Teacher Stereotypes in Contemporary American Film Master’S Diploma Thesis

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

Teaching English Language and Literature

for Secondary Schools

Lucie Sobotková

Teacher Stereotypes in Contemporary American Film Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Smith, M.A., Ph.D.

2017

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

…………………………………………….. Author’s signature

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor Jeff Smith for his ideas and helpful advice provided while writing this thesis. TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction …………………………………………………………...…………….. 1 1.1. Criteria for Evaluation …………………..………………………………… 3 2. Stereotypes and Stereotyping …………………………………………..…………… 5 2.1. Disadvantages of Stereotyping ……………………………………….…… 6 2.2. Stereotyping in Film …………………………………………………...….. 8 3. Friendly Teacher …………………………….……………………….……………… 9 3.1 Common Stereotypes of Friendly Teachers ………………………………. 10 3.1.1. Remembering Names of Students …………………...…………. 10 3.1.2. Appearance and Public Relations ………………………..…….. 13 3.2. Teachers as Experts in their Field …………………………………...…… 17 4. Teacher as a Leader ………………………...………………….………………...… 20 5. Depressed, Diseased and Burned out Teacher ……………………………..………. 33 5.1. Important Life Events and Tragedies ………………………………….…. 35 5.2. Negative and Unsupportive Environment …………………………….….. 40 6. Teacher as an Object/Subject of Sexual Desire ………………….………………… 47 6.1. Relationships at High School ………………………………………….…. 49 6.2. Relationships at University ………………………………………………. 56 7. Teachers with Ironically Reversed Roles ………………………………………….. 59 7.1. Teacher as Main Character …………………………………………...….. 59 7.2. Teacher as Support Character …………………………………………..... 63 8. Historical Background ………………………………………….…………………. 66 8.1. Films from the 1950s ……………………………………………………. 66 8.2. Films from the 1960s …………………………………………………….. 69 9. Conclusion ………………………...……………………………………………….. 73 Bibliography ………………………………………………………………..………… 76 English Resumé …………………………………………………….………………… 79 Czech Resumé …………………………………………………………….………….. 80 1. INTRODUCTION

This diploma thesis attempts to analyze how teachers are portrayed in contemporary film. The topic is, however, very broad and it would be complicated to come up with more concrete results unless using criteria to limit the sample. Therefore, this thesis will only consider contemporary works (from the ‘90s onwards) made by

American production and starring teachers who teach English literature, linguistics or subject related to this.

The thesis will be briefly introduced with theory about stereotyping and how it simplifies the perception of film. Stereotypes often carry specific expectations which can be helpful, but also harmful to the understanding of the character. The main body of the thesis consists of an analysis of 13 films. These are sorted into five categories based on similar patterns that occur in them.

First analytical chapter introduces a friendly teacher. It lists qualities that these teachers have, for example being very popular among students, making jokes all the time, always looking nice and tidy or having many friends. There are also several stereotypes linked to this character, for example remembering names of every student in class, despite being about a hundred of them there. These teachers often appear in film when their occupation serves as a background to their story line or they are not main characters. These traits are represented by films The Mirror Has Two Faces and Still

Alice. There is also another subchapter which shows a teacher as an expert in her linguistic field in the film Arrival.

Second analytical chapter introduces a teacher leader. These types of teachers are very frequent and this category is represented by films Renaissance Man,

Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers. They all have similar plot development. A

1 person without experience (eligible to teach) lands a job as a teacher among very uneducated students. They suffer with behavioral problems and often have violent outbursts. They have a very bad relationship at first, but this improves through the film and they slowly become very popular among them. The teachers improve behavior of that class and often sort their personal problems. The other traceable patterns include one student who is smarter and has more potential than the others or personal struggle of the teacher with wanting to leave, but they get persuaded and stay with their class in the end.

Third analytical chapter introduces teachers who take no pleasure in their work anymore. In films Detachment and A Single Man one can see teachers who are not happy in their lives. Personal tragedies and losses of loved ones have marked them in a significant way. Being tired of their job and feeling burned out is also frequent. These films are very dramatic and scarcely have a happy ending.

Fourth analytical chapter discusses teachers who are involved in romantic or sexual relationship with their students. This topic is still somehow controversial, especially at high schools, so it is always twisted to fit the patterns of socially acceptable norm. The film Never Been Kissed is about a student and her teacher who fall in love, but in reality she is an undercover reporter, who is much older than him. In

The English Teacher, the student who is involved with a teacher is only visiting, years after his graduation. Elegy is an example of this instance at university and still the teacher waits for the semester to end before entering a relationship with his student.

The last analytical chapter is dedicated to teachers whose role in film functions as a source of entertainment and their behavior is purposely overdramatized and ironical. These teachers behave badly towards their students and speak very disrespectfully to them. This teacher has a main role in a film Bad Teacher, where she

2 hates her job very much and she does it only to earn money to afford plastic surgery and marry a rich man. In 10 Things I Hate About You, there is a teacher who has a very minor role, but he is still very easily observable. He functions as the only person who can tone down the behavior of the main characters who are loud and argue with each other. He is also very funny.

The thesis concludes with a short example of how the portrayal of teachers in film developed through the years. There is an example from the 1950s called The

Browning Version, which is very different compared to the situation nowadays. The students are being held very strictly with the etiquette and behavior towards the teacher.

As the 1960s approached, the situation changed a lot and films like To Sir, with Love started to occur. This was a fundamental film to the entire category of teacher leaders and has a very similar pattern to them.

1.1. Criteria for Evaluation

To achieve a throughout analysis, there must be some criteria applied to narrow down the choice of films for evaluation. When focusing on films with teacher characters in them, there is tremendous amount of points for analysis. With more criteria applied, the results are more detailed and there are plenty of possibilities for another teacher- related research, for example in different country or of different subjects. For the purposes of this thesis and its limitations, the focus is as follows.

The country of origin of the film was set to be American. Production or distribution has to be primarily American, not exactly the protagonists or setting.

There are many school subjects that can be taught and all of them require a different approach and methods. Also, all of them have their own, identifiable

3 stereotypes. In this thesis, the teacher’s area of studies revolves around English language, with branches such as linguistics, literature or general high school English education based on local canon.

Originally, all the teachers in this research were thought to be university teachers. However, this restricts the research sample too much and there would be only limited amount of data to work with. In light of these circumstances, there are university and high school teachers involved.

The last criterion is a time limit of production of the chosen works. There are 13 films in this analysis, all of which have been released from 1990s onwards. To specify, the oldest film was made in 1994 and the newest in 2016. There are also two films which have been used to provide a background on development of teacher stereotypes in film, one from 1951 and another from 1967.

2. STEREOTYPES AND STEREOTYPING

Stereotypes have been a part of human life since the early ages. They slowly spread with the development of technology, radio, television and now are unimaginable part of the film industry. Stereotypes help people with orientation in this world.

When considering stereotypes that people carry which are not distributed by the media, one can be a subject to stereotypes as well as the one who creates and follows them. According to Stereotypes and Stereotyping, “one of the more basic functions of stereotypes is to provide useful information about others.” (20) Subject to this could be how a person looks, behaves or speaks. “Before stereotyping can take place, an individual must be seen as a member of one or more categories to which stereotypes may apply.” (Schneider, 64) When meeting an individual, we immediately place them into a specific category, which are mostly universal. We can immediately see the person’s gender, height, weight, skin color and after some time, they might reveal their religion, occupation or other interests. “Views about characteristic qualities of ethnic, religious, gender, sexual orientation, age, political, interest, activity, and occupational groups seem to exist in our own culture and many others.” (Macrae, 41)

These stereotypes used to remain among certain group of people and were not causing any problems. With globalization people started to travel more and encounter different cultures and religions. Nowadays, people encounter other people on everyday basis, but are also subjects to a stream of information from the media and they use stereotypes to deal with this unexpected load of information. “In modern society, the form by which most stereotypes are transmitted is through the mass media – literature, television, movies, newspapers, E-mail, leaflets, and bumper stickers.” (Macrae, 12)

Categorization makes it easier for people to navigate in this stream of information. They might pick their favorite writer because they are funny and this limits their choice of literature. Films are categorized in genres and one can pick if they like to laugh while watching comedy or be in suspense while watching a criminal drama. We can sympathize with one political party and ignore others, eliminating vast amount of information or listen to different genres of music.

All these things can be stereotyped. If someone likes rock music, the immediate picture one imagines is him dressed in black clothes with studs, but this might not be the case. Lippmann defines stereotypes as “pictures in our heads” (3). He notices that “the most interesting kind of portraiture is that which arises spontaneously in people’s minds.” (Lippmann, 8)

2.1. Disadvantages of Stereotyping

There are also several negative effects to stereotyping other than simplifying and categorizing the world. “When stereotypes are consensually shared within a society, their consequences become much more pernicious, because they affect entre groups of people in a common way.” (Macrae, 4) This could have fatal results and lead to discrimination and hatred among people for no particular reason. Our judgment may seem insulting to some people and they can start categorizing us as well.

A great example of discrimination based on religion was performed during

World War II. Nazis wanted to annihilate Jews and used stereotypes for mass propaganda. They exaggerated drawings of their noses, which is one of the stereotypes attached to them. A portal dedicated to Holocaust memory Remember.org confirms this by writing:

“Genocide, the destruction of a people, is the most extreme form of persecution.

During World War II, Hitler’s dream of destroying European Jewry substantially

came to fruition. Through the use of propaganda, he successfully convinced

millions of followers that the Jews were to blame for Germany’s troubles,

including its humiliation during World War I, and its economic chaos.”

This stereotype has clearly been used and twisted against them. This is a great example of how stereotypes can be used in a negative way and to a big extent be damaging towards a big group of people. Many minorities are subject to abuse and murder by the side that is in power and majority:

“Some prejudice has been passed down from generation to generation. Prejudice

against Jews, called anti-Semitism, has been known for more than two thousand

years. It is usually the case, however, that the passions of hatred against

minorities by members of the majority are stirred up by charismatic leaders who

exploit latent hatreds for their own political ends.” (Remember.org)

Another disadvantage of stereotyping is that it can be twisted by media very easily. This is tied to the minorities and how Hitler used media to convince everyone they were to blame for many things. Nowadays, for example, there is a big problem with people who profess Muslim religion and their connection to Islamic state and terrorism. This can be regarded as another clear example of stereotyping – that every

Muslim is black and they are all terrorists who want to exterminate other religions.

Unfortunately, media spread this information to a great extent and it is very difficult to fight against it.

2.2. Stereotyping in Film

As previously mentioned, film industry is a discipline which is built on stereotyping. It portrays people of many religions and colors in many situations and the combinations of this are seemingly endless. The stereotypes each of them carries are often a subject of the film.

“In the cinema, the audience mostly inhabits imaginary worlds whose regularity,

coherence, and reductive simplicity is produced by repetitive forms that have

become conventional and are used in more or less automatized manner.

Spectators of genre film or TV series are familiar with the repeating and

similarly constructed figural types and stereotypical plot elements attached to

them.” (Schweinitz, 14)

This would perhaps be better illustrated on real life examples. When the spectators are watching a horror film, they already expect supernatural powers, scary jumps and frightening gore scenes. Some TV shows even carry their own stereotypes.

TV show called House M.D. has always a similar pattern of a patient with unknown sickness and several wrong diagnoses before the final, correct one. The spectator is familiar with this and expects it.

3. FRIENDLY TEACHER

To be able to understand the concept of a friendly teacher it must be taken as a basic source for all the other categories. There are not many films anymore that would have teacher with these features as a main character, because this concept has a very exhausted potential. When teachers like this appear, they either have no significant role in the film or they have a role that is completely unrelated to their academic career. A friendly teacher has many features which are shared by many other categories.

Generally saying, a friendly teacher in a film centered on him develops either into a leader or into depressed person with no goal in life.

Some characteristics of friendly teachers are:

• Popularity among students

• They remember the names of students

• They make lectures seem fun, entertaining and easy

• They have a lot of friends on and off campus

• They dress in smart clothes and always look tidy

This chapter uses films Still Alice and The Mirror Has Two Faces to illustrate the most important stereotypes in films which have a teacher as a main character, but their main plot crowd-puller lies in issues unrelated to teaching. There is also one example of a teacher in Arrival who is an expert in her field and the plot of the film goes to ridiculous measures, making her save the Earth.

3.1. Common Stereotypes of Friendly Teachers

These stereotypes are a reoccurring feature of most films about teachers; they are therefore included in the chapter about friendly teacher. Most of them have character traits and physical features commonly associated with nice and kind teachers.

3.1.1. Remembering Names of Students

One of very frequent stereotypes that attract the attention of any person watching a film is that there are a lot of teachers who call students by their first names. This could be normal in smaller classrooms or during a long teacher – student cooperation, but the question stands: Is it possible for a teacher to remember the names of their students, even when there is a hundred of them or more in one classroom?

Up to middle school education, it is normal for a teacher to know the names of their students, especially if they lead the same class for several years on their journey to graduation. Michael Cavanagh and Anne Prescott in their book Your Professional

Experience Handbook suggest that “learning and remembering everyone’s name is a sign of respect. Another benefit is that students realize that their behaviour is not anonymous.” (83) The situation, however, changes at university. The need for the students to prove what they learnt and how they understand selected issues is shifted towards the end of the semester and proven mostly by an oral or written examination.

Depending on a subject and in which classroom it is taught, there could be small study groups or large seminars with hundreds of students present, which is much greater than in average middle school classroom. The interaction between the teacher and their

10 students is limited as well; sometimes they might even avoid verbal contact for the entire semester and therefore omitting the issue completely.

This stereotype is one of the most prominent ones in the film called The Mirror

Has Two Faces from 1996, starred and directed by Barbra Streisand. It follows a middle-aged woman Rose Morgan who is not very confident or attractive. One day she responds to an ad in a newspaper written by a professor of mathematics Gregory

(played by Jeff Bridges), who is tired of relationships based on physical appearance and decides to seek his significant other based on intellect. They enter a relationship which is very cold from Gregory’s side, as he always finds her very unattractive. She decides to change her look and, after some difficulty, reunites with Gregory and they both admit their love for each other.

Rose is also an English literature professor at Columbia University in New York.

This is a very prestigious institution, one of the eight Ivy League universities which are known for their elitism. The current admissions for this university according to their published statistics were only 6% of all 36,292 applications in 2016 and 11% of 21,343 applications in 2007 - the last available year in statistics. (Columbia University in the

City of New York) She is only shown teaching a class once in the movie, when Gregory sneaks into her lecture to learn about her intelligence and teaching skills.

Rose’s teaching scene happens in an auditorium with at least 100 students present – they are even standing at the sides of the classroom because there are not many empty places left. They are all very actively participating in the topic and she remembers them all by name. We first find her in the middle of a lesson, which is presumably focused on archetypes. She tells a very personal story about her sister’s wedding, which she shares without any hesitation. She says things like “there she is

11 getting drunk, regretting she ever got married” and “my mother is so jealous she’s sprouting snakes from her hair”. She violates her sister’s and mother’s privacy for the sake of being funny and attracting the students’ attention. She later identifies herself, her sister and mother as “three feminine archetypes . . . – the divine whore . . ., medusa and me.” When she asks about what archetype she is, several students raise their hands and she points at one and calls him by his name “Trevor”. She laughs at his answer

“Virgin Mary” and labels herself as the “faithful handmaiden – always the bridesmaid, never the bride” archetype, which reveals unnecessary amount of private information to the students as well. (TMHTF, 00:18:19 – 00:18:54)

She then carries on with her speech about myths and archetypes and Jung calling them “alive and well” (TMHTF, 00:19:00), but starts deviating from the topic and speaks about love in general. She continues to call people who raise their hands with their first names. During her speech, she always has all eyes on her and she makes many jokes that the students always laugh at. She walks among the students and sometimes stands in the aisle between two fixed rows of chairs, right in front of the students sitting there. (TMHTF, 00:20:11) Everyone is paying attention and having the time of their life, but overall, the topic does not make much sense. If she teaches English literature at

Columbia, what topic do ‘love’ and stories from her personal life relate to? There is no connotation or relation to any books whatsoever mentioned, besides recognition of the term ‘courtly love’ and its explanation, one quote by Carl Jung and mentioning three kinds of archetype at the beginning, without any context.

The filmmakers were purely concentrated on making her seem as a great, wise, popular and funny teacher, but many at many points her performance becomes unrealistic. During her lecture, she delivers a passionate speech about love and how people want it because “that experience makes us feel completely alive” (TMHTF,

00:21:23) and when being in love, “we are flung into the heavens” (TMHTF, 00:21:34).

This may suggest her vulnerability and desire for love, which is later in the film fulfilled. After she finishes her speech about romantic love with “while [love] does last, it’s fucking great” she receives a big round of applause, which is also very unusual for a regular university lecture. (TMHTF, 00:22:50)

3.1.2. Appearance and Public Relations

In The Mirror Has Two Faces, Rose’s appearance is also one of the main points.

Gregory invites her on their first date because he was “impresses with her teaching”

(TMHTF, 00:26:40), not her looks. When she first meets him at the university, she’s wearing an old fashioned beret, large coat, scarf and gloves, all in dark color. (TMHTF,

00:28:05) To his eyes she seems so unattractive, that he even refuses to consummate their marriage. Her appearance causes her so much trouble, that she decides to change it once and for all. She takes up running (TMHTF, 01:31:07) and various other fitness classes, has her nails and make up done (TMHTF, 01:32:26) and shops for new clothes

(TMHTF, 01:32:55). When Gregory arrives home from his business trip, he finds her completely transformed and very pretty (TMHTF, 01:34:43), which leaves him in utter shock. When he overcomes this, they reunite and their relationship is better than ever.

To make the plot less immoral, he mentions that he loves her no matter how she looks.

As Rose’s appearance improved, so did her life and marriage.

Another film which features a teacher who is an expert in linguistics is Still

Alice, which is complete opposite of The Mirror Has Two Faces. It was directed in

2014 by Richard Glatzer and shows a story of a talented and successful woman Alice

Howland (played by Julianne Moore), coincidentally also a professor at Columbia

University. She is a teacher with a high reputation, she published book about the topic and is always dressed appropriately. One day, however, she finds out that she has

Alzheimer’s disease. Her life crumbles before her eyes – she is no longer capable of taking care of herself and her husband (played by Alec Baldwin) abandons her.

Besides teaching her own classes she even delivers a guest lecture at University of California in Los Angeles, clad in a fashionable knee-length skirt, blouse and a blazer. The person who introduces her speaks well of her intelligence and accomplishments – writing a textbook From Neurons to Nouns which is now

“considered one of the cornerstones of linguistic education all over the world” while raising three children (SA, 00:02:33 – 00:03:08).

Her lectures are always cut very abruptly after they start and there is not much chance of observing her behavior in the classroom. She lectures with a carefully prepared computer presentation. She also does research at the university, at the guest lecture she mentions “today I’d like to focus on some recent studies from my lab on the acquisition of the past tense irregular verb form in children between the ages of 18 months and 2 and a half years” (SA, 00:03:46) This may be in the film to emphasize her intellect and create even bigger difference between her initial intelligence and her personality when her sickness progressed.

Alice lives happily in a big, nice and presumably expensive house with her husband. They have three children who are already adults and living on their own. They meet regularly during big holidays or celebrations. The whole family can be seen

14 together during Alice’s birthday at the very beginning, when her children wish her the best. She has her hair styled in a bun, elegant make-up with red lips and is wearing a black evening dress and jewellery. This scene is set in a fancy restaurant (SA, 00:00:28

– 00:02:15). She is shown jogging around the campus, which implies she takes care of her body and weight. (SA, 00:09:05) This is also the first occasion on which one of her symptoms appears and she suddenly forgets where she is. Concerned about this problem, she makes an appointment at the doctor’s, whom she tells “I take multivitamin, flaxseed oil, calcium, iron . . .” and denies being stressed or depressed – all of this contributes towards her health and how well she takes care of her body. (SA,

00:12:51)

It is uncanny how this whole situation changes her as Alice’s sickness progresses. Her character abandons the norms of a ‘friendly teacher’ and approaches other categories. She starts to dress differently and not accordingly to her position, leaves her job as a teacher which she simply cannot manage anymore and her friends and family slowly leave her. During the first stage of her illness, Alice still remembers her identity and that of people around her. She bonds with her husband more and spends a lot of time in their lake house (SA, 00:40:06 – 00:42:09).

The last scene the whole family is seen together is during a brunch at the lake house. (SA, 00:53:45 – 00:56:03) She also delivers one last speech in front of people, this time about Alzheimer’s disease and she has to use a marker to help her orientate in the text. (SA, 01:06:38 – 01:11:34) As her sickness reaches a low point, she wants to commit suicide, but her condition prevents her from remembering she wanted to do so.

At this point she is usually seen in home clothing such as T-shirt and sweatpants, no makeup and messy hair. In the end, Alice’s husband decides to accept a job in different city and only her youngest daughter is willing to take care of her.

These two films therefore stand as complete opposites of each other. Rose does not have any relationship; she does not take care of herself and hardly does any exercise or wears makeup and smart clothes. The breaking point in her lifestyle could be considered being denied by her husband. She starts to exercise, improves her diet and perfects her looks and as a reward, she is happily reunited with him.

Alice has everything from the start and slowly loses it. She has a loving husband, perfect visage and runs regularly to keep herself in the best shape. Her breaking point in life is her sickness. As it progresses, she is no longer able to do these simple, everyday tasks and ceases wearing makeup or running. Her husband abandons her in the end for a job opportunity in different town.

3.2. Teachers as Experts in Their Fields

There is unfortunately no doubt that one can say ‘not all teachers are experts in their field’. There is always room for improvement and no teacher knows everything.

However, this generalization seems to fail when applied the other way – most experts actually are teachers. Among making great contribution to their field by contributing to journals and newspapers or publishing books, they are often professors at universities, spreading their knowledge and passing it on to the following generation. This is partly due to the fact that most universities offer various kinds of support to teachers who publish in their name and therefore they can spend a large amount of time researching information and get paid for it. For example Linguistic Society of America, a web page which unites all linguistic lovers around the United States maintains a list of media experts who serve as spokespersons for their area of research. When browsing though this list, one can see that almost every one of them has their school listed next to their own name.

Films with these teachers who are experts in their field of study are not usually from the school background. The characters have much better, higher mission and their lessons are portrayed as a part of an ordinary life. A great example of this is a 2016 film

Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve. It features a linguistic teacher and expert in communication Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams), who is chosen by the US government to make contact with aliens and try to understand their language. She meets her team, which includes physicist Ian (played by Jeremy Renner) who is very close to her and quickly becomes her friend. After some time trying to decode the alien language, the government misinterprets their offering of a weapon and all other

17 governments plan to attack the 12 alien spaceships. Louise stops this last minute by using her ability to see the future and explains that it is a great gift.

To make her even more extraordinary, Louise is the only person on Earth gifted by the aliens. She does not know that at the beginning, but she can understand their language already and it allows her to perceive time in a different manner, which results in her seeing the future. The observer first understands this as her having flashbacks from the past, but it is later revealed that these events have not happened yet. Louise is tormented by the death of her teenage daughter, which can be seen at the very beginning in one of the ‘flashback scenes’ (A, 00:03:35), with Louise stroking her face crying

“come back to me.” Alongside this there are several scenes from her daughter’s life as a child, for example when she says “I love you” (A, 00:03:10) to Louise or “I hate you”

(A, 00:03:14) when she was a teenager. Louise is greatly influenced by this event and seems to be very lonely and depressed.

Even though a main character of the movie is a teacher, she is only shown twice at the university campus or in the classroom. This happens at the very beginning. She walks into the class, greets the students and upon seeing only eight of them are present in a large auditorium she only reacts with “Where is everyone?” (A, 00:04:27), receiving no answer. This does not set her off and she carries the lecture in a monotonous tone for a while, until she is interrupted by students’ phones which keep ringing. She asks if there are “any news [they] wanna share?” (A, 00:05:00) After this, she learns about the extraterrestrial objects for the first time. She dismisses the class and goes to her lake house, which is empty and dark, suggesting there is no one waiting for her. (A, 00:07:38) When Louise comes to work the next day, there is nobody there. She walks though an empty dining room (A, 00:10:06) and gets to an empty auditorium (A,

00:10:14). In her office, she later meets Colonel Weber who assigns her the job of decoding the alien language. This is the last sighting of her on academic ground.

Important feature of a story with an expert teacher is how it culminates, which frequently borders with being very unrealistic or impossible. Louise was the only one out of 12 groups of experts around the world to solve the problem and essentially saves the world from a great war. To emphasize this, the observer learns that she was chosen by the aliens to see future and she is the only one to meet them in their spaceship. Her triumph is celebrated by a banquet with the world leaders and she also writes a book on the alien language called The Universal Language. (A, 01:36:56) At the end she is no longer alone in her house, but she shares it with her love interest and when he asks her if she wants to have a baby with him (A, 01:49:52) she answers yes, “despite knowing the journey and where it leads, [she] embrace[s] it and [she] welcome[s] every moment of it.” (A, 01:46:27)

4. TEACHER AS A LEADER

One possible outcome of friendly teacher is someone who has the power to change behavior of the entire class. Leaders are often teachers, who are not sufficiently educated to teach students with behavioral problems or deal with racial issues, but they always manage well and the whole class changes and everyone likes them. Films with this theme share many basic plot twists. The development of the film can be generalized into several stages, which are very similar among the films.

• The teacher who is a main character of the film is almost always new at the

school/environment/occupation. They look for a job and hardly ever are aware

of the difficulty everyone has with their future class. Often they get a class

which acts very rudely towards teachers, has serious behavioral problems and

racial or other segregation issues are not uncommon. The teacher is very

unwelcome there and the class never likes them from the start.

• The teacher may struggle at first. After some time, they come up with a topic the

class is interested in. They develop this and the class slowly transforms, they

accept the teacher and they are getting to know them.

• Quickly the teacher becomes beloved by the whole class and all the students

enjoy their lessons.

• Some sort of trouble comes after this, which sets the class off the old ways. They

either start to doubt the teacher’s position or there is some other plot twist which

involves the teacher or some of the students.

• Frequently, these films have a happy ending and the teacher remains in the

position they gained. Very often they have doubts about staying with the class or

they may not be allowed to do so, but the films usually have a happy ending.

There are also many plot twists and questionable points that most films share.

For example:

• Very frequently there is one special student in class that stands above the others.

The student is smarter and wiser than the others, perhaps comparable to students

from classes which stand as average in these films, compared to the lower-

average level of concerned classes. The main plot line may involve this student,

who has more attention on them and the teacher tries to push him forward. Very

frequently they leave the school or are somehow expelled.

• In most of the films with this type of teacher occurs a stereotype of occupation

of the teacher. They come to the school/institution to teach a class which the

film focuses on, but it is unclear what else they do. There are hardly any scenes

of them having other classes to fulfill the requirement to have a full time job or

if they part time, their other means of obtaining money are absent.

• There are many instances which suggest that the teachers do not stick to a

curriculum which each school has, regardless of level of the students or their

problems. They frequently find one topic which unites them and stick to it the

entire semester. The problem arises when comparing it to a work load of an

average American student – they have a strict schedule and book lists they have

to follow.

Film which shows this kind of teacher-student cooperation does not have to be from high school or university background. For example, Renaissance Man is about a person who tries teaching for the first time and his students are army recruits. It was directed by Penny Marshall in 1994. The main character is Bill Rago (played by Danny

DeVito) who has worked in advertisement for his whole life, but he loses his job. The unemployment agency finds him a new one – teaching recruits at an army training base.

He accepts the job, which is also offered with housing and moves there, but does not fit to the disciplined army schedule. He is bothered by them training early in the morning, calling everyone sir, speaking loudly and his insignificant height does not ensure him any respect either. When his group of students finds out that he is not in the army, they lose the respect they had for him, but he manages to grasp their attention with Hamlet.

They read the play, rehearse it and even go to a theatrical staging of it in Canada. After some trouble with hard-shell Drill Sergeant Cass (played by Gregory Hines) and a reveal of one of his students as drug dealer, he successfully leads them to their graduation and they all salute him during the parade.

After losing his job in advertisement and several tiring visits to the unemployment agency, Bill accepts a job as a teacher at an army base. He struggles from the very first moment he arrives to the main gate and asks for directions to the

Army education center, because he receives instructions “building 2310. Park your vehicle in the green zone, step inside, get a pass” (RM, 00:12:57). When he asks for additional information, the soldier just repeats this many times. When asking for Cpt.

Murdoch while roving around the area, he is told that “Captain Murdoch is not at the

AEC, he is at the ARC” (RM, 00:13:37), which confuses him even more. A nice contrasting point is that at the end of the film, Bill is asked for directions himself by a delivery guy and he answers in the same manner (RM, 01:31:35).

The group of Bill’s students is referred to as “squeakers” and “double Ds – dumb as dog shit”. They keep them in the army because the colonel insists that “if

[they] can make them do push-ups, [they] can give them a hand in the brain department” (RM, 00:16:04). When meeting them for the first time, they march into the class, line up and introduce themselves in a military manner. When Bill tells them that they do not have to do that and that he does not have a rank, they lose all respect and act in an insulting way. One of them says “oh man, you gotta be kidding me, they let a civilian here?” They also have very bad relationships among themselves and argue and insult each other all the time. Bill does not know what to teach them, so he suggest that

“everybody will read something”, but they do not have any books. He therefore goes with “we will write something” and distributes papers and pens. He suggests the topic would be “that magical twist of fate that prompted [their] gravity toward this institute of imbeciles” and when nobody understands, he says “write why you joined the army”

(RM, 00:18:47 – 00:27:11).

During their next lesson they read the short stories on why they joined the army and Bill witnesses several sad and touching stories that have led them to where they are.

In another lesson, Bill asks them to read something. They each bring newspaper or a magazine. They mock each other’s choices until one student asks “what’s the book you got Mr. Rago?” and he mentions Hamlet and grips their attention by saying “it’s about sex, murder, incest, insanity.” They ask for more information about it, including “who wrote it?” which suggests they really do not know much about literature. They start talking more about Elizabethan times, Shakespeare and Bill even explains the terms

“simile”, “metaphor” and “oxymoron”. (RM, 00:37:31 – 00:47:50)

In many following lessons, they read the play together and Bill slowly gains their trust. He notices a student called Roosevelt Hobbs who is very smart. One day

23 after class, he stops him and asks “where did you go to school?” and he mentions switching schools a lot and never reading Shakespeare before. To Bill’s suggestion to

“stick with it” he says “he who increases knowledge, increases sorrow.” Bill does not recognize it, but Hobbs clarifies that the quote is from the Bible. (RM, 01:20:15) Bill mentions him to Captain Murdoch and leaves his name on a piece of paper for him to look into his papers. Unfortunately, they really do it and one day during lunch Murdoch appears with Drill Sergeant and two Military Police soldiers and arrest him. Bill meets

Murdoch who tells him “you were right, he’s a sharp kid. His real name is Nathaniel

Hobbs . . . he sold crack . . . I guess he thought he could hide out in the army.” (RM,

01:25:00 – 01:26:12)

He admits this regretfully to his class one day and gives them a motivational speech, saying “the choices we make dictate the life we lead” and he tears up his sketches for advertisements he drew in hope of returning to his old profession. (RM,

01:29:58) Since this moment, his life is taking a better turn. He takes his class to

Canada and reconciles with his daughter, who was mad at him because he did not approve of her choice of becoming an astronomer. He even finds a girlfriend when searching for documents about one of his student’s father. Before the graduation, he wants to give his class a test which upsets them a lot. However, Murdoch forbids him from doing so, because they “don’t kid around with tests in the army” (RM, 01:42:33) and expresses his concern about them failing and being kicked out of the army because of this. He convinces him with “don’t do to them what you did to Hobbs.” (RM,

01:43:13) Bill gives his students a choice – they do not have to take the test, but they can do so for their own satisfaction. All of them look as if they will not take it.

On the day of the test, Bill sits in the classroom and nobody else has come. (RM,

01:54:02) He checks his watch and looks disappointed, but suddenly his entire class

24 marches in together, which they have not done since the first day. They line up and a spokesperson announces “Sir, double Ds squad reporting for final exam, Sir.” (RM,

01:55:16) This means a lot for Bill, because it is the first time they treat him as one of them, even though he is just a civilian.

During the final graduation ceremony, they all honor him by saluting his way when parading around the tribunes. When leaving the ceremony, Colonel asks from a bypassing car “signing up for another term, Bill?” and he responds “Sir, yes Sir!” (RM,

02:03:17).

Dangerous Minds is a 1995 film directed by John N. Smith. It has something in common with Renaissance Man – the main character is also not a teacher. The background is of military origin as well – Louanne Johnson (played by Michelle

Pfeiffer) is a former Marine who applies for a job at a local high school. She does want to take a teaching job, but the level of the class she gets is a complete surprise for her.

All the students are problematic and their backgrounds are even worse. Gang drive-bys are a normal thing for them and the rivalry between several groups of students in the classroom is making the environment very unfriendly. Louanne grips their attention by practicing karate, rewarding them with candy and changing example grammar sentences, but an uncompromising school principal forbids her from doing so. She switches to poetry and starts with Bob Dylan’s lyrics, which works and the whole class unites. Problem appears when one of her students Emilio (played by Wade Dominguez) is threatened to be killed by one of his enemies. Louanne convinces him to lay his honor aside and tell the principal about it, but he kicks him out because he did not knock and

Emilio is shot. Louanne decides to leave the school after this incident, but after some convincing from the students she stays.

Louanne gets to the school with help of her friend who arranges an interview for her, which can be seen when he says to the assistant principal “my friend Louanne is here to see you”. She is impressed by her skills and says “it’s not often that we have an applicant of your maturity and varied experience” and asks her right away “when could you start?” Louanne is taken aback, but she accepts a position which was previously managed by three substitute teachers. The assistant principal specifies she will be teaching academy students with special needs who are “passionate, energetic, challenging” and immediately turns the speech towards salary, so Louanne would not be asking any questions. (DM, 00:03:30 – 00:06:30)

When she enters the classroom for the first time, a group of guys is rapping, some of them are dancing and the rest is talking. They notice her presence, shout “white bread” at her, but do not stop. Louanne shouts “may I have your attention please?”, but nobody answers. She asks one of the students “what happened to Miss Shepherd?" and the girl finally gets everyone’s attention when she reproduces the question to the whole class, who answer “We killed the bitch.” Another boy, Emilio, starts to make sexual remarks on her and it makes her leave the room. (DM, 00:07:31 – 00:10:52)

She comes back the next day feeling very determined. She does not speak to them, but writes on board “I am a US marine. Does anyone know Karate?” She gets their attention by showing them some karate moves and letting them practice it.

Louanne gives everyone a new chance to improve their grades by mentioning that “at this point, everyone has an A” and they only have to maintain it. This already works well, because one student tells his friend to be silent, because he “ain’t never had no fucking A before” (DM, 00:13:36 – 00:18:50).

One day she is called to the principal’s office, which she enters without knocking. He reminds her that “this is an office. We knock before we enter.” (DM,

00:23:28) He proceeds to forbid her form using her teaching techniques on the students and tells her that showing them karate is “against school policy” (DM, 00:23:50). She tries to get to them by using different methods, such as rewarding them with candy bars every time they answer correctly (DM, 00:26:11). At this point, the students are somehow comfortable with her and perform some tasks, but they are nowhere near liking her.

Louanne tries her luck with introducing some poetry to the class. She bribes the students by promising them a trip to a fun fair if they finish the assignment, which they are very excited about, but they do not believe her. At the end of the lesson, a girl named Callie comes to her and tells her: “If you wanna get the class to listen, get

Emilio.” (DM, 00:29:35)

She decides to use lyrics to Bob Dylan’s song instead of a poem and the students are genuinely interested in the message hidden in the text, but Emilio keeps undermining her and the whole class follows. One day, Emilio gets into a fight with two other boys from the class. Louanne forbids them from fighting, but they do so anyway.

She visits families of each of them, but instead of complaining she praises their skills.

To one of the parents she says that their son “didn’t do anything wrong. . . . he’s very bright, funny, articulate. The truth is, he is one of my favorites.” (DM, 00:44:57)

Emilio is impressed by this, because nobody has ever done anything like this for them. When other students are mad at Louanne for causing the fight, he takes her side by interrupting the quarrel and asking her to read the poem again, and everyone followed his example. After the class, he tells her “it’s cool” (DM, 00:51:40). She rewards them by fulfilling the promise of taking them to a fun fair and she lied about it to the principal, who is very strict.

Louanne, just like Bill (from Renaissance Man), finds a student in her class who she considers being on a much higher level of education than the others. She visits

Callie at a supermarket she works at after school and she tells her that “just between you and me, with your scores, I think you should consider going into advanced English.”

(DM, 01:05:59) Callie surprises her by saying she is pregnant and switching schools.

Louanne tries to speak to the assistant principal who tells her they “prefer that these girls go to the mother-to-be program at Clearview” (DM, 01:09:30). Louanne is infuriated to learn that this policy is not issued by the Department of Education, but by the school. These strict rules and incompetent leaders also cause the tragedy which follows in the film.

One day, Emilio’s girlfriend stops Louanne outside of the school and informs her of a problem he got himself into. A previous boyfriend of Emilio’s girlfriend wants to kill him. Emilio refuses any help, he tells Louanne “this is nothing you can do anything about . . . the only way to stop his is for me to kill him first” (DM, 01:18:14).

He feels that it is a matter of his honor and he cannot tell anyone about it. Louanne hides him in her house and convinces him to tell the principal about it the next day.

When she asks in the office if he has spoken to him, he says he did come, but he “sent him away . . . Because he didn’t knock.” (DM, 01:21:29) Louanne is very angry and anticipates news about Emilio’s fate, which come during the lesson. The assistant principal comes and informs her that he was shot and is dead. She tells it to the class and feels so disappointed, that she decides to leave.

She tells the class about her not returning for next year, but they all feel betrayed by her. One student says: “So if you love us so much and you’re so interested in our graduating, how come you choose to leave?” (DM, 01:26:29) They cannot understand why she leaves because of few people, because they envision her as a leader, the only

28 teacher they ever respected. The next day, they bring Callie back to convince her and use some of Louanne’s methods as well – they give her candy bars and act so persistent, so that she finally agrees.

Dangerous Minds is comparable to a film called The Freedom Writers in many ways. The plot is seemingly similar – a teacher who comes to a class with students of different races, who have a problem with each other and the people around them. What differs is that The Freedom Writers story is based on a real event. The book this film is based on is called The Freedom Writers Diary, which was written by the students and the teacher Erin Gruwell herself. (IMDb) The nature of the film is however different from Dangerous Minds and Renaissance Man. Erin does not have to personally solve problems of the students and emphasis is given on the relationship between them as a multicultural group, which she helps them change and perfect, rather than the relationship between her and her students.

The film follows a young teacher called Erin (played by Hilary Swank) who starts teaching at a high school in a class with kids with several racial and behavioral problems. Despite her knowing about it, the seriousness of the problem still surprises her. She learns that many of them lost friends and family to gang violence. She starts a project with them. She buys each of them a notebook and asks them to write a diary each day. They can choose whether or not they will let her read it. She also introduces them to Holocaust and everything it included, which they relate to. They are interested in the topic so much that they raise money to invite Miep Gies (woman who sheltered

Anne Frank’s family) to give a speech at the school. The finale of the film is dedicated to Erin’s battle to keep teaching the students during their two remaining years at high school they have, which she wins.

The film is introduced by one of the students narrating about a complicated life of people of color and it is accompanied by scenes of drive-bys. She says: “In Long

Beach, it all comes down to what you look like. If you’re Latino, or Asian, or Black, you could get blasted any time you walk out your door.” (TFW, 00:03:02)

Erin is very excited on her first day. She says to the principal “what’s happening here is really exciting . . . the real fighting [for human rights] should happen here in the classroom” (TFW, 00:05:18). When Erin enters her classroom, she notices the equipment is much poorer than in the other ones and it is also significantly smaller.

(TFW, 00:07:51) When the bell rings, they come to the class and start talking, paying no attention to her. After short time, two boys start fighting.

In one lesson, a boy is shown drawing a picture, which then circles around the room and everyone laughs at it. Erin takes it and looks at it. It shows one of the students, Jamal, in a caricature with really big lips. She asks “What is this?” and the targeted student replies “Just leave it alone”, but he looks sad. She says to the class:

“I saw a picture just like this once, in a museum. Only it wasn’t a black man, it

was a Jewish man. And instead of the big lips, he had a really big nose, like a

rat’s nose. . . . These pictures were put in newspapers, by the most famous gang

in history.”

Then she explains the term ‘Holocaust’ to them, but most of them do not know what it is. (TFW, 00:27:35-00:32:25)

Erin prepares an exercise “the line game” for the students to find out how severe the problem is. She sorts them into two rows and asks them to step forward if they can answer positively to her questions. She starts lightly, with “How many of you have the

30 new Snoop Dog album?” and most of them step forward. She slowly gets to the question “How many of you know where to get drugs right now?” and “Stand on the line if you lost a friend in gang violence.” To her surprise, all of them come forward.

She grades the question to “more than one friend” and only few people leave. When she gets to “four of more” there are still a lot of people on the line. (TFW, 00:41:18-

00:45:25)

Immediately after this scene, Erin announces “I have something for each of you” and gives them each a notebook. She instructs them that they can “write about anything

[they] want”, but it has to be every day. She devotes a cabinet for them to leave their diary in if they want her to read it. (TFW, 00:45:25-00:47:18)

Erin takes her students to Museum of Tolerance one day to teach them more about the Holocaust. One student narrates the experience: “At the beginning of the tour, they give you a card with a child’s picture on it. You could find out who they were or what camp they went to. And at the end of the tour, you could find out if they survived.”

This is very emotional for all of them. After this, she also arranged for them to meet survivors from concentration camps over dinner. (TFW, 01:03:42-01:07:30) They feel so touched by this and Anne Frank’s story that they decide to invite Miep Gies to their school. They organize a bake sale (TFW, 01:22:43), a dance concert (TFW, 01:24:17) and all of this they do united, with no fights between different races. They have become friends. Miep does arrive and her talk is very emotional and it has an impact on many of them.

The school principal and teachers do not approve of Erin’s request to continue with her students until senior year. She tells her class “It’s been decided that we can’t continue with each other junior year.” (TFW, 01:50:54) She motivates them with a speech on how they can already manage it without her and gives them one last task of

31 retyping their journals into computers. Erin compiles them into a book called The

Freedom Writers Diary. She also arranges a meeting with the Board of Education to discuss the issue of her teaching junior and senior years. She wins and all her students are overjoyed. (TFW, 01:56:08)

All these films are similar in many instances. Most teachers are confident, successful people, but they are still taken aback by how serious the situation really is.

They gain trust of their students by unusual rewards they normally do not get and take them out on trips which support the issues they deal with in class. In the end, they are torn between the decision to stay or leave the school, but majority of films have a happy ending and they stay with their class.

5. DEPRESSED, DISEASED AND BURNED OUT TEACHER

Another possible outcome of friendly teacher is a teacher who lost all ambition in his profession. Teachers like this usually suffer from depression or burnout syndrome and it is evident that they no longer take interest in their job. There are frequent topics of suicide and death, suicide may eventually be performed. This perception is interwoven through the atmosphere of the film, making its genre dramatic and psychological.

Burnout syndrome is a term that seems to occur more and more. During the last couple of years, there have been articles online or in magazines about this topic and how to avoid it. However, it is not just another trend of the decade, like eating superfood and doing yoga, but a genuine illness. “A stressful lifestyle can put people under extreme pressure, to the point that they feel exhausted, empty, burned out, and unable to cope. Stress at work can also cause physical and mental symptoms.” (National

Center for Biotechnology Information) Large factors contributing to this are the uncompromising speed and productiveness of modern times and lack of personal time, connection with nature or neglected body nutrition. Occupational burnout was first used

“to describe the consequences of severe stress and high ideals in “helping” professions”

(National Center for Biotechnology Information). The term has evolved into the current state, which can affect almost anyone who is overworked. “Nowadays, the term is not only used for these helping professions or for the dark side of self-sacrifice” (National

Center for Biotechnology Information). Teaching undoubtedly requires a large amount of self-sacrifice and teachers are responsible of spreading knowledge, grades of their students and university teachers are also required to do a large amount of research.

These responsibilities can lead to burnout – a point where they think they have nothing to teach the students and absolute worthlessness of their career.

Depression can be similar to burnout, but it does not have to be linked solely to work. “Depression refers to a wide range of mental health problems characterised by the absence of a positive affect (a loss of interest and enjoyment in ordinary things and experiences), low mood and a range of associated emotional, cognitive, physical and behavioural symptoms.” (National Center for Biotechnology Information) This can affect any part of life and cause genuine unwillingness to be on this world, regardless by which traumatizing event it is caused.

Resolution of films with teacher characters who suffer with these illnesses or any similar ones depends on genre. It may either be positive – the character finds something new in their life to live for and slowly regain their joy in life, or negative – they never make it out of the depression vortex. Sometimes filmmakers create an effect where everything leads to the positive ending, but it ends up being the opposite. For example in A Single Man, the main character finds happiness and decides not to commit suicide and at that moment he dies.

5.1. Important Life Events and Tragedies

A tragedy in one’s life like losing a beloved partner can cause serious depression and suicidal thoughts. Tom Ford directed a film called A Single Man in 2009, which shows exactly these symptoms at a university teacher George Falconer (played by Colin

Firth). George lost his partner Jim (played by Matthew Goode) and was not even allowed to go to his funeral, because Jim’s family did not approve of their relationship.

Besides his boyfriend, he only has one close friend called Charley (played by Julianne

Moore) whose life is not exactly perfect either – she lives alone and is prone to alcoholism. George plans to kill himself with his gun and tried to put everything into order before he leaves. He clears up his safe deposit, writes goodbye letters and even prepares a sleeping bag to shoot himself in and not make any mess. In the evening, he has very pleasant dinner with Charley and non-committal fun with his student Kenny

(played by Nicholas Hoult) and decides that life is worth living. Shortly after this epiphany, he gets a heart attack and dies.

The audience sees George’s important life tragedy at the very beginning. He is fashionably clad in a suit and walks on snowed land to a crashed car. Next to the car lies his dead boyfriend and their dog covered in blood. He lies next to them and looks into

Jim’s dead, expressionless face and then kisses him on his lips. (TSM, 00:02:26 –

00:03:18) This is revealed to be a nightmare which wakes him up. His pain is revealed to the audience immediately, with him saying that “for the past eight months waking up has actually hurt. Cold realization that I’m still here slowly sets in.” (TSM, 00:03:48)

Already, George is expressing his will not to ‘be here’. He continues to do his morning routine and chores with apathy – he showers, shaves and dresses with a blank, dull expression. He narrates as a third person, talking about his boyfriend and sharing their

35 loving memories, which shows how much he misses him. He takes his role in life as “a part [he’s] supposed to play” (TSM, 00:04:58).

Even during a time in George’s life when he considers himself unimportant, he takes care of himself and looks very presentable. He takes shower in the morning (TSM,

00:04:13) and shaves (TSM, 00:04:18). He takes socks which are carefully folded in his drawer. All his shirts have a blue paper stripe on them, which means they are either new or professionally dry-cleaned. (TSM, 00:04:42) When he finishes, he describes himself as “slightly stiff, but quite perfect George” (TSM, 00:04:52). He looks into the mirror and says to himself “you must get through this goddamned day” (TSM, 00:05:17).

When leaving the bathroom, he still has his inner monologue and says “my heart has been broken. I feel as if I’m sinking, drowning, can’t breathe” and straight after this he stops and puts his hand on his heart, his facial expression showing pain. (TSM,

00:05:31) This suggests that he might have heart issues he is not aware of, which signalize the heart attack he gets at the end of the day.

Hearing a phone ring reminds George of the time he received the news about

Jim’s death and it is shown as a flashback scene. George picked up a ringing phone and expected the caller to be Jim, but the man introduces himself as his cousin. He informed him that “there has been a car accident [and] . . . Jim lost control of his car”. He also mentions that “it happened yesterday, but his parents didn’t want to call [him]”, which clearly tells us that they did not approve of their relationship. He is very sad about this news and asks “will there be a service?” and gets a positive response, but his urge to get a plane ticket is denied with “the service is just for family.” When hanging up the phone, George sits stiffly in his chair, breathes heavily and drops his glasses on the floor. After this, he starts crying. (TSM, 00:07:29 – 00:10:35)

When arriving to the university he sees two of his students lying on a lawn and one boy waves at him. (TSM, 00:17:26) He responds and at the office, a secretary informs him that “there was a student [there that] morning asking for [his] address”. She apologizes for giving it to him, but George only responds to this with compliments on her looks.

At his lecture, he exchanges several deep looks with Kenny, the boy who waved at him earlier that day. He runs to him after his lecture and asks “may I talk to you for a minute?” and they have a chat about how different George’s lecture was this time, when he deviated from the topic and spoke about fear. They walk to a place on campus where they sell supplies. Kenny buys a pencil sharpener and asks George “what was it that you wanted to get sir?” George admits he only walked there to talk to him. Kenny is delighted with this and offers to buy a sharpener for him as well. George picks a yellow one which surprises Kenny, who “thought [he] would probably pick blue . . .[because] blue [is] supposed to be spiritual”. Kenny picks red and George clarifies the color stands for “a lot of things. Rage, lust . . .” and Kenny responds with slight smile and “no kidding”. (TSM, 00:25:11 – 00:28:32)

When leaving the campus George meets Kenny again next to his car on a motorbike. (TSM, 00:31:35) He knocks on his window, which startles him. He is curious if he’s “going on vacation or something” because he “saw [him] cleaning out

[his] office”. After a while, George asks “What exactly is it that you want, Kenny?” and

Kenny invites him for a drink, because he “seem[s] that [he] could use a friend”. (TSM,

00:32:12) George admits he “may be right”, but thanks him and postpones it for another time.

After leaving the office, George takes his prized possessions out of safe deposit box and buys bullets for his gun. At home, he lays everything in perfect order on his

37 desk. He prepares a suit and other accompanying clothes for his burial, displays all his important documents and keys and letters for his beloved ones. He takes his gun and heads to the bed to kill himself, but cannot find an ideal position. Later he tries the shower or carrying a sleeping bag into the bed to be more sanitary, but he cannot bring himself to do it. (TSM, 00:48:52 – 00:52:32)

His suicidal attempts are interrupted by his friend Charley calling him and reminding him of a visit he promised to pay her. Charley puts a record on in her player and they both dance. (TSM, 00:58:09) George looks genuinely happy.

After returning home and failing to kill himself again, George drops to a local bar for alcohol and cigarettes. He is surprised by seeing Kenny walk into the door.

(TSM, 01:10:49) They have a drink together and George seems in a very positive mood.

They talk about future and he remarks that “death is the future . . . when one is not enjoying one’s presence a great deal would suggest that future shouldn’t be any better”

(TSM, 01:12:52) Kenny agrees with him, but tries to connect to him and cheer him up.

When the talk moves towards experience, Kenny decides to test his spontaneousness and suggests “let’s go swimming” (TSM, 01:14:54), to which he gets immediate response “OK”. They go skinny dipping in the sea at night and later to George’s house, because he hits his head in the sea.

Despite nothing intimate happening between Kenny and George, the scene at his house it full of sexual tension. When looking for Band-Aids in a bathroom drawer,

Kenny find a naked photograph of Jim. He looks at it for a while, smiles and returns to

George to treat his head wound. After it is done, George mentions “I think we should get you out of the wet clothes”. Kenny responds “yes sir” and undresses in front of him.

They stand face to face for a while in silence and then Kenny departs to the shower.

When he finishes, they share a beer and talk about relationships. George asks about a

38 girl who is always in his presence. Kenny turns the question about dating into “What you really wanna to ask is if we sleep together”, to which he responds “once”. When

George is interested why only once, Kenny clarifies “I didn’t say only once, I said once”, which could imply his attraction to men and presumably George as well. They later talk about why Kenny wanted to see George outside of the school and he mentions he was “worried about him”, but is again assured that he is “fine” (TSM, 01:18:08 –

01:24:46).

In one of the final scenes, George walks to Kenny who is sleeping on his couch and when putting a blanket over him, he notices his gun which he took to prevent him from using it. (TSM, 01:26:04) He takes it back with a touched expression on his face and locks it back into his drawer. He looks happy and relieved. He looks at the nature for a while and burns the goodbye letters he had prepared. His inner monologue accompanies it:

“A few times in my life I’ve had moments of absolute clarity. When, for a few

brief seconds, the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think

and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh, it’s as though it had all

just come into existence. I can never make these moments last. I cling to them,

but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull

me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was

meant to be.” (TSM, 01:27:11)

He sits on his bed and suddenly feels pain in his right arm. He looks panicked and falls on the floor. After dying, he sees Jim standing above him, smiling and kissing his cheek. (TSM, 01:29:32)

5.2. Negative and Unsupportive Environment

Detachment is a 2011 film by Tony Kaye which shows most of the negative sides of teaching. The main character is Henry Barth (played by Adrien Brody), who works as a substitute teacher. Local kids hate him at first, but he gains their trust to some extent – they like him, but he is not a role model for them. He has major issues with connecting to people and making emotional attachments, partly because his mother committed suicide when he was a child. He has a grandfather he is attached to and befriends an underage prostitute Erica (played by Sami Gayle). When approaching the end of his month long substitution, his grandfather dies. He is very sad about it and builds an emotional wall around him again; he even calls to a foster home to pick Erica up, much to her disappointment. One of his students, very unpopular girl Meredith

(played by Betty Kaye), connects to him more than she should – when he denies her any personal help, she kills herself on the school grounds. After this traumatizing event,

Henry visits Erica at the youth facility and she runs to his arms, which is perhaps the only optimistic scene in the entire film.

Alongside the main plot line, the film has several other teachers who struggle with their position in front of students and get bullied by them. The school principal

(played by Marcia Gay Harden) faces dismissal or school counselor (played by Lucy

Liu) who wants to guide the children to better future, but receives only hate.

Before entering his new class for the first time, Henry takes a deep breath. He is wearing a black suit and looks very presentable. He greets them with “good morning” and introduces himself as Mr. Barth. He introduces them to his rule right away “I have one rule . . . if you don’t wish to be here, don’t come”. One student is genuinely

40 interested and asks “dude, what does that mean?” to which Henry responds “It’s not dude, it’s Mr. Barth” and receives a cold answer “you’re fucking gay”. After the boy insults another girl from his class called Meredith, he tells him coldly he’s free to leave.

The boy is hesitant at the door, asking if he wants him “to go to the dean’s office”, but

Henry says “I don’t care where you go.” He later asks them to take a piece of paper and do a writing exercise and another boy gets into opposition with “what if we have no paper?”, which Henry ignores, so he inquires “hey jackass, I asked you a fucking question!” He ignores this as well, so the student stands up and approaches him, looking very angry. He takes his bag and throws it across the room. Henry reacts very coldly to his threats and only tells him “that bag, it doesn’t have any feelings. It’s empty. I don’t have any feelings you can hurt either.” He gives him a piece of paper and he sits down.

After the class, Meredith asks him why he only threw the first boy out of the class and not the second one. He responds “I had to make an example out of somebody” and clarifies that the first boy insulted her and not him, which is not allowed. One can already see that Meredith likes him. (D, 00:08:08 – 00:11:40)

On his way home one day he meets a prostitute, with whom he had a disagreement on a bus one day. (D, 00:27:40) He takes pity on her and takes her to his apartment. He gives her food and lets her have a shower. When she sits on a sofa, he puts his hand on her thighs. She expects him to have some kind of paid experience with her and tries to stop him with “hold on man, that’s a hundred bucks”, but her looks at bruises on the inside of her thighs. (D, 00:30:02) He asks her “have you been raped recently?” and she responds with “why do you care”, indicating that it is true. (D,

00:30:25)

As the time progresses, Henry is slowly gaining the trust of his students and mostly Meredith. During one lecture, she draws pictures of him into her notebook with

41 little hearts around him. (D, 00:44:31) She keeps taking photos of him on school campus and one day after school, she brings him a picture she took and edited of him. It has him in front of an empty class and with no face, just white blank space. When he asks if that is how she sees him she says: “I don’t know how I see you. It’s just how I thought of you in your situation . . . I watch you around the school. You always seem so sad.” She also offers herself, if he “need[s] someone to talk to”. He reverses the question and she asks “will you talk to me?” She gets very emotional when complaining and when she asks if he likes her, he responds “of course I do”, which she probably interpreted in her own romantic way. She presses herself onto him and cries on his shoulder, which he finds very inappropriate and pushes her away. She starts crying even more and whines “you said you like me”, but they are disturbed by another teacher and

Meredith runs away crying. (D, 01:07:17 – 01:10:48)

Henry’s presence is haunted by things from his past. During the film, there are constant flashbacks to his childhood. They are happy at first, him playing and his mother being nice, but as the film progresses it is shown that she committed suicide by swallowing pills. (D, 01:02:28) Constant reminder of her is Henry’s only living relative

– his grandfather. He lives in a hospital and has severe mental problems and possibly dementia. Henry visits him very often and sometimes has to help the staff get him out of bathroom, where he locks himself. He looks very sad and “hate[s] being a burden” (D,

00:25:52). He reveals to him shortly before his death that “[his] mother was with [him] today” and he told her he takes care of Henry and is afraid to leave him. Then he gets confused again and mistakes Henry for his daughter. Henry speaks to him in female voice and upon his plea for forgiveness says that there is nothing to forgive him for. He also assures him “[he] can feel free to leave whenever [he’s] ready.” (D, 01:01:06 –

01:03:58) When he arrives to the hospital again, he finds his bed empty. (D, 01:12:23)

After the incident with Meredith and death of his grandfather, Henry closes himself emotionally and when arriving back home with Erica, he cooks her dinner and casually announces “you can’t stay here with me. I’m not good for you.” She denies this, calling him the “only family [she] ever had.” Situation gets emotional when social workers arrive and Erica understands and starts crying. She pleads him “don’t let them take me” and “you’re all I have”, saying even “I love you Henry”, but it is unclear whether romantically or as a friendship. She has to be dragged out of the room yelling and crying. (D, 01:14:07 – 01:17:00)

When Henry announces his last day in front of the class, they are all very sad, because he gained their trust and they like him. Even the student who argued with him on his first day tells him “I’m gonna miss you man.” After school, Meredith joins a bake sale and sells cupcakes with white icing and smiley faces drawn in black. Henry approaches her and they have a pleasant conversation, which makes Henry and the audience think that she has calmed down and everything has returned to normal. He says “today is my last day” and she responds with “how ironic”. He then points at the only black iced cupcake with a sad face on it and says “I like that one the best”, but she denies with “you can’t have that one, it’s mine” and gives him a smiling one. The say goodbye and when Henry starts to leave, she eats the black cupcake. Suddenly she faints and her mouth starts to bleed, while simultaneously the films shows clips from a videotape where she announces her suicide. Henry tries to help her, but he gets his hands covered in blood, so he only holds her and mutters “It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay.” (D, 01:20:53 – 01:26:44)

After the traumatizing experience, he decides to visit Erica who runs happily into his arms. (01:30:33) The film ends with Henry talking to his students. As he reads

43 an excerpt from The Fall of the House of Usher, there are scenes of the classroom and hallways completely deserted and destroyed, as if it was abandoned for years.

Counselor Parker

This character is another one fighting many battles and she always loses. She spends her days arguing with angry parents or trying to help the students who do not want her help. When Dr. Parker comes to ask other teacher Charlie to fill in for one who quit recently, he offers her “happy pill” to “help [her] through the day”. She mentions that she is worried about him. He is always very positive, laughs and jokes around, but it is undoubtedly caused by the unknown pills he keeps eating. He does not respond to her request and she leaves the room. (D, 00:21:19) In another scene, she answers a phone from a father of one of the students. He claims his son “is ADHD” because he

“looked it up online” and urges they “gotta give him his free laptop”. When she calmly mentions his son’s attitude problems (with accompanying scenes), like beating up other kids and argues she has “real LD kids that need [her] attention”, the father rudely screams that “he’s always mad all the time, because he’s not getting the service as he needs”. He hangs up with threats and she hangs the phone with beaten expression. (D,

00:33:09 – 00:33:45)

In one of her most prominent scenes she finally breaks down and throws an emotional outburst. She later regrets it and admits she “crossed the line”. She has a talk with a girl from the school, which was supposed to follow the regular pattern of advice and help with student’s future career. To Parker’s question about her plans after high school the student answers “hang out with my boyfriend, do some modeling shit and be in my friend’s band”. Parker politely points out that her grade report is full of Fs, but the

44 student does not care. Parker gets up from her chair, thinks for a while and then voices her opinion:

“God you are shallow, disgusting creature. You wanna know the truth? One –

you’re not gonna be in a band or a model missy, because you have no ambition.

. . . Two – the only talent you’ll ever have is getting men to fuck you. Your life

will basically become a carnival of pain and when you can’t stand it, not one

more day, not one more hour, it will get worse.”

At this point, the student starts to lose her ‘don’t care’ expression and looks slightly worried. Parker cries and is very passionate about it. She generalizes all the students later on:

“Every day I come to this office and listen to you kids shit all over yourselves. It

is so easy to be careless. It takes courage and character to care. Not that you

have any of those qualities.”

She then screams to get out and the girl leaves yelling “fuck you!” (D, 00:58:26 –

01:00:14)

Both characters in lead in A Single Man and Detachment are men who are depressed. They both lost an important person in their life – George lost his boyfriend who was his soulmate and Henry lost his beloved mother. Their sadness manifests in different ways. George still keeps his academic and professional quality at his best. He is highly organized and thinks things into detail, but he plans to kill himself because his pain is too strong to bear. Henry does not attempt suicide, but lives his life in a lethargic coma. He avoids contact with people to the extent that he even works as a substitute teacher, so he never spends enough time at one place to make friends.

These two men also share similar plot points in their stories. They both have one good friend who takes care of them and genuinely thinks of their well-being, but they underestimate their friendship. For George it is Charley, with whom he shares many stories and acts casually around her. He does not consider her as a factor to stay alive until the last moment. Henry finds Erica, but chases her away. She remains faithful to him nonetheless and when he returns to her, she embraces him.

Another connection is a relationship with a student. Both Kenny and Meredith get attached to their teachers without them knowing and feel special connection to them.

They both mention they want to be their friend and that they look sad and need someone to talk to. George is much more open to friendship with Kenny, who is very supportive.

He connects to him and prevents him from committing suicide. Meredith is less supportive, partly because she has many issues on her own and seeks help in Henry, not vice versa.

Ending of these films is however contrary. In A Single Man, Kenny and Charley remain supportive and George stops being depressed, but the end is very negative and

George dies. In Detachment, the situation with Meredith appears to be positive, but it is her who dies and Henry lives.

6. TEACHER AS AN OBJECT/SUBJECT OF SEXUAL DESIRE

This genre of film progresses as boundaries of forbidden relationships and sexual references on screen are getting more socially accepted. There is a relationship – either platonic or physical – among male teacher and a student or vice versa. Other stereotypes of teachers are omitted, because the focus is not on teacher’s performance, but the chemistry they have with the class. The only emphasis is given on the general

‘friendliness’ of the teacher to make them seem likeable to the audience. The story frequently culminates outside of the school, to put the relationship into a more real background where they seem equal. Traditional position of a teacher in class is in front of the room, standing with students sitting in front of them. A book focusing only on this relationship called Teacher-Student Relationships: Crossing into the Emotional,

Physical, and Sexual Realms states a following opinion:

“The Boundaries between teachers and students, many of which are necessary

for professionalism, legality, and ethics, are being breached as teachers and

students form personal and sexual relationships at and outside school. These

relationships are abusive and violate the law and vestiges of American societal

and moral codes.” (Zarra, 18)

Romantic or sexual relations of any kind with a student who is not of age are illegal in the United States. When raising this issue at university, where both parties are adults and responsible for their own actions, each institution usually has different policies towards this subject. It may not be strictly forbidden, but it raises questions such as if the teacher grades student’s work rightfully and whether the student has any

47 extra information to his benefit that the others do not. This may be criticized as unfair behavior towards the rest of the class.

Films with this kind of embroilment usually stick to a pattern, which might be altered to fit the nature of the story:

• First contact at school – First contact of both parties usually happens at school,

where some mutual attraction eventually becomes visible. There is focus on

chemistry of both involved teacher and student and less on everyone else

• Contact outside of the school – Very infrequently the relationship remains in

school boundaries. To make the characters more equal in their emotional flow

and give them space to be alone, the filmmakers usually use segregated, empty

classrooms or places completely outside of the school.

• Complication - To make the storyline interesting, it has to have a certain

entanglement, which is a feature most films share. In this type of films, it mostly

involves either identity crisis of one concerned party or public revelation of their

relationship.

• Resolution – To conclude the film, various resolutions can be used depending on

the story line. Films targeted at teenage audience or family comedies generally

have a happy ending and drama genres may have ambiguous or negative

endings.

6.1. Relationships at High School

One of classic teenage films from the ‘90s is called Never Been Kissed, which has teacher-student relationship as a romantic involution in a story about self-doubt and lack of confidence. It was directed by Raja Gosnell in 1999. The main character is a newspaper editor Josie Geller (played by Drew Barrymore) who dreams of becoming a reporter. One day she gets a chance to go undercover to a local high school to investigate what the students do in their free time. She is acting as a teenager, but in reality is much older, thus erasing the ethical issue of relations with underage students.

The male protagonist - her English teacher Sam Coulson (played by Michael Vartan), is not aware of her disguise and faces big qualms about his desire for an underage student.

Josie eventually becomes popular with the help of her brother Rob (played by David

Arquette). During school prom, she can no longer keep a secret and reveals her identity, but Sam gets very angry at her. She therefore writes and emotional newspaper article about her love for him and he forgives her.

Josie works as the youngest copy editor at the Chicago Sun-Times. She likes her job, but she would like to become a reporter much to her boss’s dismay. During a meeting, the head of the newspaper speaks of his kids and how he realized he “[doesn’t] even know [his] own kids” (NBK, 00:08:21). He therefore suggests an article called

“My Semester in High School” (NBK, 00:08:21). He points at Josie uncompromisingly to be the one to covers it, perhaps of her young age and no one dares to argue about it.

After the first wave of enthusiasm slowly fades, Josie remembers how unpopular she used to be at high school and changes her visage to fit into the group of popular kids.

She is very unsuccessful at first, because she only bonds with very unpopular students and her brother has to join the same high school to help her be prominent.

On Josie’s first day Mr. Coulson walks into the class wearing black trousers with a black belt and blue shirt with a white T-shirt under it. He greets everyone and sets eyes on Josie saying “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sam Coulson.” This encounter already seem a lot more personal than it could have been, if he simply asked her to stand up and introduce herself to the class. There is a lot of focus on their eye contact and the film suggests attraction from the fist confrontation. When talking about meaning of the word ‘pastoral’, Josie is the only one to raise her hand to answer and this attracts his attention. When she answers, he looks at her for a while silently and then asks “Are you sure you’re 17?” which sets her off and he then continues to stare at her, partly in admiration of her intellect. (NBK, 00:18:05 – 00:19:21)

During their second meeting, the film brings us to a class which has already started and they are discussing Shakespeare’s sonnets. They speak about ‘disguise’ and people feeling liberated when not being their true self, which is a topic Josie can personally relate to. Sam asks Josie to read a sonnet and she does so and the camera switches between them looking at each other. The scene is interrupted by Josie’s flashback to her young years and then by the bell. (NBK, 00:25:50 – 00:29:23) There is also another clip showing Josie reading her essay about disguise and Sam looking dreamingly on her, already expressing much more attraction than previous scenes. This is emphasized by Chicago Sun-Times employee and Josie’s friend looking at the footage streaming from Josie’s hidden camera and with acknowledging look. (NBK,

00:37:21 – 00:37:48)

Their first encounter outside of school happens in a bar on accident. They share some private information, which would not be possible at school. Josie goes to a bar and meets Sam. She is pleasantly surprised by meeting him and her answer to his question

“Out on a school night?” is interrupted by an unknown woman approaching them. He

50 introduces her as Lara and she adds she is “his girlfriend”. He introduces Josie to Lara as “one of [his] students”. It is suggested that Sam likes different things than Lara, because she complains about the noise in the club and says “no offence, I know you love this. I’m just hoping you’re gonna get it all out of your system before you move to

New York.” Josie is taken aback by this and says nothing for a while and Sam’s expression is blank. They both later laugh at Josie’s joke, which Lara does not understand. They part with friendly “nice to meet you” and Sam only waves his hand.

(NBK, 00:40:40 – 00:41:28)

They further discuss this on a Ferris wheel on another Student night. Josie tries to ride by herself, but the operator starts yelling “lonely ride in bucket five! Single!”

Sam notices this and goes to ride with her. He mentions that he is afraid of heights, so he probably only came on the wheel because of Josie. Sam speaks openly about moving, saying that “[he] should do it . . . make the commitment and grow up” but it is obvious that his girlfriend wishes that and he does not want to. They talk briefly about boys and he says “when you’re my age guys will be lined up around the block for you.”

Josie knows it is not true, but says only “you have to say that, cause you’re my teacher.”

He acknowledges that “actually [he] shouldn’t say that because [he is her] teacher”

(NBK, 00:51:16 – 00:53:48).

Sam tries to express his sympathies towards Josie in a different way – he helps her in her studies and even arranges a meeting with the admissions person at Dartmouth for her. She lies that she “wasn’t gonna go to college”, but he insists that “[she] is a great writer.” (NBK, 01:09:13 – 01:09:50) The situation goes so far that people in the office start noticing it – even her boss suggests writing an article about him called

“Student-teacher relations: how close is too close?” (NBK, 01:10:09)

Everything climaxes at prom, where Josie is forces to reveal her true identity.

Before doing so, she slow dances with Sam and shyly asks “Is your girlfriend here?” gets a response “No. I’m alone”. Then he clarifies “in fact, we broke up last week.”

Josie lightens the situation by making a funny remark and he flatters her by saying “You are amazing, Josie Geller.” Josie wants to tell him who she really is and Sam says

“there’s something I wanna tell you too”, but they are interrupted. (NBK, 01:21:53 –

01:23:30)

She confronts Sam one more time outside of the school after her reveal and he is very mad at her, because he thinks she was writing a story about him. He feels betrayed and used - complete opposite of what Josie thought he would feel. He admits having feelings for her, but things do not change just “because all of the sudden [he] was allowed to be attracted to [her]”. He walks away, because “[he] can’t look at [her] the same way”. (NBK, 01:26:59 – 01:28:05)

The story has a happy ending when Josie writes and emotional newspaper article about him, which charms many readers. She suggests meeting him at baseball field and even though at first it did not seem he would show up, he does in the end and they have their first passionate kiss. (NBK, 01:38:48)

The affection between Josie and Sam in Never Been Kissed is accepted positively and people could empathize with them, imagine what it would be like to be them. The genre of the film is romantic comedy and the finale of the film is very romantic, without their relationship it would not have any bigger potential. When a film does not use this ‘forbidden relationship’ as a main plot topic, it gets treated differently.

Another film which deals with teacher student relations is The English Teacher, which is coincidentally also a comedy. In this case, however, the romantic part is completely left out and the relationship serves as a complication which drives the comedic plot. The culmination of the story is that Linda tries to completely forget that it ever happened.

The English Teacher was directed by Craig Zisk in 2013. Its main character is a high school teacher Linda Sinclair (played by Julianne Moore) and her love interest is a boy named Jason (played by Michael Angarano) who used to be in her class years ago.

This is another clever way of avoiding the controversial affair with an underage student, but still remaining in the high school background. One day, Jason appears and presents his theatre play to Linda, who is fascinated by it and does everything to stage it as a school play. Due to its negative ending, she has to promise to the headmaster an alternate one, but keeps this away from Jason. She eventually has an intercourse with

Jason in one of the classrooms and dismisses it as one time thing, but surprises herself with unexpected jealousy towards him. When other students find out, they all start to hate her and they all become very mean. To top it off, Jason finds out about the alternate ending and gets mad at her as well. Linda is tormented with regret, but faces her fears and eventually overcomes them. The movie is at places commented by a narrator, who familiarizes the audience with Linda’s life and thoughts.

The narrator introduces Linda as a 40 year old woman with “no prospect of marriage.” She lives on her own, but her life is not “cold and dull”, she is a “passionate woman”. She seeks most of it in books since the young age and teaching has become her passion, “but her uncompromising spirit, so beloved in the classroom doomed her to a spinster’s life.” (TET, 00:01:30 – 00:03:42) She tries to find a relationship that would

53 work, but she has very unfortunate habit of grading men the same way she grades essays.

One day at a lonely gas station, she gets frightened by a man in a hood and casual clothes. After spraying a significant amount of pepper spray into his face, she learns that “[he] was in [her] class in 2006” (TET, 00:05:43). She recognizes him as

Jason Sherwood and they have a discussion about his writing, which she has always found to be incredible. He gives one of his plays to her and she is overjoyed with it to the extent of persuading a drama class teacher to make the kids perform it as a school play. School principal agrees under several conditions – Linda has to pay all expenses above the budget and they promise to change a negative ending into positive, which she does not tell Jason.

Main plot twist of the film comes during one of the rehearsals. Linda and Jason are alone in a classroom when suddenly he kisses her. (TET, 00:34:25) She is taken aback, but kisses him back (TET, 00:34:37) and they engage in passionate intercourse.

She is consumed with regret and has a talk with him the next day, claiming that “it is best that what happened does not happen again” (TET, 00:37:48). This is the only contact between them that ever happens in the film.

Situation gets complicated when she sees Jason flirt with one of the students in a leading role (TET, 00:42:09) and gets very jealous. She calls her over to her classroom and delivers a speech about how “[her] behavior with [Jason] lately has been a little inappropriate” and gives her advice about men, which is obviously motivated by her jealousy and the student looks very uncomfortable during it. She also threatens about calling her parents and telling them about it, which frightens her. (TET, 00:42:34 –

00:45:05)

Later that day, she catches them making out backstage and threatens her angrily.

(TET, 00:45:33) Unfortunately, one of the male school play protagonists overhears and records an argument Linda has with Jason shortly after at a parking lot, including a mention of their passionate encounter. (TET, 00:46:09 – 00:46:55) Next day, the word spreads around the school and students laugh at her and mock her and sometimes even verbally abuse her, for example calling “hoe” instead of ‘here’ during attendance check

(TET, 00:48:29) or writing “hypocrite slut bitch” on her classroom door (TET,

00:48:55). Linda complains at the headmaster’s office, but ends up getting fired (TET,

00:53:04) after verbal exchange between many people involved in the play reveals she did not tell Jason about the ending scene change.

This film ends positively, but most issues remain unfinished. Linda is persuaded to write a new ending to the play, but both Jason and other students do not regain much respect for her. She learns her lesson and uses it as new approaches in her teaching, and also starts dating “father of a young man with whom she had so disgraced herself”

(TET, 01:21:04). Her affair remains in the past and she regrets it in the end.

6.2. Relationships at University

The past two films Never Been Kissed and The English Teacher were set in high schools. Both had to overcome the issue of underage students by making the students involved in a relationship older than they should be, once without the teacher knowing and once with her consent. Elegy is a piece which deals with student – teacher affair from a different perspective. It happens at university, so the student is already of age and allowed to have a relationship with the teacher, but he has his personal boundaries and only seduces students when the semester finishes. The main character, David, has experience with dating his students, so it is not a onetime thing like the previous cases.

There is also no obvious happy ending that both previously mentioned comedies have, but Elegy ends ambiguously, which is more fitting to its drama genre.

Elegy was directed by Isabel Coixet in 2008. Its main character is elderly man

David Kepesh (played by Ben Kingsley) who works as a writer, critic and a professor.

Since his divorce, he refuses to have committed relationship with women and only uses them to have casual sex with. As he says, “[he’s] always been vulnerable to female beauty” (E, 00:04:28). He has been in this ‘agreement’ with his former student Caroline

(played by Patricia Clarkson), who travels a lot, for several years. One day he sees beautiful Consuela (played by Penélope Cruz) at one of his lectures, but only addresses her at a party after the semester ends. They quickly start dating, but break up over

David’s fear of commitment and refusal to meet her parents. David is devastated by this and a sudden death of his best friend George. He breaks up with Caroline and starts to focus on himself. After two years, Consuela calls him and informs him about her having cancer. She asks him to take pictures of her breasts before they take them away and he

56 agrees, emotionally reuniting with her over this tragedy. The film has ambiguous ending, with David lying on Consuela’s bed at hospital and consoling her.

David notices his love interest, Consuela, at one of his lectures. He is morally aware of rules the school has and he has his own rules he never crosses. He jokingly mentions that “since they posted the sexual harassment hotline number down the hall from [his] office, [he] never make[s] private contact with any of [his] students until they’ve received their grades.” (E, 00:04:58) At a cocktail party he throws for his students he immediately talks to Consuela. He invites her to a theatre, which he explains to his friends as “this girl is a throwback to completely different time. She has to be wooed.” (E, 00:08:42) His friend George gives him the advice to get married and “keep the sex part just for sex” (E, 00:09:21). He cannot bring himself to do so and quickly enters a relationship with Consuela, with simultaneously still occasionally sleeping with

Caroline.

Breaking point comes early in the film. Though David has seemingly everything he wanted, but he starts to struggle with jealousy. He says that “[his] whole life was dedicated to independence and at some cost [he] had achieved [his] goal. Never the less, it was in that moment that [his] terrible jealousy was born. That is when [he] realized that [he] would never ever really possess her.” (E, 00:24:58) Consuela is open to commitment and keeps inviting him to meet her parents, a commitment he eventually agrees to.

On the day of a graduation party he is supposed to attend, he panics and calls

Consuela to make an excuse about being stuck in traffic. Consuela responds with “why are you doing this to me?” (E, 00:53:20), suggesting she knows about his lies. She later leaves him a voicemail saying “[she] loved [him]” (E, 00:55:34) and breaks up with him. David is devastated and shortly after his emotional situation gets even worse when

57 his best friend George dies. Later he confesses his love for Consuela to Caroline and ends their relationship.

Several years pass in David’s life. He “concentrated on [his] work” (E,

01:16:53). He did not enter any new relationships and gave himself time to recover, which he achieved. “It took two years, but [he] finally got past the death of George and

[he] even accepted the loss of Consuela.” (E, 01:17:08) After all this time, Consuela makes appearance again. She leaves a voicemail on David’s phone and after a tormenting himself with several possible scenarios for what might have happened, he calls her back, his hand visibly shaking from fear and nervousness. (E, 01:20:30) She visits him to inform him she “has cancer. Breast cancer.” (E, 01:23:02) David is shaken by this and starts crying. He agrees to fulfill her wish – to take a photo of her breasts before she undergoes the surgery. She tells him the wrong date, but he finds out and visits her in hospital.

In emotional scene, she tells him “I will miss you” (E, 01:40:48) to which he responds “I’m here” (E, 01:41:14) and lies next to her on the hospital bed. It is unclear whether Consuela recovered from her surgery or whether they started dating again. The film ends with a flashback scene of them walking on a beach, which might be also interpreted as a scene from the future, where they are happily together.

7. TEACHERS WITH IRONICALLY REVERSED ROLES

There are some instances when filmmakers take positive character traits (mostly those mentioned in chapter 3) and reverse them, thus turning the teacher into a really bad one and it becomes attractive to larger audience. There are two movies in the selected sample that stand out from other films – because they are pure parody. The directors were aware of the ‘friendly teacher’ stereotype and did an exact opposite – a really mean teacher who does not really care about anything or anyone. The issue of whether in real life they would or would not be fired from the school is ignored, because the character functions a source of entertainment only.

7.1. Teacher as Main Character

One movie implies the main plot by the name of the film Bad Teacher from

2011, directed by Jake Kasdan. The main character is a middle school teacher called

Elizabeth Halsey (played by Cameron Diaz) who simply hates her job. On top of this, she loses her rich fiancé and decides to get a new one with a little help of a plastic surgeon. This film portrays her journey to earn money for breast augmentation, only to find out she does not need it. She even gets involved in a theft of government issued tests, but for the nature of this movie there are no consequences for her. In the end she ends up dating her colleague (played by Jason Segel), whom she initially denied for being too poor. This comedy with motto “She doesn’t give an F” is suitable for the whole family. The idea of the film got so popular, that it was remade into a TV show of the same name, which aired on CBS in 2014. However, it was cancelled after a couple episodes due to dropping rating and bad reviews. (IMDb)

One of Elizabeth’s main desires in life is being rich and having a lot of money, but this is not something that could be reached from a high school teaching position.

She tries to marry well, but fails in this area. She is first seen leaving school she used to teach at and she is very happy about it. When the principal makes a speech to say goodbye to her, she very subtly entwines her fingers though her hair to make sure everyone can see her diamond encrusted engagement ring. (BT, 00:03:00) She talks about the things she will miss and her lies are accompanied by clips of real events –

“my students probably most” with a clip of a girl crying in a hall and Elizabeth quickly turning and walking away upon noticing her (BT, 00:03:33) or “I wish that I had gotten to know all of you better” with a clip of an unknown teacher blowing the candles of her birthday cake and Elizabeth quickly walking away again. (BT, 00:03:41) She drives off in a red, nice and expensive car with a custom registration plate. Her dream of marrying a rich man falls apart. Upon arriving home, she meets his mother sitting in a living room. She implies that it is her son’s birthday and makes Elizabeth confess that she forgot about it. She tries to make excuses, but both her fiancé and his mother insist on ending their relationship. (BT, 00:04:37 – 00:06:32)

Elizabeth returns to school again. A clip is focused on her registration plate again and one could clearly see that her car is red, but as it zooms out it is revealed that she had to change it for an older and cheaper version. To top her current financial situation and having to live with a roommate, she decides that she needs money for breast augmentation surgery to attract rich men. Her undying endeavor to earn

$10.000,00 is the basic plot of the film.

She takes money from parents of her students who ask her to “keep eye” on their kids and try to secretly bribe her (BT, 00:31:28), sells old lost & found clothes (BT,

00:32:26), steals cans to sell them for recycling (BT, 00:32:33) or dresses very

60 inappropriately for school car wash day and steals money from there (BT, 00:22:50 –

00:24:40). When she finds out that there is a financial reward based on her pupil’s performances in a state standardized test, she tries to take everything back and teach them as much as she can. She soon disregards this as impossible and sets to steal the test results.

Elizabeth’s attitude towards her students is very questionable as well. She treats her students with brutal honesty mixed with relative disinterest. First time she meets her new class she has a major hangover and does not even introduce herself. One of the active, friendly kids brings her cookies made by her mother – Elizabeth tells her to “just leave them on the desk” without even thanking her. A little further into the lesson, she bites one of the cookies and spits it back into the box with a comment “these cookies suck” (BT, 00:12:55 – 00:13:40). One day at a parking lot, her student catches her smoking marijuana in a car. She makes an excuse that “it’s medicinal marijuana and

[she has] a prescription and everything”. The student is a girl who always tries a little too hard to be the best and keeps bringing her cookies. Elizabeth tries to give her advice to “stop dressing like [she’s] running for congress”. The girl responds to that negatively with “I wanna be president.” She reacts with “keep saying shit like that and you’re gonna get punched.” (BT, 00:33:50 – 00:34:43)

Elizabeth’s reputation among her students starts to improve with her overly honest, but helpful advice she gives them. It all culminates during a school trip, when one very unpopular boy confesses love to the most popular girl in the class. She turns him down in embarrassment and he runs away. Elizabeth confronts him and tells him that “this girl in never gonna be interested in [him].” She makes clear to him an acknowledged fact – that good looking girls are “superficial” and they like boys who are “hot and popular”. When he is too embarrassed to go back, she gives him her bra.

They later put on a show by Elizabeth loudly scolding him in front of everyone for

“hooking up with an eight-grader from another school”. He pulls out a bra as a proof and quickly becomes a beloved hero among his classmates. (BT, 01:16:47 – 01:20:47)

On of the most important features of a film which works with teaching occupation with a certain degree of irony is a good ending, which is very unrealistic in real life. One of Elizabeth’s co-workers and a love rival Amy prosecutes her with drug and alcohol abuse in school – a crime she is undoubtedly guilty of. However, to prove this, Amy switches their tables and all the drugs are found in her classroom instead of

Elizabeth’s. Her punishment is being transferred to “one of the worst schools in the state” (BT, 01:29:20) She is overjoyed with this, because she has very high ambition and imagines herself as the one who will change the schools and motivate the students.

Elizabeth gets her happy ending as well – she becomes the school guidance counselor.

7.2. Teacher as Support Character

Another of the films is 10 Things I Hate About You from 1999, directed by Gil

Junger. With its genre, this film stands half way between romantic comedies primarily, but not exclusively, for teenage audience and a parody of other romantic films. The plot line is a typical love story of a boy who makes a bet about asking a girl nicknamed Kat

(played by Julia Stiles) out and she finds out. In the end, he does a nice gesture, expresses his love and she forgives him. However, it is lined with some interesting ironical characters and situations. This film is up to this day considered to be classic teen film and is beloved by many generations, partly for its main character Patrick – portrayed by charming, but prematurely deceased Heath Ledger.

On of the funniest characters in the film is Mr. Morgan (played by Daryl

Mitchell) - a young, Afro-American English literature teacher. He can be seen in three scenes; all of them depict his lessons. In each he wears a different shirt and a tie and looks very professional. He maintains his authority by various insults to the students and is not afraid to use dirty words. He is very easily triggered and likes to fight, mainly with two main characters – Kat and Joey.

He opens his first lesson with a cheerful clap and asks: “Okay then. What did everyone think of The Sun Also Rises?” (10TIHAY 00:05:51) After a brief casual discussion, the spectator can see that he does not like some students in his class – mainly the main character, Kat, who is a rooted feminist and a pretty boy Joey, who does not know anything about literature, but likes to argue with Kat about her ideas.

When Kat turns the discussion about Hemingway to a very strong criticism, Mr.

Morgan rolls his eyes. After another snotty comment from Joey, he quickly sets him to his place with “pipe down, Chachi!” (10TIHAY 00:06:13) This may mean an insult; the

63 word ‘chachi’ could potentially refer to a character from the sitcom Happy Days and its spin-off Joanie Loves Chachi. According to the top definition on slang based Urban

Dictionary it can also be “the person who dresses a bit over the top and/or always trying to "one-up" someone else’s comments, whilst tending to overdo everything they try to do” – a definition which would fit more into the context. Another insult comes a while later, when he tells him that “some day [he’s] gonna get bitch-slapped, and [he’s] not gonna do a thing to stop it.” (10TIHAY 00:06:41) He expresses some of his feeling about feeling oppressed and a target of racism, but for the purpose of this movie, it is taken as background information and nobody takes him seriously. He says to Kat:

“I know how difficult it must be for you to overcome all those years of upper-

middle class suburban oppression. Must be tough. But the next time you storm

the P.T.A., crusading for better lunch meat or whatever it is you white girls

complain about, ask them why they can’t buy a book written by a black man!”

(10TIHAY 00:06:49 – 00:07:05)

Kat only replies with “anything else?” (10TIHAY 00:07:12) The movie is quickly set to its ironic line with him telling her to “Go to the office. You’re pissing me off.”

(10TIHAY 00:07:13) When she wants to protest, he just waves her off with his hand and says “later!” (10TIHAY 00:07:16)

The spectators already know what to expect from Mr. Morgan, so he opens his second lesson less cheerfully: “All right. Not that I give a damn, but how was everybody’s weekend?” (10TIHAY 00:55:27) He responds to Joey’s insulting comment about Kat “unless she kicked the crap out of your damn butt, I don’t wanna hear about it.” (10TIHAY 00:55:32) The topic of the lesson was Shakespeare’s sonnets and he very

64 skillfully raps one to his students. This is met with great admiration. He gives them an assignment of writing their own sonnet. When Kat accepts this as a great homework and asks if he wants it in iambic pentameter, he is so taken aback and thinks she’s being ironic that he asks her: “You’re just messing with me, aren’t you?” (10TIHAY 00:56:17)

When she assures him that she is not, he has only one response for her – “Get out of my class!” (10TIHAY 00:56:22) His last line in this scene is responding “shut up”

(10TIHAY 00:56:33) to Joey thanking him for kicking Kat out.

The last scene is not very long, because the main plot line culminates and there is more space dedicated to Kat reading her emotional sonnet. He still makes a little joke about Joey, who is wearing glasses, because he got punched into the eye and has a massive bruise. “Shaft, lose the glasses!” (10TIHAY 01:29:19) he strongly orders him and openly laughs at him. His reaction to Kat’s poem, which he expected to be bad or triggering again, is not shown. He and the rest of the class only silently stare at her leaving the room.

Both these films share a teacher whose attitude is very inappropriate. In 10

Things I Hate About You the teacher is a character which only appears in few scenes.

His attitude is source of entertainment and he is also the only person who can confront the main antagonist without any serious consequences. His background is not at all debated and he makes remarks on some form of racial inequality, but is ignored. The teacher in Bad Teacher is however a main character and therefore has much more background information available. Her negative character traits and bad behavior are not enough to use as a functioning plot line, so there are other plot twists added – like her lust for money and misfortune in relationships.

8. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Both chosen film are British and there is 16-year gap between them, but they could not be more different. The Browning Version is unique in its sort of way, because it still follows very old ways of education and exemplary behavior of the students towards the teacher. This makes it incomparable to any other analyzed films in the general sense, because this etiquette is not performed in any of them. There are some minor traces that can be compared, such as depression of the teacher and encouragement he receives. To Sir, with Love deals with an opposite – as the ‘60s approached, students started to be rebellious and misbehaved. It therefore fits perfectly into the teacher leader category and is comparable in many ways.

8.1. Films from the 1950s

The Browning Version is a film from 1951 directed by Anthony Asquith. It was based on a play written by Terrence Rattigan in 1948. It is set at an English public school for boys and the main character – an aging English professor Andrew Crocker-

Harris is played by Michael Redgrave. Other than him star Jean Kent, Nigel Patrick and

Brian Smith.

Andrew Crocker-Harris is a teacher at a school for boys. Because of his ill health, he is forced to switch job position and is being replaced by a much younger teacher Mr. Gilbert. Andrew is very strict with his students and not very popular among them. When the headmaster announces his departure during morning prayers, they all look very happy rather than sad to hear about it.

During one of his classes he proves his strictness. He returns homework to all students and asks them to do it again, because the previous one has been done badly.

When he makes a joke that nobody understands, one boy named Taplow laughs.

Andrew calls him to his desk and asks him to translate it for the class, after which he is forced to admit he only laughed because he felt sorry for him making jokes that nobody laughs at. This angers him and he gives him extra homework.

To fuel Andrew’s depression even more, his wife is unfaithful to him with one of his colleagues named Hunter. Later in the film it is revealed that she informed

Andrew about it. They also do not agree in many things and have a very bad relationship. From his successor, Andrew learns that the students have nicknamed him

‘Himmler’ and he is very disappointed about it. During Taplow’s extra work with Mr.

Crocker-Harries, they bond over their love for the play Agamemnon. He then gives him a version he purchased and personalized with dedication “God from afar looks graciously upon a gentle master.” (TBV, 01:00:14) This reduces Andrew to tears.

Andrew’s wife tries to ruin this moment of comfort for him by telling him that

Taplow did an imitation of him behinds his back. Hunter despised her behavior and breaks up with her, trying to convince Andrew to leave her too. He does so, announcing to her that he will not be leaving early with her to his new job place, but remains for a while longer. During a speech at school, he apologizes to his students for everything he did to deserve the nickname ‘Himmler’ and after this, he feels free and ready to start again.

This film has some similarities with the category of depressed teacher. Andrew feels very stressed by what is happening around him, mostly his illness and bad relationship with his wife. What devastates him is realization how unpopular he actually

67 is among the students. Even though he realizes he is very strict, knowing that he’s being called Himmler is an insult for him. This story has a happy ending – Andrew is cheered up by one student who still likes him and gives him a nice parting gift. He also befriends his colleague who gives him the confidence to terminate and possibly end a relationship with his wife and start anew.

The only similarity with previously analyzed films is perhaps with A Single

Man. Both films dramatically differ in endings, but each has a boy/student who understands the pain of their teachers and tries to befriend them. In The Browning

Version Taplow says that if Crocker-Harries gave him a change, he would “feel sorry for him” (TBV, 00:11:35) Kenny also approaches George because he “seem[s] that [he] could use a friend”. (TSM, 00:32:12) Both Taplow and Kenny serve as a beacon of hope for the teachers and give them new hope to live a different life.

8.2. Films from the 1960s

One of the most well known films about teachers is To Sir, with Love. It was directed by James Clavell in 1967 and is based on an eponymous novel by E. R.

Braithwaite. This film is British and the settings remain at a secondary school in

London. The main character is a man from British Guiana, brilliantly portrayed by

Sidney Poitier. Other people starring in this film include Christian Roberts, Judy

Geeson or Lulu.

The film follows a young man called Mark Thackeray who applies for a job at a secondary school in London. When he arrives to the school, he is shocked to see how badly the students behave and how benevolent and ignorant towards this the teachers are. When he meets one of his fellow colleagues, he reveals that this is his first teaching job and that he majored in engineering – he is still looking for a job in this department.

His other colleagues are nice and friendly as well. This does not apply for the students.

He sees them before class and learns that they like to dance during their breaks.

Mark and his class do not get along at first. They are led by a boy called Bert and they pull various pranks on him, like sawing a leg off his desk causing him to fall down or burning a tampon in a fireplace. This disgusts Mark and he decides to maintain discipline in his class. He asks them to call him Sir and address the ladies with Miss and men with surnames. He explains to them that they are not kids anymore, but adults and they need to act with manners. They also stop following curriculum and learn about different things every day – Mark even goes as far as letting them choose what they want to learn about. They take a school trip to a museum as well.

A turning point comes during a PE class one day, when their teacher Mr. Bell forces a chubby kid to jump over a pommel horse. He refuses, but is pushed to do it by

Mr. Bell and falls, injuring his stomach. This upsets one of his classmates who threatens the teacher with a piece of broken wood. Mark is called to help, but takes side of the teacher and asks the student to apologize to Mr. Bell for threatening him. The class dislikes him after this. They refuse to invite him to a final class dance and refuse his donation for flowers for a deceased mother of one of his students. He gains their admiration back by beating a class leader Bert in a boxing match.

By the end of the school year, Mark receives a letter with an engineering job offer, which he is overly excited about. At a class dance, where he eventually gets invited, many people express how big of a loss it would be. His class say goodbye to him by singing a song and giving him a present. The tag on it says ‘to Sir, with love’ and all their signatures. He is almost reduced to tears by this and in an empty classroom; he tears up his letter with the job offer, suggesting he is going to stay in the school.

This story could be sorted to the same category as ‘leader teacher’. The basic plot line involves a teacher who joins a school where the students are behaving badly, they lack respect and have complicated family backgrounds. Mark’s students do not like him at first and pull many pranks on him. He eventually wins them over with teaching them what they are interested in and they have a big respect for him. In this movie genre, the plot twist is usually an instance where the kids turn against their teacher.

Films from previous analysis (from 1990’s onwards) take this matter into more extreme measures – gang fights and deaths of students are very common. In To Sir, with Love, the accident is more subtle – the teacher does not take their side during an argument, but supports another teacher. This leads to reconciliation and a good ending and to the almost obligatory decision of the teacher to stay at the school and teach.

There are several minor and more detailed similarities that can be traced between To Sir, with Love and films analyzed in chapter 4 – Teacher as a Leader:

The teacher looks stylish and is well mannered to be the best possible example for his students. Mark always wears a black suit, white shirt and a tie. One exception is a PE lesson where he wears a white T-shirt and black trousers which are worn with the suit. (TSwL, 01:23:30) Bill in the Renaissance Man wears a suit or trousers and a shirt.

Both ladies in lead from Freedom Writers and Dangerous Minds wear fashionable dresses, skirts or other clothes and they look tidy and chic.

There is one class leader who is respected by the other students. He is loud and often the one who makes funny remarks on everything. The class follows him – if they like the teacher, so do the others. In To Sir, with Love the boy is called Bert Denham.

On one of Mark’s first days, he asks to leave the room and shuts the door after him very violently. (TSwL, 00:18:30) He walks back to apologize, garbling his name to

“Fackeray” and explaining his action with “proper drafty in these parts, isn’t it?” (TSwL,

00:18:35), when it was obvious it was done on purpose. Mark wins him over with the rest of the class. When the big argument about PE teacher happens, he is the one who takes his friend side the most and challenges Mark to a boxing match saying “I don’t mind having a punch-out with you.” (TSwL, 01:24:04)

This character also appears in Dangerous Minds, his name is Emilio. He diminishes Louanne by making sexual remarks on her and does not respect her. His position in class in confirmed when one girl tells her “if you wanna get the class to listen, get Emilio.” (DM, 00:29:35) She gains him on her side when she visits parents of him and his friends. He appreciates her behavior by obeying her in class and everyone follows his example. He is later involved in the main plot twist as well by getting in a fight with another person and dies by getting shot.

Another similarity is a class outing which is not allowed or is uncommon for the class. Leading teachers usually obtain the permission and take their students for a trip.

Mark in To Sir, with Love took his students to Victoria and Albert Museum and

Museum of Natural History. Bill in Renaissance Man takes his class to Canada to see a play they have been studying. Erin in Freedom Writers takes her class to a museum as well, this time it was Museum of Tolerance and she used it as a support for the topic of

Holocaust. Louanne in Dangerous Minds was not allowed to organize school trips, but she still rewarded her students with a trip to a fun fair she paid for herself.

Last but not least, a major similarity occurs at the end. Mark wants to leave school because he always wanted a career in engineering and he is offered one. When he gets the letter, he is overjoyed and does not consider staying at school at all. His colleagues tell him “It’s a pity. I’m sorry about that. You’re damned good. You’ve done wonders for this show.” (TSwL, 01:33:34) and “If you must leave Mark, go to another school. You can’t waster a marvelous talent on electronics.” (TSwL, 01:34:59) He decides when he is touched by the students’ gift for him. Bill from The Renaissance

Man looks for a new job in marketing consistently throughout the film and decides to stay when his students surprise him by quoting Shakespeare on a training field in rain and paying a tribute to him during a ceremony. Louanne from Dangerous Minds faces similar situation as well, but she has no other job option. She wants to leave school based on bad incident that took place, but the students like her and persuade her to stay.

9. CONCLUSION

The aim of this thesis was to analyze films of American origin with teachers of

English as characters and sort them into categories with similar characteristics, behavior or destiny. They were sorted into 5 main categories and film analyses were provided to each of them for support. The thesis is introduced with a brief theoretical chapter about stereotypes and how they help with simplifying the perception of the media.

The first category is a friendly teacher. This was used as a base to build on the next categories. This involves teachers who are genuinely positive, nice and caring, but they offer nothing else. This could be caused either by them not being a main character in the film or by revolving around completely different topic, unrelated to their teaching. This genre is also very exhausted – at this time, it has nothing more to offer to the audience who are already expecting much more action and many interesting and unexpected plot twists. Parts of this chapter are also the most frequent stereotypes, for example remembering names of students in a university classroom of 100 and more students. There are also teachers who are experts in their field and give lectures at universities as a part of their job in research. In film they frequently have to deal with more important and sometimes even unrealistic tasks other than teaching.

The second category are teachers who either do not want to teach, have no idea what to expect or get to a school they did not expect and are very surprised by the class that is assigned to them. Behavioral problems of their students are very common and the teacher is always unwelcome at first. Slowly, by using many techniques, they win them over and become their favorite teacher. They manage to calm the class down, help sort many personal problems of their students and give them new hope in life.

Other teachers are the exact opposite. The category about depressed teachers shows people who are emotionally aggrieved by various things. The source of their despair could be a personal tragedy, death of a loved one, feeling underappreciated or being so tired of the job they had to perform that they have burnout syndrome and hate it. These films scarcely have a truly happy ending, which could be partially credited to the gloomy and dramatic atmosphere they have.

Fourth category is teachers who find themselves involved in a sexual relationship with their students. These affairs are gaining popularity in the most recent years as the benevolence of the audience grows – this relationship would not be very positively accepted for example in the 1950s. There are several hints in later films, for example female students having crush on their male professors, but this genre develops in the later years to a full relationship or sexual encounters of student and teacher both in and outside of the school grounds.

Last chapter of the analytical part is dedicated to ironical use of teachers in films. Filmmakers are usually aware of qualities listed in the friendly teacher category and use them in reverse to create a very bad teacher. This character then functions as a source of pure amusement and goes beyond the potential rules that regular teacher would never be allowed to cross. They use dirty words and act disrespectfully to their students, insult them or verbally abuse them.

When discussing how the stereotypes evolved from the first films with teachers, there would have to be another analysis performed and both results compared to each other. For the purposes of this thesis, only 2 films have been used as an example. The main analysis was done with films from 1990s onwards and compared to a film from

1950s called The Browning Version. This early film is very different from the others in comparison, because it is set much earlier. The students are very obedient and well-

74 mannered, despite not liking their strict teacher. The similarity could be with depressed teachers – the main character realizes his unpopularity and among other problems, it troubles him very much.

Another film To Sir, with Love from 1960s was compared to a category of teacher leaders. In many points it is similar to them, but the boundaries are much stricter for the 1967 film. Although Sidney Poitier’s skin color is black and unusual for those times in London, there are no or very few racist comments on his behalf. In the later versions from the ‘90s, race and color are main causes of conflict and violence, which is explicitly portrayed in the films.

In general, portrayal of teachers in film enlarges over the years, but maintains similar stereotypes. What evolves is the length of the story and main complications and plot twists. There are patterns which have developed in recent years, as boundaries of what is acceptable by the society expand, including things such as sexual relations, homosexuality or violence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

10 Things I Hate About You. Dir. Gil Junger. Perf. Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, Joseph

Gordon-Levitt, and Larisa Oleynik. Buena Vista Pictures, 1999. Film.

Arrival. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. Perf. Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker,

and Michael Stuhlbarg. Paramount Pictures, 2016. Film.

A Single Man. Dir. Tom Ford. Perf. Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Nicholas Hoult, and

Matthew Goode. The Weinstein Company, 2009. Film.

Bad Teacher. Dir. Jake Kasdan. Perf. Cameron Diaz, Lucy Punch, Jason Segel, and

Justin Timberlake. Columbia Pictures, 2011. Film.

Dangerous Minds. Dir. John N. Smith. Perf. Michelle Pfeiffer, George Dzundza,

Courtney B. Vance, and Robin Bartlett. Buena Vista Pictures, 1995. Film.

Detachment. Dir. Tony Kaye. Perf. Adrien Brody, Marcia Gay Harden, James Caan,

and Christina Hendricks. Tribeca Film, 2011. Film.

Elegy. Dir. Isabel Coixet. Perf. Penélope Cruz, Ben Kingsley, Dennis Hopper, and

Patricia Clarkson. Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2008. Film.

Freedom Writers. Dir. Richard LaGravenese. Perf. Hilary Swank, Partick Dempsey,

Scott Glenn, and Imelda Staunton. Paramount Pictures, 2007. Film.

Never Been Kissed. Dir. Raja Gosnell. Perf. Drew Barrymore, David Arquette,

Michael Vartan, and Molly Shannon. 20th century Fox, 1999. Film.

Renaissance Man. Dir. Penny Marshall. Perf. Danny DeVito, Gregory Hines, James

Remar, and Ed Begley Jr. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, 1994. Film.

Still Alice. Dir. Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. Perf. Julianne Moore,

Kate Bosworth, Shane McRae, and Alec Baldwin. Sony Pictures Classics,

2014. Film.

The English Teacher. Dir. Craig Zisk. Perf. Julianne Moore, Michael Angarano,

Nathan Lane, and Greg Kinnear. Tribeca Film, 2013. Film.

The Mirror Has Two Faces. Dir. Barbra Streisand. Perf. Barbra Streisand, Jeff

Bridges, Lauren Bacall, and George Segal. TriStar Pictures, 1996. Film.

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Cavanagh, Michael, and Anne E. Orescott. Your Professional Experience Handbook:

A Guide for Pre-service Teachers. Frenchs Forest, N.S.W.: Pearson Australia,

2015. Print.

“Chachi.” Urban Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 April 2017.

< http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chachi>.

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Statistics, 2007-2016.” Columbia University in the City of New York. N.p., 12

August 2016. Web. 14 March 2017.

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Edition)” National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library

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U.S. National Library of Medicine, 12 January 2017. Web. 5 April 2017.

Grobman, Gary M. “Stereotypes and Prejudices.” The Holocaust History – A

people’s and Survivor History – Remember.org. N.p., 1990. Web. 25 April 2017.

Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. New York: MacMillan Co., 1922. Print.

Macrae, C. Neil, Charles Stangor, and Miles Hewstone, eds. Stereotypes and

Stereotyping. New York: Guilford, 1996. Print.

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Schneider, David J. The Psychology of Stereotyping. New York: Guilford, 2004.

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The Browning Version. Dir. Anthony Asquith. Perf. Michael Redgrave, Jean Kent,

Nigel Patrick, and Brian Smith. Universal-International, 1951. Film.

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Bayldon, and Judy Geeson. Columbia Pictures, 1967. Film.

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All Film Information Were Retrieved from the Internet Movie Database

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< http://www.imdb.com/>.

ENGLISH RESUMÉ

The aim of this thesis is to collect sample of films which feature a teacher as a character and sort them into categories based on their behavior, character or other similarities. For the purposes of obtaining a sample which would be diverse but not too broad, there were some criteria applied. All films have to be of American origin, made after 1990 and the teachers in them have to teach English, literature, linguistics or any subject related to it.

There are 13 films in the analytical part, which have been sorted to 5 main categories. First analytical chapter introduces a friendly teacher. These teachers are represented by films The Mirror Has Two Faces and Still Alice. There is also another subchapter which shows a teacher as an expert in her linguistic field in the film Arrival.

Second analytical chapter introduces a teacher leader. These types of teachers are very frequent and this category is represented by films Renaissance Man, Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers. Third analytical chapter introduces teachers who take no pleasure in their work anymore. In films Detachment and A Single Man one can see teachers who are not happy in their lives. Fourth analytical chapter discusses teachers who are involved in romantic or sexual relationship with their students. This chapter is supported with films Never Been Kissed, The English Teacher and Elegy. The last analytical chapter is dedicated to teachers whose role in film functions as a source of entertainment. This teacher has a main role in Bad Teacher and a support role in 10

Things I Hate About You.

The thesis concludes with a short example of how the portrayal of teachers in film developed throughout the years.

CZECH RESUMÉ

Cílem této práce je shromáždit vzorek filmů, ve kterých figuruje postava učitele a vytřídit je do kategorií na základě společných znaků v jejich chování, charakteru nebo ostatních podobností. Aby byl vzorek filmů pokud možno co nejvíce rozdílný, ale ne příliš rozsáhlý, musel být omezený určitými kritérii. Všechny filmy musí být původem americké, natočeny po roce 1990 a učitelé v nich musí vyučovat angličtinu, anglickou literaturu, lingvistiku nebo předmět k těmto se vázající.

V analytické části je 13 filmů, které byly vytříděny do 5 hlavních kategorií.

První analytická kapitola představuje přátelského učitele. Tito učitelé jsou reprezentováni filmy Dvě tváře lásky a Pořád jsem to já. Tato kapitola také obsahuje podkapitolu, která znázorňuje učitelku jako expertku ve svém lingvistickém oboru ve filmu Příchozí. Druhá analytická kapitola představuje učitele vůdce. Tento typ učitelů je velmi běžný a tato kategorie je reprezentována filmy Vzbuďte se, vojáci!, Nebezpečné myšlenky a Mezi řádky. Třetí analytická kapitola představuje učitele, kteří již nemají rádi svoji profesi. Ve filmech Oddělen a Single man můžeme vidět muže, kteří nejsou v životě šťastní. Čtvrtá analytická kapitola pojednává o učitelích, kteří jsou zapleteni do romantických nebo sexuálních vztahů se svými žáky. Tato kapitola je podpořena filny

Nepolíbená, Učitelka angličtiny a Umírající zvíře. Poslední analytická kapitola je věnovaná učitelům, jejichž role ve filmu funguje pouze jako zdroj zábavy. Tato učitelka má hlavní roli ve filmu Zkažená úča a učitel má vedlejší roli v Deset důvodů, proč tě nenávidím.

Na závěr této práce je krátký příklad toho, jak se zobrazení učitelů ve filmu vyvíjelo v průběhu let.