Notes on “Unjustly Overlooked Classics in Fascist Cinema,” a critique of Andy Anderson’s “Detention”
Rhys -
Really great job with this draft! This is an interesting, insightful analysis. Most of my comments are local - see margins. A larger question I have concerns potential objections to your characterization of Texas public schools. You paint a very totalizing picture of a school system that has succeeded in stiffling student creativity and preventing free thought. And yet, you (I assume) and lots of other students have managed to come out of that system with your own ideas and the ability to critique the system that you characterize as an “authoritarian regime” that has done nothing but hurt students. Furthermore, I know for certain that, whatever the shortcomings of the system, there are many very good teachers and individuals in that system who do teach students how to think for themselves and really help them. By presenting such a one-sided picture, you risk alienating readers who might agree with you that the system has some major problems, but who choose to work from within the system for positive change. Power is rarely so totalizing as you make it seem, and your argument would benefit from a perspective that accounts for the forms of resistance to this system and its ideology as well as for the problems.
-JH
