mf

That previous post showed up as a saved draft when I came here just now! So I finished it and posted it. But what I really want to talk about is this show, The Magicians.

Ok so I tried to start watching The Magicians twice before, mainly because of the gifs I kept seeing on tumblr, but it's only this week that I gave the show another shot and finally made it past the first episode. I love something about the aesthetic.

That being said, the show makes me very angry and I guess I'm here to make a list of reasons why it makes me angry.

(1) yet another story about a special boy being more special than all of the other special people
(2) classism
(3) toxic ideas about "talent," including but not limited to the idea that trauma leads to talent, and talent = merit
(4) toxic ideas about teaching and higher education: gatekeeping, arbitrariness, testing students without warning, shouting, or otherwise favouring students who thrive in anxiety-or-fear-based environments
(5) exclusion for no apparent reason

My teaching experience is that there is no correlation whatever between the scope of someone's abilities, and their initial capacity to perform under pressure. Also, students do much better if you just do what's best for their well-being, and literally never give a thought to how "talented" they might be.

I've spent so much of my fucking life force wishing more of the parents of my violin students knew that caring about how "talented" kids are - let alone ranking those kids [shudder] - is not the same as caring about those kids's well-being. Even worse, I sometimes have to worry about that kind of vibe coming from the school administration. It just makes me want to scream "STOP FETISHIZING TALENT" "THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS" "THE PROBLEM IS YOU."

I've been seeing more and more teaching styles that are kind and supportive but also foster good, solid work ethics. Twenty years ago, the options were either "kind teachers who are laisser-faire about discipline" or "toxic shouty teachers who make sure you work diligently." (Like no one had figured out how to be kind while also making sure you put in regular hours?! Ugh.) But now I'm seeing examples of healthy teaching environments more often.

So. Well. The patriarchal classist gatekeeping I'm seeing on The Magicians makes me angry. It's regressive, imo. "Talented boy is more talented than all the other talented boys so this story is about him!" "Only the talented special people are special enough to be admitted to the specialest school that ever did special!" "THEY ARE SPECIAL BECAUSE OF THEIR TRAUMA." Like why would you promote that.

Ok that's probably all I had to say about that for now. Thank you for reading! Hope you are all well.