“THE BREAKFAST CLUB”, 30 YEARS LATER: A CONVERSATION ACROSS GENERATIONS
THE BREAKFAST CLUB just turned 30! I wrote a short piece about the experience of teaching a film I adored in my youth to a brand new generation of students. The big surprise? They loved it as much as I do:
“It’s a hard thing, teaching students of another generation about a movie you loved as a child. Indeed, whenever I teach a film that I loved passionately in my youth—”E.T.”, “Star Wars,” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”—I try to divorce my affective attachment to it from my pedagogy. It’s not that I don’t let students know when I truly love a film—I gush about “Breathless” and “Double Indemnity” and “Killer of Sheep.” It’s just that I don’t trust the tastes I cultivated during my youth, back when my raw, hormonal heart dictated the music I listened to and the movies I watched. My undeveloped cinematic palate is somehow less authentic, at least to the teacher in me, than the tastes I formed post-college, when I began to study the cinema as a critical object. So I overcompensate for the love object. I try to point out its flaws ahead of time, to prepare myself for disappointment. I am sure they will find “The Breakfast Club” racist, close-minded, and unsatisfying. They will surely shit on my youth.”
Read the full piece here.
judgmental observer 
March 29, 2015 at 4:02 am
Reblogged this on Conversations I Wish I Had and commented:
Reading the full text is really worth it so go check it out!
April 11, 2015 at 9:39 am
احسنت
April 11, 2015 at 9:39 am
Reblogged this on norasalemalazmi.