Arrogant Teachers

For whatever reason, I seem to have recurring trends in my posts. Lately it's either about school or generation gaps. Seems like I have little other inspiration when I'm not exploring and gaining new insight and perspectives. Ah well.

The point is, though, that I am really fed up of all these arrogant teachers. My Italian Film professor, for example, is a real sleazy fuck. He asks us to write up a little something each class on the film that we saw the week before. He encourages us to really analyse the given situation, character, film, whatever, in specific details and offer us a clear insight. This is a situation where people who actually know a lot are punished. There are many cases in which this is true in our education system. If you are ahead of the curve, you are disadvantaged. You cannot use the knowledge you have because an appropriate context does not arise.

So, with all this encouragement to provide creative insight into this film, I set off and write my little 2 page analysis as I do every week. I get it back, graded, to a surprising 6/10. I thought it was excellent, and I'm not just saying that... I really had a creative interpretation and analysis of a specific scene through a comparison with another film.

Oh, but, you see... this causes a problem. The only comment I got on the entire page was this entire paragraph circled with a note next to it saying that it was "stretching it" and that I should have referenced the comment. This angers me beyond belief. Here we have this arrogant fuck who asks us to provide a detailed and insightful analysis. When I do precisely that, though it is pushing a bit further than the surface-level stuff we've been doing in class, he completely dismisses it. So, to support this, I need a source. How the fuck am I not a proper source on a film which I have watched three times? It's not just that I watch a lot of movies, but rather than anyone who has half a brain should be able to interpret and analyse a film after a viewing. However, I need some sort of "expert" who has studied this film in detail to pronounce himself on the matter. There are no other comments other than this, so I am to assume that I got 40% deducted simply because I didn't analyse the film within the mould he proposed.

Here's another thing that annoys me about this guy. He makes us watch 1900 by Bernardo Bertolucci, and goes on raving about how Vittorio Storaro, the cinematographer (and one of my personal favourites), is a personal friend of his. This would be very interesting and exciting if the teacher wasn't so arrogant because, after saying for 10 minutes how he lights scenes like a Rembrant and this is great art and all, he shows us the film in a sawed-off pan and scan version, on a projector that is busted and has a burnt-in blue color on 80% of the image. I'm sure that your buddy Vittorio would be real fucking proud that you just butchered his film. I guess you'd like to chop up the Mona Lisa, too. Just the head, please.