![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yesterday I made the incredibly time-consuming decision to create tags, which took me hours. Made me realize I have a lot of theater tags, and I don't do posts for every play I see even. Which leads up to the fact that I went to the theater last night to see History Boys, which is awesome and from London. Naturally any time you get Great British Thespians in a room at least one of them has to have been in a Harry Potter movie. This play had two, Richard Griffiths (Uncle Vernon) and Frances de la Tour (Madam Maxine).
Sometimes it seems like the theater is the place you go when you want to listen to any subject discussed intelligently. There just seems so many plays that do that now, as opposed to just being a straight drama, you know? Anyway, The History Boys gives a lot of different angles on the subject of education without, thankfully, setting up a black and white hero and villain.
Richard Griffiths plays Hector, an English teacher who's also coaching a bunch of boys who've done well enough on their A-levels to be taking exams for Oxford and Cambridge in the 1980s. Hector's one of those teachers who, Miss Lintott (Frances de la Tour) says ruefully, is trying to be the kind of teacher kids remember. He's nutty, he's over the top, he's dramatic, he makes them memorize poetry. He also insists on giving them rides home on his motorcycle so he can fondle them as he drives.
Hector's rival is fresh young Oxford grad (actually a graduate of my JYA alma mater, U of Bristol--woo hoo!) who's here to teach them how to do well on the exam by...lying. They must approach essay questions through the back door--or better yet the side door, he says. Dakin, the hotshot student having an affair with the school secretary and beginning to fancy a walk on the other side with Irwin himself, takes a liking to this right away--it's like a game. You just figure out what's not true and argue that. It's a little like crack theories in fandom, which of course is the danger. If you know what you're doing crack theories can be fun, but every day you see earnest fandomers who don't know they're arguing a crack theory and believe that if they thought it up, it must be true.
Anyway, it's not quite so simple as Hector being the wonderful "real" teacher and Irwin being a slick huckster. Hector himself has his own agenda. He hates Oxbridge and would like to see real learning separated entirely from education, so his kids wind up holding themselves back on tests thinking that anything but the boring party line should be saved for his class. Hector also teaches them to memorize songs and bits of old movies (the boys do reenactments of "Now, Voyager" and "Brief Encouter" that are so hilarious--not only does the one boy talk like Bette Davis, he shoulder-walks and smokes like her too). Not that this goes against Irwin's own plan, since he encourages references to "Carry On" movies in essays as part of that all-important back door approach. Miss Lintott, meanwhile, is responsible for the grasp of history the boys do have as their former teacher. At one point she reveals she's not even sure Hector is such a good teacher, feeling that all the memorized poetry etc. is just insurance for his students to substitute for success. Still, there are also examples of the fact that any information is valuable, and learning is valuable in itself. I admit I really loved this one scene where one of the boys brings in a poem he's memorized and he and Hector discuss it, comparing it to other works etc.
Basically all the adults are trapped in this love/hate relationship with Oxbridge. By the end of the night we know where all of them went, and their relationship with their own alma mater is pretty much always couched in how they feel about Oxford and Cambridge.
It's a hilarious play, though. My favorite line I want to mention just because it's one of those great lines that make no sense but that someone would absolutely say. Hector has been given his walking papers due to finally being caught at his motorcycle groping by the headmaster's wife. He's unhappy to learn that Lintott knows the real reason for his dismissal. "Does Irwin know?" know he asks, and she says yes. "Oh god. Do the boys know?" There's this beat of incredulance silence. "Of course the boys know!" It's so funny, yet so easy to believe that the guy who gropes these kids thinks he's somehow keeping it a secret from them as long as they don't hear it from anyone else.
There was one unintentionally chilling line for me at the end, when we learn the fates of the boys in question. One of them, we know, went to Cambridge but flunked out. We learn later he lived alone, got a monthly allowance and had periodic breakdowns (this is of course the boy who really learned everything Hector was teaching and remembered all these events). He has lots of friends, we learn, but...only on the Internet.
Damn. Why does that always have to be some shorthand for failing at life? I mean, I can't really argue with the idea it comes from. The Internet can offer a form of social interaction for people incapable of other sorts--it's more controlled in so many ways. It's not like plenty of people on lj haven't been open about things about themselves that others might judge as "failure." Fandom culture seems to sometimes be constantly fighting its own battle of denial, trying to prove it's not like those losers who interact on the Internet all day! Still it's chilling to realize that that last line about the Internet is actually the nail in the character's coffin--you can imagine him as just kind of eccentric or something until the Internet friends slam him firmly into Pathetic-ville. It's pretty sad that I'm hearing that, getting it, feeling bad and also sitting in my seat reminding myself of every real-life social interaction I've had in the past month. I've got real friends! I think I'm okay!
Sometimes it seems like the theater is the place you go when you want to listen to any subject discussed intelligently. There just seems so many plays that do that now, as opposed to just being a straight drama, you know? Anyway, The History Boys gives a lot of different angles on the subject of education without, thankfully, setting up a black and white hero and villain.
Richard Griffiths plays Hector, an English teacher who's also coaching a bunch of boys who've done well enough on their A-levels to be taking exams for Oxford and Cambridge in the 1980s. Hector's one of those teachers who, Miss Lintott (Frances de la Tour) says ruefully, is trying to be the kind of teacher kids remember. He's nutty, he's over the top, he's dramatic, he makes them memorize poetry. He also insists on giving them rides home on his motorcycle so he can fondle them as he drives.
Hector's rival is fresh young Oxford grad (actually a graduate of my JYA alma mater, U of Bristol--woo hoo!) who's here to teach them how to do well on the exam by...lying. They must approach essay questions through the back door--or better yet the side door, he says. Dakin, the hotshot student having an affair with the school secretary and beginning to fancy a walk on the other side with Irwin himself, takes a liking to this right away--it's like a game. You just figure out what's not true and argue that. It's a little like crack theories in fandom, which of course is the danger. If you know what you're doing crack theories can be fun, but every day you see earnest fandomers who don't know they're arguing a crack theory and believe that if they thought it up, it must be true.
Anyway, it's not quite so simple as Hector being the wonderful "real" teacher and Irwin being a slick huckster. Hector himself has his own agenda. He hates Oxbridge and would like to see real learning separated entirely from education, so his kids wind up holding themselves back on tests thinking that anything but the boring party line should be saved for his class. Hector also teaches them to memorize songs and bits of old movies (the boys do reenactments of "Now, Voyager" and "Brief Encouter" that are so hilarious--not only does the one boy talk like Bette Davis, he shoulder-walks and smokes like her too). Not that this goes against Irwin's own plan, since he encourages references to "Carry On" movies in essays as part of that all-important back door approach. Miss Lintott, meanwhile, is responsible for the grasp of history the boys do have as their former teacher. At one point she reveals she's not even sure Hector is such a good teacher, feeling that all the memorized poetry etc. is just insurance for his students to substitute for success. Still, there are also examples of the fact that any information is valuable, and learning is valuable in itself. I admit I really loved this one scene where one of the boys brings in a poem he's memorized and he and Hector discuss it, comparing it to other works etc.
Basically all the adults are trapped in this love/hate relationship with Oxbridge. By the end of the night we know where all of them went, and their relationship with their own alma mater is pretty much always couched in how they feel about Oxford and Cambridge.
It's a hilarious play, though. My favorite line I want to mention just because it's one of those great lines that make no sense but that someone would absolutely say. Hector has been given his walking papers due to finally being caught at his motorcycle groping by the headmaster's wife. He's unhappy to learn that Lintott knows the real reason for his dismissal. "Does Irwin know?" know he asks, and she says yes. "Oh god. Do the boys know?" There's this beat of incredulance silence. "Of course the boys know!" It's so funny, yet so easy to believe that the guy who gropes these kids thinks he's somehow keeping it a secret from them as long as they don't hear it from anyone else.
There was one unintentionally chilling line for me at the end, when we learn the fates of the boys in question. One of them, we know, went to Cambridge but flunked out. We learn later he lived alone, got a monthly allowance and had periodic breakdowns (this is of course the boy who really learned everything Hector was teaching and remembered all these events). He has lots of friends, we learn, but...only on the Internet.
Damn. Why does that always have to be some shorthand for failing at life? I mean, I can't really argue with the idea it comes from. The Internet can offer a form of social interaction for people incapable of other sorts--it's more controlled in so many ways. It's not like plenty of people on lj haven't been open about things about themselves that others might judge as "failure." Fandom culture seems to sometimes be constantly fighting its own battle of denial, trying to prove it's not like those losers who interact on the Internet all day! Still it's chilling to realize that that last line about the Internet is actually the nail in the character's coffin--you can imagine him as just kind of eccentric or something until the Internet friends slam him firmly into Pathetic-ville. It's pretty sad that I'm hearing that, getting it, feeling bad and also sitting in my seat reminding myself of every real-life social interaction I've had in the past month. I've got real friends! I think I'm okay!
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
"It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when one morning he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, 'I will never play the Dane.' When that moment comes, one's ambition ceases."
And
"I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts, prostitutes for the bees. There is, you will agree, a certain je ne sai quoi, something very special, about a firm, young carrot."
From:
no subject