#the reason why i take the eclipse not me and atots so personally

[aprilblossomgirl]

The Eclipse and the School Curse.

Suppalo uses the school curse to keep things under control. They hope the rumor would make students stay away from violating or, further, questioning the rules. While this approach might have worked in the past, it just doesn't make sense that it would be today when students are becoming more critical. When the World Remembers insisted on protesting the school uniforms, the curse happened to them, from mild events to more dangerous accidents. However, they were aware that there was no curse. No incidents happened by themselves; there must be someone behind it. That's maybe why in one of their next protests, they demand the school catch the bad guys behind those accidents.  

And so, the question would be, who's behind it, then? The last few minutes of the last episode showed Akk to be the one behind the supposedly last curse, that is about to be burned, as Kan said. However, it is unclear whether he was also behind those other previous incidents (I know from the special episode he's behind the blood incident, but none indicating the others). Regardless, another question would be, did he do it all on his own or by an order (from the school authority)?

Rewatching the conversations between Akk and Teacher Chadok, I had my suspicion; however, no lines directly indicating that he ordered Akk to carry out the curse. "They have no idea what the curse will do if they keep on being stubborn (episode 3)" was the only line from Teacher Chadok that backed up my thought but still not entirely. Well, in the next episode, we will get to it, that is, if Akk would open to Aye when confronted about it, I think.

Now, back to the curse. I have so many feelings about this since I've started to relate to the narratives built around it.

First, the curse is used to keep something undisturbed by inflicting fear of performing disobedience. In this case, the school uses a curse to scare students and prevent them from violating or criticizing the rules. It was meant as a tool to maintain order in the school. But still, why an outdated approach?

A little out of topic, but this analogy might help understand the use of the curse. The use of the school curse for rules enforcement here is similar to the use of the scary forest myth to make people stay away from entering and even approaching it. In the past, it was known as one of the strategies to protect rural natures, commonly used by the elderly in the local or traditional communities. To some extent, it worked that at least outsiders stayed far or out of the forest, so the forest stayed pristine and undisturbed. A point to understand, though, is at the time, the myth was used with a somewhat 'good intention' to protect nature.

Nowadays, such an intention might hardly exist. With politics added to the motives, the myth is still used, but in the wrong way. It still scares people away, but for a different reason. Before, it was to protect the forest for the sake of nature conservation; now, it was to 'protect' the forest for the sake of nature exploitation by a few greedy groups.

So, to answer why the nonsense approach, it might be either:

the whole school system is run by older people who are simply uninformed of the current development of society in general or education in particular and have no idea of better rules enforcement, which I don't think that's the case, or

to divert the attention from anything possibly more important that’s happening within the school system, or

to deliberately instill fear of disobedience towards the school authority instead of encouraging a positive attitude of critical thinking towards the rules.

All this is to say that, maybe, the whole thing about keeping the regulations and reputation of the school was not about maintaining order but more about maintaining authority. In the first case, an order should allow disorganization or disruption to recreate or redefine the order itself, allowing critique and questioning for improvement. In the second case, however, the rules cater to only a few groups of people, giving flexibility and advantages to them while causing repression and disadvantages to the rest outside the groups. And so now, as I wrote here before, the ultimate question is: who's behind the Suppalo school system?