The film The Great Debaters exceeds expectations. I want to go again. Here is some excellent commentary on the film by the Anxious Black Woman, and here is some information on the real life Melvin B. Tolson, a poet. We should all be so brave.
It was I who taught Black Diamond
his first lesson in the Art of Picasso’s Benin,
at Waycross, Georgia –
aeons before Africa uncorked an uppercut:
many a tour de force of his
executed in Harlem dives and dead ends
has greened the wide-awake eyes
of such masters as
Giglio and Gentile,
Bufalino and Profaci.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Side note: I want students like the ones in the film, and I want to make my own decisions about things as Tolson does. I have not had such students, or been allowed that kind of authority in any area of my work life, since graduate school. This is the crux of my conflict about being a professor – it is as though one must be one, but not be one … and all of this is ground we have gone over before, and of course one can say it all has to do with capitalism and such things, and note that Tolson is in trouble for being radical, and he gets arrested and I haven’t yet, so the end meaning of it all is get brave and braver.
To be brave you must commit and that is not cynical enough for my sophisticated friends and family. And my father says being a professor is just a job, but when he was being one it was considered a heroic mission by the entire family, and I certainly do not elevate it to *that* degree. So there. I hereby declare that the oscillation between cynicism and heroic mission-speak is highly unstable.
In the movie Tolson doesn’t doubt and the Farmers create a whole sermon about not doubting. This is of course one of the key points in this blog and thus, one of the reasons why I am so impressed with this movie.
Anyway I am melting down and I wish I knew a way to destress other than getting out of town. I want to destress in town as well and I have tried everything I can think of *except* success at changing *all* my mental pathways out of Reeducation Mode – a mode this town encourages and even enforces.
Anyway, in Reeducation one was supposed to let things get to one, so that one could “feel one’s feelings.” You couldn’t say “bah,” or “that’s silly” or “get out of my face.” You had to let evil sink in fully, so you could truly experience it. I thought it was a bad idea then and having tried it, I can confirm it is a very bad idea. I have not yet succeeded in leaching all of the evil out, and I have not yet made my diaphanous screen impermeable.
Reeducation taught self-cruelty and this is very difficult to unlearn – especially in my present region where self-cruelty seems to be part of the general culture. Perhaps I will set an alarm clock every fifteen minutes, something like this, and re-commit to kindness that often, so that no junk seeps in!!!
Hey! Wow! One of the actors in the film was born in New Iberia, has a B.A. and an M.A. from LSU, and teaches at SLCC! And the film was made in Louisiana!
http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071213/LMAGAZINE01/71212015
I saw the “The Great Debaters” last weekend and loved it so much, I dragged a friend to see it yesterday. She asked me where it was made and I said, “It looks like Lousiana.” Ha! Good call, huh?
Excellent! Here’s the debate team’s exercise:
“Who is the judge? The judge is God. Why is he God? Because he decides who wins and loses; not my opponent.Who is your opponent? He doesn’t exist. Why doesn’t he exist? Cause he’s the mere dissenting voice of the truth that I speak.”