Dead Poet's Society

Watched Dead Poet's Society last night. It gave me whiplash, because for half of Mr. Keating's scenes I was all "BEST TEACHER EVER" (which is how you're supposed to react) and for the other half, I was like, "You are so lucky this is a movie and your students are scripted to respond correctly, because otherwise you would be scarring some of them for life."

Case in point: the scene where Keating makes Todd Anderson loose a "barbaric yawp." First, he teases Anderson about being afraid of public speaking. It's very gentle teasing, but still, if one of my teachers had informed the entire class that I was afraid of something - I wasn't afraid of public speaking, but something else - I would have shriveled up and died on the spot.

Then, desirous of effecting instant desensitization to the terrors of public speaking, Keating drags Anderson to the front of the class so he can yawp properly, in front of everyone, with all of them staring at him. When Anderson fails to yawp loudly enough, Keating basically attempts to goad him into shouting.

As this is a movie, this works just fine, but I'm pretty sure that in real life 90% of shy students would react one of two ways. Either they'll stand at the front of the room, humiliated and miserable and incapable of yawping (barbarically or otherwise) for the endless eternity it will take the teacher to let them sit; or they will cracks like eggs halfway through the yawping session and flee the classroom weeping.

Either way, their fear of public speaking will be magnified tenfold.

And sure, maybe the other 10% will find their inner yawpmeister (although I doubt most of them will spontaneously spout poetry like Anderson). But a teaching method with a 10% rate of success versus a 90% rate of "that was one of the most humiliating experiences of my life" is a BAD TEACHING METHOD.

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man

Before I get into all of The Woman Who Rides Like a Man's problems - which are many and varied and could probably support a chapter in a dissertation thesis - I want to mention a couple of things the book did really well. I have the impression that Pierce did some serious thinking between In the Hand of the Goddess and WWRLaM, and made an effort to counteract some of the problems of the first two books.

First, Alanna finally starts interacting with women in this book, and it's actually handled pretty well. There's a little bit of "Alanna teaching the benighted savages about feminism," but it's not all one-way interaction: Alanna teaches the girls to be shamans, the girls teach Alanna weaving, and Alanna realizes that weaving is actually an important and noble pursuit (and, by extension, that women's work has value).

There's this lovely quote:

"How can I not like other women?" Alanna inquired. "Particularly after knowing Kara and Kourrem and Mari Fahrar and Farda? I don't feel nearly as odd about being female as I did before I came here."

I'm getting increasingly frustrated with books about the One Awesome Girl (and no other girls at all), so it's nice to see Pierce give that a knock on the head by having Alanna meet lots of interesting women.

Second, the disintegration of Jon and Alanna's relationship. Alanna would be a terrible queen, and would moreover be absolutely miserable as a queen. But even if Alanna had the requisite patience and tact for queenship, Jon would be a rotten husband for her. He's high-handed, self-centered, and seems to have trouble with the idea that people (specifically Alanna, but people in general) might have desires contrary to his own. (Tortall is damn lucky that he evolves from the spoiled prince to the elder statesmen of Protector of the Small.)

Jon's mishandling of his relationship with Alanna - "Of course you'll be coming back to Corus with me! Why should I ask you before having your horse saddled?" - is also one of the best depictions of sexism in SotL. Maybe even all the Tortall books, which tend to assign sexism to characters we're supposed to hate; it's much more troubling (and interesting) to see a previously sympathetic character revealing his underlying sexism.

Jon assumes that Alanna will want to marry him immediately and start popping out heirs, never mind that this assumption is contradicted by everything he actually knows about Alanna individually - because Alanna's individual desires are, in his mind, clearly overruled by the fact that she's a girl, and girls all want to get married and have heirs post haste.

Alanna, of course, disagrees, and their liaison goes up in smoke. Alanna takes up with George, who disturbs me more every time I read the Tortall books.

But this is getting rather long, so I'll leave George-your-friendly-local-Mafia-boss and the Voice of the Bazhir for another post.