Yes, he described Palestinians as “the bugs” and said some other really fucking ignorant quotes from that movie without the slightest understanding of Paul Verhoeven’s intent (his effort may have been doomed from the start; he even scolded actors on set for “not getting it” and just enjoying the fascism).
I have some license with what I say because I’m moving and transferring out of state in a few weeks but I also don’t want to have a bad mark on my record by saying something particularly scary about the IDF, so what should I tell him on Monday?
Ya know, the nazis thought the same exact thing of themselves.
They sure did.
How do I even argue with him? I know I didn’t reach him yesterday.
Honestly though, just tell him that he isn’t engaging with art in anywhere near an intelligent way. That it’s very surface level. If he’s like most libs that will offend him and he might need to reconsider how he interpreted it.
He’s the chemistry teacher so he gleefully shits on the humanities.
oh then why’s he even pretending to understand a movie, ask him if you can fuck around in his lab despite not being a chemist
He believes that he can do a non-STEM job just as well as a non-STEM person because only STEM degrees matter and everything else is, quoting him, “children’s puppet theater.”
Good fucking luck putting on a children’s puppet show without knowing anything about children’s puppet theater, by the way.
Maybe if “Starship Troopers” was presented in ‘children’s puppet theater’ format the themes would be more apparent.
Nuance allows incuriously smug people that think they know everything to decide what something means and be smug about it.
No wonder such people hate things that are “for babies” because the message might be too clear for them to make up for themselves.
sometimes I wonder what it’d be like to be a completely incurious dipshit, it always sounds so stress-free
It’d be blissfully ignorant treat consumption, all while believing one is The Main Character and by extension the Chosen One, just like in the treats.
That’s why I love having a stem doctorate. I get to make those people feel like the shit idiots they are.
He’s right in the exact wrong way lol. Without any understanding of the humanities, it is a puppet show- and he’s the puppet.
Excellent. I may well say just that next time I see him, but then again, the “ENTERTAINMENT HAS NO EFFECT ON ME” crowd is pretty ironclad in their belief.
He sounds like the kind of guy who shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near kids, or puppets for that matter
I don’t think he likes kids at all, at least in any way that can be considered appropriate for school. All of his “funny anecdotes” are Mr. Herkabe-from-Malcolm-In-The-Middle style contempt for kids while feeling smugly smarter than them.
Did… did you teacher have a part in Starship Troopers? Is he this guy?
EDIT:
An obvious counter that should shut this dude down: “Why are we talking about this? It’s just a movie, not real life. Why are you reading so much into it?”
Meet his incuriosity with your own. He sounds like he’s seeking validation for his intelligence and denying that will drive him up a wall.
I think I may do just that as part of my response in the break room tomorrow. He does seem to base a lot of his worldviews on fiction (and not just that movie) while also deriding fiction as “children’s puppet theater.”
And this is why multi-disciplinary education is so important.
Some of my least pleasant classroom experiences in college were STEMbros (especially the TE part) that dragged their feet through the one or two non-STEM courses they had to take from time to time and had to constantly signal how displeased they were with being there.
I fully believe university education should be mandatory for most people, with more cross-field education required.
I know so many STEMbros who couldn’t understand the themes of a film or book if you smacked them in the head with it, and I also know so many humanities majors that fundamentally don’t understand the physical world around them to a point I don’t understand how they can walk down the street without dying.
There is no remedy then.
Irredeemable
Really don’t know