My Literature Class

I tried to title this post "My Lit Class" but it made me feel icky, so I got all formal with it.

We're all in luck!  My Algebra teacher went on vacation, so class was cancelled for today and I have time before Government to write.

I decided to take my Intro to Literature class from the same professor I took my quickie English Comp class from over the Summer.  My reasoning was thus: I got an A in that class, and once I got to know her a bit on e-mail, I liked her.  Also, I figured that she couldn't make me read "Battle Royal" again.

I was wrong.

Fortunately, I was only wrong about "Battle Royal."  She's still a really nice lady - a former hippie and Freedom Rider, harkening back to my days at the Liberal Arts Academy.  She likes to encourage discussion, which is where I become the asshole in the class, because I can't stand the silence.  She asks a leading question and everybody just sits there and stares at her, so I end up giving my asshole opinion just to make the silence stop.  So I come off as a know-it-all, and probably a brown-noser because everybody knows I had her for my Summer class.

She likes to show us movies.  The problem is, our tastes in movies, mine and hers, are completely divergent.

On the first day of class, she showed us a clip from Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan.

Did you know that Tarzan was played by Christopher Lambert of Highlander fame?  Or that Jane was played by Andie MacDowell?  And Jane's father was Ian Holm? 

No, you probably don't.  And nor should you.  Because it was a terrible movie.

A few classes later, she showed us a video a friend of hers had compiled, set to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire."  She made absolutely no comment before showing us the video, so I was completely unprepared for the film clips of Saipan, the naked children of Nagasaki, and the Chinese Army shooting a guy in the head, for reals, at the end of the video.  I held it together through everything, right up until they shot the guy in the head.  And then I started to cry.  In public.  If you're reading this, I probably don't have to tell you how much I fucking hate to cry in public.

Today, she showed us clips from The Lion King to illustrate the use of symbolism.  It was pedestrian, but it completely blew the fragile little minds of the teenagers in my class.  Which brings me to: the teenagers in my class.

On the second class day, we discussed "The Hand" by Sidonie-Gabrielle Collette.  It's a story about a newly-married woman who, after a whirlwind courtship and two weeks of marriage, starts a weird obsession with her husband's hand one night in bed.  She stares at it for hours and finally works herself up into a big old hysteria about how ugly her man's hand is, and how she's going to have to just resign herself to a sad, sad life full of pretense and nothingness because of his damn hand and her stupid feelings about it.  It is, of course, symbolic and a whole bunch of other things, but one of the idiot teenagers in my class burst out with "If she hates him so much, she should get a divorce!"

There are many, many things wrong with this statement.  Here are a few, in no particular order:

• This story was written around 1924.  You couldn't just "get a divorce."
• It's not about getting a divorce, idiot.
• Seriously, the girl in the story had been married for two weeks.  Is that how people deal with things now?  You think his hands are ugly so you get a divorce?  Is that how it goes?  I guess being married for almost thirteen years should be an achievement worth a fucking medal, then, because I'm fairly sure that my husband and I have both been irritated with each other countless times in our marriage.  And if annoyance = divorce, we should be lauded by the goddamn President for our personal committment.

Today, for some reason known only to herself and maybe God, the professor decided to ask if anyone had seen the Republican debates.  I had not, so for once, I could keep my asshole mouth shut.  There was a girl in class who clearly felt strongly about the issues in the debate, and she mentioned how upset she was when the audience applauded Rick Perry for his record of 234 executions while in office.  Some other idiot teenager (a boy this time), started muttering under his breath that they deserved it, they were murderers, etc., etc.  First off, if you don't have the balls to actually speak up and join the discussion, shut the fuck up.  Secondly, if you are under the age of 25 (and I'm being real generous there), your opinion is stupid, so shut the fuck up.

Yep.  I said it.  If you're younger than 25, you probably have not lived enough to have a credible opinion.  There are, of course, exceptions to this rule - there are very mature, considered people under the age of 25, whose opinions are worth something.  It's just that there are none of those people in my class.  Or none that speak up.  Why is it that only the idiots speak up? 

And since I've already admitted that I give my opinion every time a hush falls in there, what does that make me?