My Students’ Surprising Reaction to “Whiplash”

In my “Art of Film course,” I teach Whiplash constantly. Other movies may come and go, but that one is there consistently. I see it as a fascinating, and unnerving, critique of both toxic masculinity and of the kind of tunnel-vision that often passed for being “driven” or “determined” nowadays.

After all, in its most intense moments, the movie shows 2 personalities feeding off of one another in a way that is anything but positive:

These kinds of scenes are filled with sweat, tears, and sometimes even blood. Hands are waving in the air, words are being shouted, and fluids are flying. (I use the passive because sometimes I’m not entirely sure whose fluids I’m seeing fly across the screen. Sure, I know the blood was from the student. But was that fluid the student’s tears or the teacher’s spit…or was it the student’s sweat? You can read into that what you will.)

Anyway, I have my own hangups and concepts when watching the movie. But my students do not share them.

I taught Whiplash recently and prepared to read through my students’ responses. I went in thinking I knew what I would see. Then, I read a student response about how the professor was doing his best, and that he just wanted his student to succeed.

“That’s fine,” I thought. It was surprising — and I’m not quite sure we watched the same movie — but I could see it. We could say that the professor really did care, though that care was perhaps the most destructive caring I have ever seen on film.

Then, the similar responses kept piling up: the professor cared too much; he cared in a way that the student’s father did not; he was on the right track, but just executed his plans wrongly. And on and on it went.

I was left with an overwhelming feeling that the disconnect has been lost. When faced with a professor who might be too hard on their papers, they might rail against the professor as “uncaring” or “unfeeling.” But when asked to analyze a character like the abusive Terence Fletcher, they will look beyond the professor’s actions to a well-meaning, but misguided intent.

Now, if only there were a way to re-purpose this kind of intent-seeking, so that my students focus on Fletcher’s destructive action while coming to a greater appreciation of their professors’ well-meaning and caring intent in commenting on their papers. Seriously, their professors are well-meaning. Fletcher, not so much.