#gotta love how all of these were done with varying degrees of effort based on how much time/energy i had lmao

[retros-artandstuff]

eyebrow twins

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Dangerous Minds

Those of my readers who haven’t known me long may not know that I was once a corps member of Teach for America. I taught 10th and 11th grade English for about 5 weeks, then I was told on a Friday about my “involuntary transfer” to another school in the district, where I’d be teaching 7th and 8th grade English instead. I went from having about 110 students to about 190. My classroom had no books (textbook or otherwise), no pencils, no paper, no markers or chalk, but it DID have one of those folding lamps that come out of the ceiling at the dentist’s office. The kids had been in there for 5 weeks with a rotating roster of subs; they’d done no schoolwork of any kind. I was teaching in a very poor area of the city, and my students were predominantly Black and Hispanic. One of my 10th graders wrote his first personal essay about getting shot the previous year. I say all this to tell you that when Chad asked that I review Dangerous Minds, the 1995 adaptation starring Michelle Pfeiffer of the true story of Louanne Johnson’s experience teaching in inner city schools in California, I was prepared to laugh it off as a cringey, Lifetime-movie representation of my experience. Is that what I got? Well...

For the most part, what I got was a ball of anxiety in my chest. It’s well-worn territory, obviously. A teacher bonds with their students from the wrong side of the tracks, and ends up learning just as much from them as they learn from him/her. Usually poetry or music features heavily as a tool that can set the students free from the depressing circumstances of their lives. Depending on the rating, usually a student dies, and the teacher learns just how Important their job is, so they commit to it even harder even though it pays no money and garners no respect from the administration who just doesn’t “get it.” But these cliches and stereotypes and broad strokes exist because at their core, they’re true, and they make me anxious and uncomfortable and I can’t laugh at them or Michelle Pfeiffer being a Nice White Lady because I’m too busy being angry about the systems we put in place that straight up abandon so many kids, all in the name of white supremacy.

Some thoughts:

Oh we’re starting right off the BAT with “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Fantastic news. Two things I associate so strongly with this song is skating around the skating rink in 2nd grade and buying the Weird Al cassingle of “Amish Paradise” and wearing it out. 

Ooh, the score was composed and performed by Wendy & Lisa! Love that, you don’t see nearly as many film scores as you should composed by women.

God, the salary is $24,700 a year and Louanne acts as though that is appealing - I can’t tell if that’s because it was 1995 or because teacher salaries are so dismally low that this feels like a good salary?

This scene in which Louanne goes into her classroom for the first time and the kids are all shouting at her and getting in her face and sexually harassing her and throwing paper balls at her is giving me stress hives. 

Also her friend Griffith (George Dzundza) saying, “You wanna teach, so teach! All you gotta do is get their attention” is rather disingenuous. Trust me, you can have their attention, and still not be able to teach. 

I’m excited to see Sally-Can’t-Dance from Con Air as Raul (Renoly Santiago). He’s honestly fantastic in this, with a tough exterior but a sensitive and gooey inner sweet boy. All of the teens give pretty solid performances, but he’s a real standout.

I recognize this is based on a true story and Louanne Johnson’s lived experience, but I am not sure it’s wise for any teacher, regardless of grade or subject, to be teaching her students how to fight each other. Or taking them to dinner on what looks to outsiders like a date. I know some people have a problem with the bribery (giving her students candy for speaking up in class) but I have no problem with it - you get paid to do all the dumb stuff you don’t want to do at work, why shouldn’t kids be compensated for going to school if they don’t want to be there? External motivation goes a long way to building up internal motivation.

Mm I do love me some Courtney B. Vance, but he’s such a quiet, condescending ass in this. It’s a different vibe than I’m used to seeing in a principal in a movie like this. 

Ooh, Griffith grading papers and saying “What a fuckin’ idiot” is a real mood. 

“Since when has the Board of Education done anything for us? We barely get fuckin lunch” is legit. The lunches my students were served in summer school were some of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen. One day it was spoiled milk, white bread, and pickles. And one of my students put his in a microwave that was hidden in the back of my classroom behind some dividers and left it for a week. And just so you know, as stomach-churningly awful as that sounds, the day I found “pickle man” as my student called him, isn’t even in my top 5 worst days teaching list. 

I like Griffith, and I’m glad Louanne has a friend, but frankly I’m not that interested in these interludes between them - they really feel like they slow down the momentum from the scenes of her in the classroom slowly earning the kids’ trust. The pacing is kind of a mess, because the most dynamic sections all revolve around the kids in the classroom, and I feel like that only makes up about a third of the movie. 

One thing I know for sure is you do not get in the middle of a fight between students. I have a friend who worked in the same district I did who interrupted a fight and got punched in the face because of it. And her principal blamed her. 

Oh wow the way the soundtrack picks up when Emilio finally engages in the class is some kinda cheesy. And it continues through the rest of the scene to a distracting degree. Oh Wendy and Lisa, I hoped for better. 

Can I just emphasize that to reach these kids, Louanne uses her experience as a LITERAL MARINE by demonstrating she can kick all their asses, and then she bribes them by paying for 25 kids to go to an amusement park for the entire day with her?

Also, even if they like and respect her now, I call bullshit at any scene in which ALL of  the kids are A) sitting in their seats or B) silent, and especially C) both. 

Um suddenly feeling some weird vibes with Louanne and Raul having a dinner date at this fancy restaurant by themselves. Also, the double standard here is pretty telling - there’s no way this scene makes the movie if Louanne had been a male teacher and Raul was a female student.

Wait wait wait, she’s also loaning Raul $200? Like, is this why I didn’t make it as a teacher? Because I wasn’t a former Marine taking students to amusement parks and fancy dinners and lending them money? I was 25 and could barely afford rent. Maybe teachers who have enough money to take care of themselves are better equipped to take care of others. Idk, I’m just spitballin here.

Oh “Gangsta’s Paradise” is happening again! We already heard the whole song over the opening credits but now it’s happening again about 3/4 way through. I mean this song is definitely the best thing about the film, so I get it, but it feels weird that they think we wouldn’t notice it playing to completion twice.

Michelle Pfeiffer is doing everything she can to make this movie feel less cheesy and more real. Like, you can tell she’s really trying with her performance. Of course, it’s not like the character is a huge challenge acting-wise, but she is definitely committed to the part and can walk the line of both accessible and tough. 

This scene where Louanne tells her class she is not going to be there next year, that what happened to Durell and Lionel and Callie and Emilio made her too sad to stay has not aged well at all. And it’s certainly true to life, and I say that as someone who did the same thing. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s a reality - the fact that I’m a nice white lady is exactly the reason that I can choose to leave when things get too hard. Just because the kids convince her to stay at the end in this very rushed “all’s well that ends well” way doesn’t sweep this scene under the rug, and it shouldn’t. 

Ope, “Gangsta’s Paradise” shows up one last time in the credits for good measure. 

Side note: after the film, I researched Louanne, and she’s still teaching, which honestly made me emotional (in a good way). And I’d like to point out the racist ass bullshit the studio and screenwriter Ronald Bass pulled by changing the poems the students read to Bob Dylan lyrics when Louanne originally used rap lyrics from popular artists in ‘89-’90 to teach the kids about poetry. 

Did I Cry? No, but I did get heartburn from anxiety flashbacks.

This genre of film is easy to mock and parody because it tells the same story and hits the same beats to the point that they’ve become cliche. Ultimately, the truth at the heart of the movie (which is the un-nuanced and candy-coated depiction of Johnson’s real memoir, My Posse Don’t Do Homework) is that high schoolers crave someone who will see them and validate them, someone who is willing to put in the effort. The quality of the package that truth is wrapped in varies, and this one certainly leans in hard on stereotypes that feel like cheat codes rather than any real illuminating depictions of living teenagers. But as cringey as it is to watch, maybe it’s not a bad thing to remember that all people - including those who are trapped in poverty and all the cruel injustices that entails - want to be seen and valued for who they really are. 

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

[badbackgroundscience]

Weird Transporter Accidents, Entry #1

Episode of the Week: The Enemy Within

Planet of the Week: Alpha 177 Villain of the Week: one half of Jim Kirk Redshirt death count: 0

TL;DR: A funny yellow powder breaks the transporter, bringing into question exactly how it works in the first place when it can make 2 whole human beings out of only one pattern. Also known as “the one with the alien that is clearly a dog in a funny suit”.

Sometimes you just gotta love that 1960′s costuming

We open on the surface of Alpha 177, Kirk checking in on a “specimen-gathering mission” that Sulu appears to be leading.* He mentions it’s getting a bit nippy, and the captain adds, “At night it gets down to a hundred and twenty degrees below zero.” Kirk doesn’t specify which temperature scale he’s using, there, but we know it can’t be Kelvin because 1. you don’t use “degrees”,** and 2. the Kelvin scale doesn’t go below 0.

Given that the show was made for an American audience, you could argue that it’s meant to be Fahrenheit. Or, given that it takes place several hundred years in the future and surely a unified Earth space fleet would use the most-used temperature scale on the planet, it’s meant to be Celsius. -120 °F is about -84.4 °C, while -120 °C is exactly -184 °F. 

Both are really cold for our pathetic human bodies, but for perspective, the lowest ground-level temperature ever recorded on Earth is -128.6 °F (at the Vostok Station in Antarctica back in 1983). There was a colder temperature recorded by a space-based satellite - as opposed to a thermometer on the ground - at a different Antarctic location: -135.8 °F/-93.2 °C (or 180 K). Meanwhile, -120 °C is comparable to how cold it can get at a Martian pole during the winter.*** 

Indeed, Mars has seasons like Earth does, though they last roughly twice as long because it takes Mars about twice as long to orbit the Sun. Seasons come about because a planet has an obliquity - the axis about which it rotates is tilted with respect to the plane the planet orbits its star. Earth’s is 23.5°; Mars’s is currently 25°. But there is one big difference - both vary, but Earth’s doesn’t anywhere near as much as Mars’s. Earth’s Moon helps stabilize us, so we don’t stray too far from that 23.5 number, but Mars can wobble between 10° and 50° over millions of years. At really high obliquities (i.e. the more a planet’s pole can be pointed toward the Sun) Mars will get really large polar ice caps:

[This is not a real image - but NASA made it and it illustrates what Mars could have looked like during an “ice age” at a point of high obliquity about 400,000 years ago. The northern cap would reach a latitude “equivalent of the southern Unites States or Saudi Arabia on Earth”]

But I’ve gone off on a tangent, so let’s get back to the episode. To be honest there’s not a lot of science left to comment on, aside from the fact that the temperature keeps dropping. 

Geological Technician Fisher falls down a ledge and cuts his hand, so Kirk orders him to report to sickbay. He’s covered in some sort of magnetic yellow ore that makes his transport a wee bit difficult, and Kirk is beamed up not long after with the apparent same trouble. Kirk arrives and nearly stumbles off the platform, admitting he feels a little dizzy. Scotty helps him out of the room and the other technician goes to get some diagnostic equipment; while the room is empty a second Kirk appears on the transporter pad. Given the sinister background music and the lighting, we know he’s evil.

Good!Kirk takes a nap while Bad!Kirk barrels into sickbay, demands and grabs a giant bottle of Saurian Brandy, then wanders off to find Yeoman Rand’s quarters. Obviously concerned with this behavior, McCoy tells Spock, but Spock checks in with Good!Kirk, who thinks the doctor is just pulling the Vulcan’s leg. Scotty then calls the captain to the transporter room, where he shows Jim and Spock the not!dog duplicates. Without knowing the same thing has happened to the captain, Scotty warns them that they dare not beam Sulu and the landing party up, for fear that the same thing will happen to all of them.

Bad!Kirk, meanwhile, sexually assaults Yeoman Rand, who claws at his face and evades him until her door opens as Fisher happens to be walking by. He tries to call in the attack on a hallway comm but Bad!Kirk knocks him out, sending him back to sickbay. The two report the incident, and Spock concludes there’s an “impostor” aboard, (even though he just saw the whole duplicate alien dog thing down in the transporter room). Cue commercial break, after which they refer to Bad!Kirk as a "double”.

Soon Good!Kirk starts acting very confused, and not particularly good at delivering sound orders or following conversations. Turns out Kirk needs that “bad” (or animalistic) half of him to make an effective captain, so they can’t just kill the brute. Security runs around looking for him, with Good!Kirk foolishly announcing over the entire ship’s comms that the ‘impostor Kirk’**** has scratches on his face. Naturally, Bad!Kirk grabs some makeup and covers them right up. Good going, Jim.

Meanwhile, Sulu’s hanging out in “-20″ weather while the other 3 men are constructing a shelter out of rocks.

(-20 °C is -4 °F, -20 °F is -6.7 °C) There’s a noticeable wind blowing, but we don’t know if Sulu’s temperature report is with or without the wind chill factor For example, -20 °F with a 15 mph wind is actually -45 °F, with frostbite setting in in 10 minutes. If it’s -20 °C with the same wind, frostbite would only start setting in after about half an hour. Still, Sulu should probably make more of an effort to cover his exposed skin...

[Side note: at no point is the idea of sending a shuttle down to get them brought up. We know the Enterprise has at least one, seen in a later episode. The whole reason transporters were invented for the show was because it’d be too expensive to make the crew travel by shuttle down to every planet every week - so clearly they thought that shuttles could exist on the ship. Why not throw a line in about something in the atmosphere preventing them from safely getting a shuttle to the surface? Am I overthinking this? Yes I am.]

Good!Kirk and Spock find the “double” hiding out in Engineering, and we get our first Vulcan Neck Pinch (woo!):

Said pinch causes Bad!Kirk’s phaser fire to strike a random panel that further damages the transporter system, while Sulu and company do a poor job of protecting themselves against “forty one degrees below zero” (Note that -40 is the value where both the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales match up). 

They do actually use their phasers to heat the rocks in a later scene, so at least they’re showing a modicum of sense. Now that I think about it, if you made up the energy stored within a single phaser, and the specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity of the rocks, you’d actually have a really good high school physics problem on your hands.

Bad!Kirk also shows signs that he’s near death - a consequence of the duplication process; McCoy reports he doesn’t know if Good!Kirk will be able to survive the split, either. So they quickly test the transporter by putting the dog alien "specimen” back together.

And, in our second first of the episode, McCoy gets to officially say “He’s dead Jim.”

Spock is convinced the animal died of shock, and a sentient creature like Kirk would be able to handle the blending. McCoy isn’t so hasty, and their arguing over Kirk’s head makes the ineffective Captain have absolutely no clue what he actually wants to do. He ultimately sides with Spock, partly because Sulu and Co. are basically dead in what our resident fencer reports as 117 below.

When Good!Kirk goes to sickbay to collect his other half, said other half knocks him out and scratches his face in a similar manner to his own injury. Bad!Kirk then goes to the bridge and confidently orders the pilot to leave orbit. He’s not obeyed, and Good!Kirk arrives on the bridge to begin the “who’s the ‘real’ Captain Kirk” scene. The answer arrives rather quickly; we don’t even get to see Bill and his stand-in wrestle around a bit before Bad!Kirk gives up.

A surprise to absolutely no one, Kirk survives the reintegration and Sulu and the team are saved (McCoy reports, “Severe exposure and frostbite, but I think they'll make it.” Dudes got lucky, but then again none of them appeared to be wearing red). The episode ends with a very inappropriate line from Spock towards Yeoman Rand referencing her assault and Kirk able to successfully command people to get stuff done.

* To anyone asking why the Enterprise’s primary pilot is playing the part of dogcatcher, at the start of the series Sulu bounced around doing basically all the jobs - from heading the “astroscience” division to running down corridors with a sword.

** Though that’s a common mistake people make. For example, room temperature is roughly 298 Kelvin. Not “298 degrees Kelvin”.

*** Science side note: the tardigrade has been observed to survive exposure to temperatures barely above absolute zero (-273 °C), so it would have absolutely no problem on this planet.

**** Spock won’t let Kirk tell his crew the truth because “You're the Captain of this ship. You haven't the right to be vulnerable in the eyes of the crew. You can't afford the luxury of being anything less than perfect. If you do, they lose faith, and you lose command.”

PS - Behold: Bill Shatner, actor:

TOS s01e05 - Written by: Richard Matheson, Directed By: Leo Penn

Image Credit:

Mars simulation Credit: NASA/JPL/Brown University