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Saturday, January 12, 2013

Schools Matter: Carl, Get Your Gun

Schools Matter: Carl, Get Your Gun:


Carl, Get Your Gun


Just as I was about to start writing this an image that springs out of my "cultural" heritage popped into my head. In the movie The Breakfast Club, the man of superior conscience turns out to be Carl, the janitor.  Do you remember?  I'm pretty sure none of the teens in the movie will turn out to be of superior conscience or character, which is interesting too.  I sometimes marvel at the actual complexity in our filmed representations of institutional roles and human responses.  We know the assistant principal is an ass, not least due to the anticipated viewer response to the actor's "look."  Looking like that, Vernon is irredeemable.  But in the end we can only imagine that each of these "club" members will go their merry way just as they had prior to this day of detention even as they earned a single day of "victory" over themselves, their cultural roles, and the institution that "molds" them, becoming briefly an association of sympathetic beings.  That is, they will go back to being