The History Boys

[St Disibod]

Don't know whether anyone is bothering with the Dublin Theatre Festival, but I would recommend Alan Bennett's The History Boys in the Olympia to anyone who might feel slightly inclined. The film of the same name is a rather good second best- though it does have some advantages over the play.

Anyway, if anyone has seen either, I was just wandering what they thought of it in relation to:

a) education: should it be pointed or taught for its own sake?
b) history: is it about the pursuit of truth or the force of argument?
c) homosexuality: was this component an Anglo-centric one, or is it equally relevant to Ireland?

And are there any other major themes or points of interest that I am missing?

Or did anyone think it was just a big heap of mawkish ************************e?

[Dee Four]

Or did anyone think it was just a big heap of mawkish ************************e?

And nothing but.

Overly sentimental rubbish for the most part. The film's main flaw (despite perhaps coming across exactly like a play that had been filmed) was that it tried to turn a paedophile into a loveable and wise character, with whom we are supposed to automatically share the boys' fondness for, and accept that fondness unquestioningly.

I cared very little for the 'hard issues' it tried to raise, as I found such moments came seemingly out of nowhere, interrupting the main story line, which appeared to be an exposé on how gay all these folks were. There didn't seem to be too much in the way of intellectual thinking during these moments of discussion, but plenty of pseudo-intellectual posturing. They did do an alright job propping up academic straw men and knocking them down as if this was some mighty achievement.

[eddiebatt]

I thought the film was horrible - disgusting rubbish.

[TheBear]

I found the film quite enjoyable, and was intending on going to see the play if I get a chance. I didn't much like the prologue in the film, as I felt it was unnecessary, it was too obviously a theatrical mechanism (everyone sitting as if in an audience, each standing up in turn to speak) which didn't really suit the cinematic mode.

I do know of some people who objected to it on the grounds that it made it seem that any gay male teacher was going to be drawn to molesting their students, whereas this isn't the case. I had noticed that (it was referred to in the prologue), but it hadn't been something I dwelled on at the time.

[St Disibod]

[quote=Dee Four]

Or did anyone think it was just a big heap of mawkish ************************e?

And nothing but.[/quote:r66i7uva]
Funny, I did have you in mind when I wrote that particular line. Oh well, play it again, Sam...

*Plot Spoiler Warning for the rest of this post*

Overly sentimental rubbish for the most part. The film's main flaw (despite perhaps coming across exactly like a play that had been filmed) was that it tried to turn a paedophile into a loveable and wise character, with whom we are supposed to automatically share the boys' fondness for, and accept that fondness unquestioningly.

I actually thought Bennett was being brave by trying to paint a paedophile in a positive (or at least a rounded) light. He was hardly all that wise; but rather a tragic figure. The film and the play diverge a bit on how he was received by the boys. But in either case, it was Irwin's (the other, new teacher) lessons that unlocked the door to Oxbridge for the boys and all but a few ditched Hector's values from the minute they left his last class, becoming as they did tax accountants and journalists, etc., in later life. A large part of his character was the very question of whether he was at all wise, or whether he was pissing his life away in the classroom only to be forgotten by each and every class upon graduation.

As far as his paedophilia was concerned, it was telling that the one boy he refused to give lifts to was the one who he might have had his way with. That does not much dent the severity of his actions however, and it was duly the cause of his downfall- it was a moral story, not an apology for paedophilia. But that whole theme of homosexuality and paedophilia (and perhaps Bennett does blur the two- the emphasis being on teacher and student rather than adult and child) I do feel is something of an import in the Irish context. The same issue presents itself in much of the World War I novels- what with soldiers staring longingly into one another's eyes in the trenches in book after book. This theme does not seem to exist with anything near the frequency in Irish literature- whether that represents Irish society accurately or not, or whether it owes to literary suppression, I will leave up to the reader. But I do wonder does our unfamiliarity with it as a theme mean that it eclipses everything else when it is presented to us as only one of three or four other themes (as I think it was presented in The History Boys)?

I cared very little for the 'hard issues' it tried to raise, as I found such moments came seemingly out of nowhere, interrupting the main story line, which appeared to be an exposé on how gay all these folks were. There didn't seem to be too much in the way of intellectual thinking during these moments of discussion, but plenty of pseudo-intellectual posturing. They did do an alright job propping up academic straw men and knocking them down as if this was some mighty achievement.

I do think it dealt well with re-opening, though not closing, that ongoing argument on what constitutes education: is it pointed (i.e. should it get you somewhere specific, can you measure it, etc.) or is it an end in itself that is completely self-justified (like good health- you don't want good health so that you can work better and earn more, you just want good health). Bennett was much more sympathetic to Hector on this than Irwin, but as said it was Irwin and his "gobbets" that provided the goods that got them into Oxbridge.

Also, I thought its treatment of the English language was rather razor sharp and not at all pseudo- or postural. Hector’s English lesson where he talks of how compound adjectives can be used to create a sense of isolation or holding back or where the boys recall how he taught the subjunctive as the tense of possibility is hardly humdrum stuff. Maybe I’m a sucker for that kind of stuff, but it did make an impression on me.

At a more specific level Bennett was criticising a trend in history, and at his most specific an individual historian, namely Niall Ferguson, author and presenter of The War of the World. I could quibble with Bennett’s treatment of the issue- for instance there are gradients between the traditional, textbook explanation for the two world wars and Ferguson’s penchant for turning every narrative on its head to keep things interesting and diverse- but it really is a critical issue in the field of academic history. History’s currency as a science, or a record of truth, is being debased by those who believe you have to shake everything up to keep people interested (not to be confused with revisionism). Though that is something of a subplot of the most subtle order. But for those who might be interested, Ferguson did offer a defence in the Financial Times (see here).

[Pidge]

I'm curious about whether it's quite "paedophilia". A teacher feels up boys in their last year of secondary school. It's inappropriate use of power, sure, but I'm not quite sure if I'd regard it as paedophilia.

The play in the Olympia is closing tomorrow night. There are no tickets left for the night show and only restricted vision seating for the matinee. Pcha!

[St Disibod]

I'm curious about whether it's quite "paedophilia". A teacher feels up boys in their last year of secondary school. It's inappropriate use of power, sure, but I'm not quite sure if I'd regard it as paedophilia.

Indeed, hence why the issue is so blurry in the play. But for how long was he at it is an important question. Though it presents itself again with Irwin- who is deemed by the boys to be "no more than five minutes older than us" or something to that effect. But where Bennett does draw a line is on the morals of it: Hector was wrong and is duly punished, Irwin would have been wrong (or would he, considering the student would have graduated by then?) but is rescued by unforeseeen events, and Posner in later life knows right from wrong and holds himself back from his students (made clearer in the play than in the film, I think). But for ther students no moral punishment is on offer by the playwright for their homosexual tendencies, suggesting that he does offer some divergence between peadophilia and homosexuality.

But then because Posner is a homosexual and then becomes a teacher should not have necessarily led him to be attracted to his students, all be it that he can hold back. So again a blurring of the issues is re-introduced. But I really think the homosexuality/peadophile theme is obsessed upon to the degradation of the other themes in the play that were, in my view, much better embedded.

[L'Chaim]

Well I was at the play tonight and I thought it was fantastic. The parts about the teacher groping the pupils didn't strike me as paedophilia at all. I just thought the pupils' reactions to it was hilarious. They were all supposed to be about 17 years old and they took it as some sort of joke "who's turn is it to take a lift today". And even when the head master found out and was going to sack the teacher, the pupils reaction was "who complained?"

What I took out of the play was that exams don't matter in the great scheme of things. In school you can be taught the tricks needed to pass exams and you can be taught things that you will never have any use for ever again, but you might need to know them for an exam. It just struck me that if you were lucky enough to have teachers that are interested in helping you to look at 'history', or whatever subject, differently to the rigid way laid down in school books then you were lucky. You had good teachers, even if they did buck the system.

And the choice of old songs used was fantastic. Bewitched, that old Ella Fitzgerald song, sung by a teenage boy was a fantastic choice of song and was perfect for the scene it was in.

I just loved that play. It was fantastic and there were some real laugh out loud moments. But it was also very moving. Well worth seeing. And the teacher groping the boys from the class was written very well. It's a play I'd love to see again.

[St Disibod]

Well I was at the play tonight and I thought it was fantastic. The parts about the teacher groping the pupils didn't strike me as paedophilia at all. I just thought the pupils' reactions to it was hilarious. They were all supposed to be about 17 years old and they took it as some sort of joke "who's turn is it to take a lift today". And even when the head master found out and was going to sack the teacher, the pupils reaction was "who complained?"

Well I don't think one should make too light of the act. It is a clear abuse of one's role as a teacher to use that position to gain access to children. What if it where a class of girls? I do think that Bennett brilliantly demonstrated that there was more to Hector than a peadophile, or a teacher. He was both, and other things aside. None of his characteristics cancelled the others out, but all had to be weighed together with due consideration.

It just struck me that if you were lucky enough to have teachers that are interested in helping you to look at 'history', or whatever subject, differently to the rigid way laid down in school books then you were lucky. You had good teachers, even if they did buck the system.

Indeed, but where Bennett really brought on this theme was with the boys. Unlike Dead Poets' Society, which I think was just a load of mawkish drivel, the class divided on whether Hector's lessons were worthwhile. I certainly remember within my own school the classroom battles as a teacher tried to dig deeper and the majority of the class argued that they should stay within the confines of the course as anything else was considered waste. And, of course, those who want to spend the time digging deeper are then stuck in a hard place- it sounds easy to rebel against the wider school system but it's not so easy to defend your teacher and rebel against the popular consensus of your peers within the classroom. Even an even split is hard to reconcile.

I did think there was something poignant in the fact that only one child, out of this bumper crop of his best class, took Hector's lessons "to heart". As a guiding force in their lives, his influence died with him for the rest of them. I fear, in the dehumanising points race-based education system of ours, there's something of a truth in that.

[stringjack]

Well I don't think one should make too light of the act. It is a clear abuse of one's role as a teacher to use that position to gain access to children. What if it where a class of girls?