Watched Detachment on Netflix. Wow. And so sad...

[HiPointDem]

2. i just watched it on you tube based on your rec. interesting in parts but a bit over the top &

Last edited Sun Nov 11, 2012, 06:30 AM - Edit history (2)

in the end pretentious for my taste and creepy in bits too.

whoever wrote the script, they needed an editor -- imho. i liked the bones of the story but parts of the execution were annoying and the perpetual gloom struck me as unrealistic. c'mon, not *one single parent* at parents' night? not one?

yeah, i know, it wasn't supposed to be entirely realistic -- but it seemed to me it was unrealistic in places that should have been realistic.

This school looks like a suburban school, the halls are all shiny and white and clean -- it's majority white/asian except for one really angry black kid who looks and acts like he escaped from the projects and another really angry black girl with a really angry black mother. despite being in this clean white-tiled school all the kids are angry, sad, or sexualised and the school is 'failing' and about to be closed, all the teachers are angry, doped up, miserable, with terrible home lives or sad pasts.

yeah, i know, teenagers can be angst-ridden and teachers can be burnt out and unhappy, but not all of them, all of the time.

and the child prostitute storyline, while necessary for the story arc, i found unbelievable as executed and kind of creepy & hypocritical in the presentation of the child.

this initial encounter where the tiny little girl is shaking down a john on a bus all by herself -- unbelievable. the next encounter, her standing on a streetcorner dressed like a stereotypical hooker somewhere near the very clean school -- unbelievable. where's the drugs, where's the pimp/boyfriend, where's the other street kids, where does she go to change out of that black number or does she walk around all day like that? where'd she get the other skimpy clothes that materialize at his apartment?

the guy is presented as taking her in out of some detached compassion, caring for her as a *child* but she's presented throughout in a sexualized way, always in skimpy clothing, and their developing relationship reminded me of the montage sequences in romantic movies where boy & girl do various cute things together, smile at each other winningly etc, to indicate their growing love. in the end when he goes to see her at juvie she jumps on him and wraps her legs around his waist just as the female love interest does after the silly break up over triviality, when they finally realize that they *really do* love each other and fade into happy ever after.

in the same time space, the gorgeous redheaded teacher is told "she shouldn't be here" because the man is empty. so this can be read as him rejecting the woman for the child. can be, i don't know if *should* be, but it struck me.

and then at the end, he's reading 'fall of the house of usher" (symbolic of our decaying, falling society) to a room of students which changes into broken furniture and swirling papers. interesting, but kind of mitigates against the previous scene where he's gone to see the young prostitute, which you can initially read as accepting responsibility for her and for his students, opening himself up to all that pain which he rejected before. but if so, what's the significance of reading to inanimate broken torn up things?

and of course the ugly fat girl had to die, but the cute young prostitute lives. why is the young prostitute so very cute, anyway? "pretty woman" for pedophiles?

the guy's personal history -- though again, necessary for the story arc -- i also found kind of unbelievable.

i dunno, there were some things i liked -- the acting, some of the scenes, the hints about education deform (but those wouldn't have much significance to folks who didn't already have some background), the speech about reading being a way of defending our ability to imagine against images given from others (albeit the written word is also images given by others) --

but i felt there were weird subtexts.

i'd be interested in hearing other people's reactions; it's not your stereotypical 'special caring teacher reforms juvenile delinquents' at least -- or is it?