HW 49A

Our class film so far has been about an alcoholic teacher who is sick of school. Reasons are unclear or maybe there's too much reasons, but judging from the dialogues, the teacher is sick of everything about school, the curriculums, the students, and even his own lesson. It seems like his girlfriend had something to do with his circumstance, since the first scene is him moping with a picture of her in his cellphone but some of us haven't seen it yet. The scene after takes place where the teacher is sleeping and is woken by one student who is worried about his condition. Eventually he got up and taught the class that life isn't so simple. Curses a bunch of students and then leaves.

The first scene takes place in a dark room, with the only source of light could be the computer screen and the cellular phone. If you picture that, because the light from the phone contradicts with the dark in the room, whatever the teacher is looking at on the phone is important, which is his girlfriend. Because he is all alone in an empty room with only a picture of his girlfriend, something must have happen to his otherwise he could've just called her. So this makes him a man who has lost something he is not ready to lose and tries to drown the pain by drinking. The next day, the class arrives in the room with the teachers head on the table which tells me he has been drinking all night and has not left the building. This also tells me he did not want to go, whether he has one or not. The way he approach the student in the class he also acted like he blamed them for his state of being. He attacks the students strength (i.e. the smart students), and weakness (i.e. the rebels) while disregarding his intentional lesson. Then leaving the class with a "fuck you" attitude, leaving the students confused and eventually resuming their chat.

This would be the only film, compared to all the teacher/savior films we have watched that didn't end predictably. For instance, the mood of the other films in the beginning is a carnival, where the students go crazy and have a party (though some of the films don't exaggerate that far). Each student living like they are going to die tonight so they ignore the lessons and chat like everything happened that day. And when the teacher tried to do their job, they all fail to grab their attention. In our class film, the first scene was a drunk teacher who misses his girlfriend. The scene with the class starts out with the students wondering why the teacher is drunk. our film completely contradicts the other films right from the start with a drunk teacher. At the very beginning you don't see him as a savior but a saboteur. But we did do something the other films have done with is to show the misery the teachers endure. Our film didn't have much of an plot where the problem was resolved in the end. In other films, no matter how bad the students got, the teachers never caved in and gave up. Even in Hamlet 2 where the teacher was a hopeless slob and maybe mentally crazy, he never gave up. Even when the the veteran teacher who came back from a war, where people shot at her, complained that her students are terrible, she never gave up. In all these films the teacher kept going. Other film is the opposite. In my opinion, our film is what happens to a teacher who works for too long, trying hard each year to get their students attention and determination to learn lessons that may or may not help them in the future. I believe that our film is the end all to the teachers of the savior/teacher films.

I don't get why people have to go to school to become successful, many people have done it. I guess because more people have become successful with education, so they immediately assume that the more people who attend school, the more people will do well in life. I think this idea is ridiculous in every way possible but I guess it can't be helped. People learn more in school definitely, I won't say important things (except the basics) but definitely something. Why there are so many teacher/savior films is because of the amount of students dropping out, or not paying attention. Maybe this is a generation of ignorance and that more and more students believe they can achieve without schooling. Parents get mad and blames the school for their child's hatred for school. They all cried out for a teacher who goes the extra mile to hep students learn and make them interested in learning. Maybe thats why there is so many teacher/savior films that predictably end the same way because it would be too realistic if it ended the other way. I mean how many teacher have we had that acted like a savior and made us interested in learning more? I honestly couldn't tell if I ever met one. Besides movies are suppose to be fantasy, that's why they are movies and not documentaries.