Male and Female

I screened the 1919, Cecil B. DeMille directed Male and Female today in my Intro to Film course. Two days a week I get to teach an extension class for our local community college. Two days a week I get to use my graduate school education and, you guessed it, two days a week I love me as a teacher. I get excited about films. Some people look at a cathedral, a painting, a mountain and it fills them with a sense of the divine, a belief that we are not alone, that the dead speak. For me, it's film. I showed a movie made 91 years ago to a room full of people under the age of 25 and the laughed, cried and, fuckin' a Billy, they clapped at the end. They liked it and I felt like there was hope.
I get hopeful and excited at the start of every school year. My high school kids are just as fun and excited as my film students. We covered the first chapter of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter today, and no question I could think of went unanswered. It was clear that at least two kids in every class had actually read the book--that's not bad. The rest were at least decent enough to pretend they had read it, which I think is a positive. I've decided that my job keeps me from getting depressed. When a city block explodes in San Bruno, when truly retarded people when primary elections, when my wife hates me or I can't take a shit, I have a room full of kids who are willing to at least try to figure out Hawthorne's syntax, even though they are taking 5 other hard classes. There is hope in this work. There is beauty in 90 year old images of a naked Gloria Swanson getting into a bathtub. I feel lucky today.