“Respect your father dear. —What kind of rock?”
—from The Bank Dick
Yes, there have been a few more films—All That Heaven Allows and The Bank Dick. Having now seen the former I can see just how much Todd Haynes’s wonderful Far From Heaven owes to this film. Also, I can see why Rock Hudson was such a sex symbol—in the Doris Day films it always seemed obvious to me that he was gay, but as the Walden-esque self-sufficient nature man, with his house in the woods, his hunting, trees and—terribly important—his flannel shirts I can definitely see why anyone would fall for him. The Bank Dick is W. C. Fields’s best-known films—at least these days. (I don’t know how it stacked up at the time it came out…) I’m so glad I’ve finally seen one of his films—though Louise Brooks wrote that his films don’t capture the genius of his stage performances. The film certainly did well enough—his stage performances must have been something!
On top of this I’ve been catching up with friends, working in the Writing Center, begun working with a Liberal Studies summer class, planning the syllabus for the class I’m (hopefully) teaching in a few weeks (enrolments are still low—fingers crossed the numbers arrive), writing and attending performances, reading things and thinking about the thesis I’ll be writing this coming academic year. As my mother always says, “No rest for the wicked.”
I went to another free performance at the Kennedy Center last night—a dance performance by the NORD/NOBA Center for Dance, which is a community partnership between the New Orleans Recreation Department and the New Orleans Ballet Association. For a number of the pieces the dancers were accompanied by Rising Appalachia, a musical duo of sisters Leah and Chloe Smith—they were pretty fabulous. I’m hoping to track down their CDs soon. The dancers were great—again making me wish I had the knowledge and experience to write about dance (particularly contemporary dance) effectively. The writing center and writing consultant work has started up pretty much as if I never left off. It still feels strange to me that I’m reasonably good at giving advice on all the writing that comes through the door. I’m used to knowing my way around a poem, but I feel like it’s taken me so long to get the hang of academic writing—and I’m still getting the hang of American academic writing—that I can’t quite trust my own advice a lot of the time! On the other hand, I think the struggles I’ve had, and really learning to think about it in terms of academic conventions has probably helped me relate to writers and helped them understand the very things that troubled me. It does make me wish there had been an explicit pedagogical strategy in my undergraduate degree to assist with writing—my writing fluency has always been considered a strength, but I really feel like I had to begin to find my own way through the labyrinth. In a way I think it has made me a better writer—because I’ve got idiosyncrasies that I wouldn’t otherwise have—but sometimes the weird individuality that creeps into my academic work does raise eyebrows. Of course, finding my own solution is, I think, the best way to have come out of the thing (even if it did take me an inordinately long time to do so!) but at the same time, the lack of focus on the pedagogy meant I was incredibly shy of asking for guidance to improve my writing for a long time. Slowly these things come together…
And now I’m trying to get the nuts and bolts of this syllabus together as I contemplate not just tutoring but actually teaching writing. I was reluctant to even apply for the teaching position as I didn’t feel qualified. As it’s like to be high school students or “rising seniors” I wanted to choose something familiar that they could begin to think critically about, and so the theme for the course is representations of America, specifically American youth, looking at television, print-media, film and short stories. I’m planning to use an episode of The West Wing (probably the last of season one; Charlie is reluctant to join the conversation because he feels his inexperience; Zoe, the priviledged presidential daughter, feels no qualms and doesn’t fully understand his reluctance; the president cites the report Charlie eventually gives him on youth attitudes to politics; the shooters are themselves young white-extremists… there’s a narrative about privilege versus lack of privilege, and about education versus ignorance in youth underlying what seems to be a whole adult focussed drama I’d like them to see) and an episode of My So-Called Life—probably the substitute teacher episode, which raises a lot of questions about youth investment in a cause and youth apathy, when censorship becomes an issue. I was thinking about using the film Pleasantville—which I haven’t seen in years—to try to think about adult nostalgia and youth culture… and perhaps—because, let’s face it, I’m a dork—the king of teen representation John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink. (I suppose Clueless would also work—I like Pretty in Pink because of the class representations and classic teen “types” staples of teen films that are clear but also not so explicit as The Breakfast Club… though The Breakfast Club works better in some other ways, acknowledging the near-impossibility of crossing into other social spaces…)
And of course I want to look at election coverage and the commentary on the youth vote.
I feel like it’s evolving day to day.
I may be heading to Philadelphia tomorrow—if I do it will be my first time in Pennsylvania (another state!)—with Kacee, a girl I met in Costa Rica who’s in DC all summer before moving to Philadelphia for law school. She’s looking at places and areas to live, and hopefully I’ll be along for the ride. If there can be a stop by some major sight and a Philly cheesesteak then I will consider it a good first foray into the city. And I’ll be back. We were also talking last night about going on a crazy five day road trip up to Boston—and maybe going further on right up to Canada and New Brunswick—in the next week or two. I’ve got my fingers crossed. She has access to a car, so I hope it happens. She seems ready to get out of DC, having, like me, been back for under two weeks! Girl after my own heart… Nothing like someone who understands nomadism.Tonight I’m having a cultural experience of a different kind: I’m going to my first baseball match. Not just any baseball match, though—it’s the “Stitch’n’Pitch,” which means that the game at the DC stadium will have a contingent (I do not know how large) of knitters in the stands, knitting and purling away as the innings pass by… Yes, I’m taking some knitting with me. Yes, I think it is strange—but how could I pass up such an invitation?
