Uncomfortable Lesson Cycle

I present a short screenplay depicting a recent incident at the high school. It is the first part of a cinematic tryptich, which I think of as my Uncomfortable Lesson Cycle. The second and third section are tentatively titled “Alexander For God Knows Whatever Reason Evokes the Theoretical Concept of ‘Otherness’ While Explaining Apartheid to French Students Who Have Never Heard of Apartheid Before” and “Montage of French Students Responding Inappropriately to Pointedly Neutral Questions about their Family or Social Life.”

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[Hallway in French high school. ALEXANDER meets a TEACHER]

TEACHER: Oh, hi Alex! I’m glad I ran into you. Would you mind teaching the entire class today?

ALEXANDER. (doing that thing where one of my eyes is open wider than the other and my jaws are set unaligned) Uh… sure!

TEACHER. Have you prepared anything?

ALEXANDER: (trying to conceal that he never prepares anything for any of his classes, he just always asks what they did over the previous weekend.) Uh…no…

TEACHER. That’s fine. You read Brooklyn Follies? We’re discussing Tom. So you could talk about him. I printed out some excerpts concerning him.

ALEXANDER. Sure.

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[Forty-five minutes later. In a classroom full of high school students. ALEXANDER is sitting at the teacher’s desk.]

ALEXANDER. Okay, so in the excerpt from page 50, it says that Tom stays a taxi driver because he is in mourning. What is he mourning? [no response.] What is he mourning? [no response.] Can anyone tell me what he’s mourning? [no response.] What is he mourning?

STUDENT. He works at a bookstore.

ALEXANDER. Do you understand my question? Do you know what mourning is? Someone tell me what mourning is.

STUDENT: Le deuil?

ALEXANDER. Ouais, le deuil. But in English. Someone explain what mourning is in English. What is mourning? Do you know what mourning is? Can someone tell me what mourning is? [getting up and writing on the board]. Mourning is a Ritualized. Method. Of. Accepting. Loss. That’s why we wear black, and why funerals are so heavily structured. Do you understand? Do you know what a ritual is? What is a ritual? Do you know what ‘ritual’ means? [students fidget uncomfortably.] You should know what it means. [disdainfully, as he seats himself] It’s the same word in French.

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[Sudden cut to a wind-scoured desert landscape. The sand extends to infinity. The only visible object is a shattered mirror in the foreground — the remnants of the mirror reflect a fetid, boggy forest. A black boa constrictor is curled around the mirror’s base, among the shards. All my movies end this way.]

[FIN]