Pressure Cooker

I figured it was about time to go through my "eh, I'll watch it eventually" list that I've been making for myself. Started with Bigger, Stronger, Faster, went to Mad Hot Ballroom, and I've just finished this one.

I was a puddle after this one. I watched a few Rachel Ray videos, updates they did with the same class from the move and Wilma Stepheson, the teacher. They gave her a new bistro, a new kitchen, and a 5 day vacation. The tears just started flowing out of me. Funny thing is, I don't feel like I cry a lot at movie, but I looked through the tags on my blog (I tag it every time I cry during one of them) and lets just say I have plenty of "tears" tags.

Then I thought more about it. Something like this is so bittersweet. More sweet than bitter, of course. But even still, it's great that something like this happened to THIS inner city school and THIS class and THIS teacher and THIS group of students, but there are thousands of other schools like it. That's what it makes me think of (after I get over the initial happiness of celebrating the kids' success.) It made me think of the culinary art school at Mackenzie Career Center. What are they up to now?

It's funny that I watched this so close to Mad Hot Ballroom. The featured teachers were similar while being very different. Similar right down to the kiss on teh cheek before competition, but this lady was absolutely insane. Just completely hard core and a bit vicious. I can really imagine having a teacher like her or knowing of a teacher like her at my school. And she really wants them to succeed and do well and get into college. She really cares. She's involved in the lives of the students just like the teacher in Washington Heights was. Buying dress shirts for her students similar to the way the teacher at Washington Heights was buying the performing skirts for her students. Attending the football games in support of her students like the other teacher attended the final Grand Finale. What an experience, to have a teacher who cares that much. And this lady has been doing it for FOURTY years.

I feel like the camera had to have some influence on the students when to comes to being nervous for the competition. You look down, concentrating and working, and you look up and there's a camera in your face. And watching a documentary, it's easy to forget the camera's there. Being filmed, it's a little less easy. Especially if you're asked questions in the middle of doing whatever it is you're doing. I do wonder how Fatoumata had the clearance to be followed by a camera crew, but not much freedom when it came to anything else.

Last point, this movie was so hopeful and inspiring, it basically reminded me of an opposite Waiting For Superman. Superman actually did actually do a good job in showing up for this one. One thing that was interesting about this one is that it wasn't just about the competition. That was definitely a huge part, but it was more about the characters and their journeys. It was interesting to watch this and Mad Hot Ballroom back to back. There very similar in their ways but also had their difference in the way they approached the material. It's interesting how different two docs can be when they begin with very similar structures.

Mad Hot Ballroom

Competition is a great way to make a documentary moving. Unfortunately for me, the competition becomes less about celebrating the people who won and more about being sad for the poor bastards who lost. I like that they didn't dwell too long on the kids that didn't get chosen to represent their school for the competition because that would have been a little sad.

I love watching kids like this because I remember being this young and thinking I was so old and old enough to be dating and doing all kinds of things I was nowhere near old enough to be doing. They're playing it up for the camera and trying to come off as cool. Funny.

It was interesting that they got the clearance to be following these kids. They follow them walking home and they follow them hanging out with their friends. Their parents, their immigrant parents and grandparent parents and non-native English speaking parents allowed this to happen. Which is interesting.

The teacher in the Dominican Republican school didn't really come off very well for some people, I bet. Which is really just a shame because she probably basically just did her best to help these kids. You can tell she's doing it for them because she really cares about these kids and their future. All good teachers do. The scene where they go out to buy dresses is particularly revealing of that. And it's not like the filmmakers went out to go after her and make her look bad. As if they only included scenes where she said something terrible. That wasn't the plan. So...it just was what it was. Although, I mean, she did work those kids pretty hard and speak to them pretty hard compared to the to her teachers. But that's how winners win. And, also, some things are lost in translation. Take that into consideration. Overall, I thought she did a great job and was a very loving teacher. On another note, having the Dominican students do well at dancing the meringue to me was kind of like letting Nicole Schirzinger compete and win Dancing with the Stars. Also funny.

It was interesting that we were introduced to last year's winners (the people who got last year's huge trophy) halfway through the film. They were clearly a school with higher income families and more resources. So clearly, they were the villains against the Washington Heights school's underdogs. The faceless yuppies who get things handed to them. We had to beat them this time. Kind of an interesting way to go about building the roles of a narrative within a documentary. I wonder if that school minded. They clearly invited them into their school and gave them access to their students like any of the other school. But they weren't like any of the other school in the end. Not really.

35 Up

Michael asks such asshole questions. When Tony said he basically gets his shit done and makes stuff happen that he wants to make happen, he replies that "well, nothing you've done has worked out, right?" Tony's response? "It's better to be a hasbeen than a neverwas, innit?" You get him Tony.

I thought they'd have some problems finding things to talk about for the next few series, but I guess I get it now. We're just going to sit and watch all the relationships dissolve.

It's interesting though. With this sort of thing, you wonder why you just can't work the marriages out. Like, this seems like it could kind of be like fiction, so the idea of not having your life work the way they wanted it in the previous edition, or not working really hard to make your relationship work, the idea of these concepts just seems so abstract. Like when you hear things these people say about their lives, you just take it at face value, but these people are just saying things that they think will make them sound the most clever, or what the documentary filmmakers would want to hear, or what they think sounds most truthful to them. And they're not prefect. They could just be talking out of their ass. They do the interview once, and it's over, and it's on celluloid forever as these specific statements being representative of their outlook on the world. Interesting. Confusing, I know, but interesting.

Unfortunately, we keep hitting terrible decades. This hair. These sweaters. This is so miserable...really. Also, a terrible point is that these 35 year olds don't look a day over 40. Some around 45. Is it going through the 80s that did it to them, or is it because most of them smoke, or because Brits age worse than we do or...something is going on here. Like, guys, we check back with you once every SEVEN years, and THAT'S what you wear in front of the camera? That's such an odd choice. As Marggy said about one of the guys "I need this mustache to go away."

A lot of the previous children, now adults, complain about a loss of privacy or having regretted doing the program. And one of the wives was upset at how she was portrayed so she opted out of this next one. And that's a shame. I feel weird watching something that they might not enjoy doing. It's really a shame. I do wonder why they still even do it, though. If terrible things happen to them, they'd have to share that with the whole world.

It's kind to sad to see them not get what they wanted to get at 7. Which is silly. Seven year olds don't know what they want. Their opinions aren't their own so they just repeat what they hear and they only know what they want to do by what they see. They're stupid. But I want them to get their dreams. Which is stupid.

28 Up

They got lower thirds! Just like I thought.

28 Up was strange in that I don't see where they can go from here. The questions have started to get a bit repetitive and they now all seem to be fully formed adults. We're going to see them at 3 more stages in their lives and all I can think that will happen at that time is more children and/or divorce, which will be sad to see.

Most of these kids (who are now older than me, so I guess they're not kids anymore) are married in this one. Which at 28 makes sense, but most of them got married at or around the age I am now. Which makes me feel weird. But also, a lot of these, or I'd say most of these 28 year olds look and act like I thought they were going to be in 35 Up. So I can't imagine how old they're going to look for that one. It does make me wonder, though, at what point they stopped contacting their parents are started contacting them. If this was the US, I'd guess they'd have to wait until this edition, 28, before they wre fully adults. But for some reason I feel like in the UK, 21 would be considered adult and they got with them directly then.

One thing that I think is strange about this whole thing is what it does to its subjects. I was wondering how they were going to work around some kids not being able to or wanting to do the interview some year and I guess this was how since two subjects opted out this time around. They just use more b-roll from the past editions to fill time. I didn't like it. It didn't really show any progression of the characters, of where where they were at the time, just where they came from. I hope they show up in the next one.

So interesting, besides his voice during the interviews, which is very apparent throughout the entire doc, Michael Apeted isn't present in this thing. We watch them do activities, but he never participates. He's not on camera. When he's almost on camera, he's in the shadows and you can't make out his figure. Still with that pervasive voice over though.

One thing the focused on was the differences between classes and therefore the different styles of education. This is something that is mostly a glaring issue in the UK, not so much in the States. Some of the private school posh students dropped out, but the guys still put so much worth in their education and would still support even lower classes sending their kids there. Others would disagree. One of the girls riffs that she doesn't even think of her class until the program comse around every 7 years. Which is really interesting. Like a self fulfilling prophecy

Also, I'm completely in love the sole black dude at his 21 and 28 year old state. I'm totally bummed to have to witness him become my mother's age.

Waiting For Superman

The experience of watching something in a theater instead of my small computer screen felt very weird. Being a child of a life-long teacher, I was really interested in what this movie had to say. I knew I was going to cry a little bit, so I was prepared for that. It was good, but I also had some problems with it.

The great stuff. I love putting the focus on education in this nation. How can we call ourselves a superpower and yet in a study done by the Program for International Student Assessment, we're ranked 24th out of 29 (TWENTY-NINE!) countries in math skills? And similarly in English. This obviously a problem that needs attention, and that's what documentaries are for and that's what this one was doing...by making you cry hard.

This sort of reminded me of a sort of Spellbound, but with a school lottery. They took a while to build up to the lottery at the end of the movie. They introduced us to the characters and we got to know the families and their struggles. I thought they balanced the kids families, the statistics, the (really fun) graphics, and Michelle Rhee's struggle really well. They sent us through this first before they tore our hearts out. At the Charter school lotteries each character we'd spent time with was put into a lottery in their respective schools districts and picked, or not picked, to have a better future in a better school system. A school that, the movie implied, would care more about their success.

Some things I had problems with are some of the race related things. Most all the graphics used, not racially ambiguous drawings of people, but white people when clearly, the movie focused on all young children of color until they introduced the girl in San Francisco half way through. And on that note, I didn't really feel like she was necessary at all. I see what they were trying to do by introducing tracking in schools and how that can harm a child's education as well, even in a school that wasn't as bad as some of these inner city schools, but to see the stark contrast between her future public school and the road ahead for some of these other students, was a little jarring. Especially in the end. Which I won't ruin.

And speaking of the end, I really didn't like the fact that there was no follow up, as most documentaries have. I think the theater was surprised that we didn't catch up with a few of these kids a few months later and see if they're doing okay and still on the right path.

And overall, the thing I found most interesting is that in this film, we place the problem with the schools. The schools aren't teaching our kids and they're holding them back and failing all these students. I feel like that may be a little unfair because the problem isn't as easy as that. Blame can't always be placed on just the schools. In a large majority of those schools with all those failing students, standing right behind them are failing parents. As my dad says, the worst thing about this country, the number one thing that's a problem in this nation is piss poor parenting. That can funnel into just about every other aspect of our lives. Including education.

It was very well done though.