picture of a tough teacher who relentlessly pushes kids and accepts only their best efforts, and I’ll show you…a coach. in Hoosiers (1986), the high school basketball coach played by Gene Hackman is a strict taskmaster. He coaches his team hard and prevents them from shooting the basket during practices, working instead on passing, defense and stamina. In the first game, he orders his team to make four passes before shooting, and puts his disobeying star on the bench. Even after another player makes a mistake, he continues the game with only four players, to ensure that the lesson remains. It’s better to lose the game than to lower your standards. Later, when the city tries to fire the coach, the same selfish but talented player, who came to see the light, saves his job. Notice the contradiction: the stubborn child adopts the coach’s methods and the coach’s mentality, not the other way around. As previously the Karate Kid (1984), Remember the Giants (2000), miracle (2004) and Coach Carter (2005).
The Hollywood rule is that good coaches push kids to greatness while good teachers inspire them, but never the other way around: There’s never been a sports movie made — and likely never will — in which a school wins a state championship after the coach quits Practice and Stop Being Tough. But in the classroom, it’s just the opposite. Hollywood coaches win by adhering to the highest possible standards and expectations. Classroom teachers gain audiences only when they drop theirs.
