Love on Campus

Why we should understand, and even encourage,
a certain sort of erotic intensity between
student and professor

By William Deresiewicz

A professor is walking across campus one afternoon when he spots a student coming the other way. “Excuse me, young man,” the professor says, “am I walking north or south?” “You’re walking north, professor,” the student replies. “In that case,” the professor says, “I must have eaten lunch already.”

This is not a joke anyone would think to make up these days. The absentminded professor, that kindly old figure, is long gone. A new image has taken his place, one that bespeaks not only our culture’s hostility to the mind, but also its desperate confusion about the nature of love

Look at recent movies about academics, and a remarkably consistent pattern emerges. In The Squid and the Whale (2005), Jeff Daniels plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In One True Thing (1998), William Hurt plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In Wonder Boys (2000), Michael Douglas plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, has just been left by his third wife, and can’t commit to the child he’s conceived in an adulterous affair with his chancellor. Daniels’s character is vain, selfish, resentful, and immature. Hurt’s is vain, selfish, pompous, and self-pitying. Douglas’s is vain, selfish, resentful, and self-pitying. Hurt’s character drinks. Douglas’s drinks, smokes pot, and takes pills. All three men measure themselves against successful writers (two of them, in Douglas’s case; his own wife, in Daniels’s) whose presence diminishes them further. In We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004), Mark Ruffalo and Peter Krause divide the central role: both are English professors, and both neglect and cheat on their wives, but Krause plays the arrogant, priapic writer who seduces his students, Ruffalo the passive, self-pitying failure. A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004) divides the stereotype a different way, with John Travolta as the washed-up, alcoholic English professor, Gabriel Macht as the blocked, alcoholic writer.

Not that these figures always teach English. Kevin Spacey plays a philosophy professor — broken, bitter, dissolute — in The Life of David Gale (2003). Steve Carell plays a self-loathing, suicidal Proust scholar in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Both characters fall for graduate students, with disastrous results. And while the stereotype has gained a new prominence of late, its roots go back at least a few decades. Many of its elements are in place in Oleanna (1994), in Surviving Desire (1991), and, with John Mahoney’s burnt-out communications professor, in Moonstruck (1987). In fact, all of its elements are in place in Terms of Endearment (1983), where Jeff Daniels took his first turn playing a feckless, philandering English professor. And of course, almost two decades before that, there was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

What’s going on here? If the image of the absent-minded professor stood for benevolent unworldliness, what is the meaning of the new academic stereotype? Why are so many of these failed professors also failed writers? Why is professional futility so often connected with sexual impropriety? (In both Terms of Endearment and We Don’t Live Here Anymore, “going to the library” becomes a euphemism for “going to sleep with a student.”) Why are these professors all men, and why are all the ones who are married such miserable husbands?

The answers can be found in the way these movies typically unfold. Consider One True Thing, in which these questions are most fully and intelligently played out. As the movie opens, Hurt’s George Gulden comes across as a monumental figure. Seen through the eyes of his daughter, Ellen, from whose perspective the story unfolds, George embodies the highest intellectual and ethical standards: brilliant, passionate, demanding, a gifted critic and beloved teacher, a dispenser of anecdotes and aphorisms that suggest a near converse with the gods. Ellen, an ambitious young journalist, has worshiped him since she was a little girl — emulating him, yearning for his hard-won approval, and disdaining her less-educated mother, Kate, as trivial and weak. Kate belongs to a group of local wives who devote themselves to performing acts that seem utterly inconsequential and who, as if to advertise their own insignificance, call themselves the “Minnies.” But when George summons Ellen home to care for her dying mother — or, as it turns out, to care for him in his wife’s stead — his daughter gradually comes to see her parents for what they really are. George is a novelist manqué who recycles his stories, plagiarizes his witticisms, and drinks away his sorrows in secret (he no longer even has the starch to chase graduate students). His wife is really the strong one. While George and his kind dream their petty dreams of glory, the Minnies hold the community together. One day, Kate forces Ellen on an excruciating drive during which Kate and another woman sing silly songs at the top of their lungs. Afterward, Kate explains to Ellen that the woman has been living as a virtual shut-in since her husband left her, so the Minnies have been taking turns getting her out of the house. Ellen learns that just as the Minnies have held the community together, her mother has held the family together — held it together, it turns out, until her death. The “one true thing,” Ellen realizes, is not intellect or ambition, as she’d been taught to believe, but love.

The lesson is typical in these films and points to the meaning of the new academic stereotype. The alcoholic, embittered, writer-manqué English professor who neglects his family and seduces his students is a figure of creative sterility, and he is creatively sterile because he loves only himself. Hence his vanity, pomposity, and selfishness; his self-pity, passivity, and resentment. Hence his ambition and failure. And thence his lechery, for sleeping with his students is a sign not of virility but of impotence: he can only hit the easy targets; he feeds on his students’ vitality; he can’t succeed in growing up. Other symbolic emasculations abound. John Travolta stumbles around in a bathrobe. Michael Douglas stumbles around in a pink one. Steve Carell’s character is gay. But most importantly, nearly all of them are set against a much woman, usually a wife, whose power lies precisely in her ability to love: to sacrifice, to empathize, to connect. By the end of the movie, in the typical case, the academic, too, has learned to love and, having been humbled as thoroughly as Rochester in Jane Eyre, is equally ready for redemptive female ministration.

more at: http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su07/love-deresiewicz.html

Thank God real life is different than Hollywood dribble. Frankly, I wouldnt have spent the time thinking about it. Its from the plasticene world.

BTW, I teach P/T at the local college. Love my wife. Never had/never will have an affair. Served proudly in the military and can still bench 500lbs+ freeweights. Into eastern mysticism as well. Suppose my students think I'm pretty hip for a finance professor.

But too boring for their imaginary Hollywood image I suppose.

Screw the plasticene world's image of the professor. Unfortunately the lemmings will see it, and beleive it to be real.

Is it clear yet that I cannot wait for "the Big One", so Hollywood and all its social malaise can float off into the Pacific. Please Lord, do us a favor!

You can bench 500?!?!?????? OMFG! The most I've seen is 435 by my friend Gabe, and he's a college linebacker!

__________________
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

Your a Marine aren't you?

__________________
"It's normal for these things to empty your wallet and break your heart in the process."
2012 SLK 350
1987 420 SEL

No ma'am, but I am a Aries like you ! I served with some very high speed troops. Some of whom are members here. I was a candystriper, or nasty leg, if you will. Summer camp duty as compared to most. US Army 1985-1989.

Kuan, I've been doing it for a while, I aint a youngin'. 480 was my peak. I exaggerated ( or quoted a historical fact). I was beginning to look too "puffy". You know those big chested, big armed guys at Gold's. Anyway, body mass aint what we 46 yr old. looking to run ALOT longer are looking for. But yeah, I still stack the Nautilus machine 15-20X once in a while so as to keep my titties from flabbin'. Prolly cant do 375+ now. I'm measuring personal performance in body fat % right now!

POINT: 1/3 body , 2/3 mind.. With some Tai-chi sensibility and imagery, your freind can add 100 lbs to that, or some # at any rate.

anyway..

My point was that not all college professors are the malcontent, sniveling, distressed/ wimpyass types that Hollywood portrays. Although, I must admit, I do feel a bit "odd" amongst the faculty, they are generally much different than me since I'm only a P/T lecturer from the biz world.

Lastly, tell you what, I'll take a pre-menopausal 40 yr old chic ( epsecially if you happen to catch them during ovulation - HOLY **** HANG ON ! ) over a 20 year old co ed anyday. they're more engaging mentally ( typically anyway), and I suspect ( although I'm only allowed one girlfriend), they sure as hell know how to " go through the gears" more than any of the young gals in my classes, ( you young bucks TAKE NOTE!!!! ). They must not lay 40 yr old chics in Hollywoods. Dem boys dont know what they're missing!

Yup. Real mean teach college too. Screw Hollywood. They try and make their own reality. It's Still celluloid.

btnst, those folks you speak of, they gotta get jobs man. WAY too much idle time on their hands.... non productive malcontents... seems to me some of my genetic ancestors started wacking off thousdands of folks they thought were that. Thank the Maker them there are fictitious.

Ok stock market's slow in here.......but gotago

Peace. Out.

Oh yeah, edit, I DO feel like a professor driving to lecture in my old diesel clankity MBZ. FOr sure. hell , I used to wear tweed and bowties in college, I might just go ALL THE WAY!

THE PURITY OF THE EDUCATIONAL RELATIONSHIP WHEN EGO IS ALLOWED TO ENTER THE PICTURE, ie., sex, wants, desires, etc. IS SEVERLY COMPROMISED.

If I was a school prez, I;d let the staff know I'd be a NAZI about it. Eff up, zing, you're gone.

Dont give a rats ass what image Hollywood wants y'all to believe.

Reminds me of a satiric line from a recent novel dealing with the "attraction" of a 40 something Prof,for a nubile student.

The annals of literature are full of this,simply put,men are horny beasts and if in a position of power and authority this "energy"becomes dominantly unendurable and such"extracurricular activities"become easier and more justifiable with each instance,sheesh........

"He gently bent her over the desk and Mentored her until dawn broke in upon their studious communion."

Call a spade a spade,why don'cha?

__________________

I had to post this- a portrait I did of my friend Dorsey- Arm Wrestling Champion 1996 and 1997.

Attached Thumbnails

 

__________________
"It's normal for these things to empty your wallet and break your heart in the process."
2012 SLK 350
1987 420 SEL

Nice biceps!

I ran into a kid from sakachewan ( sp?) once, a great guy, who said he was into arm wrestling. So here we are, slightly drunk, and no one will take him on ( cuase they knew he was a champ in NW Canada) and I fell for it.

Its like I was barely there. I had to do it again ( stupid male ego), and he whooped me twice. ANd I dont mean it was any kind of contest, less than 7 secondoinds the first time, adn I got SOME mechanical advantage the second so he "humored" me and let me last 10. Dayng!

To wit, Dorsey could fry my arse but good.

Hey, I'm a professor man, gimmme a break.

Carleton, spot on, concur wholehartedly. Its become assumed. The first thing my woman thought of when I got invited to teach - " What , you and 20 yr old girls-- no way!", in a slightly jesting voice. Funny thing about chics, at least this one, they always think you'll step out on them. Even if you're wired like a loyal dog.

For the record, I had a student claim she needed to see me for extra help. Man, I can smell a lie before it crosses your lips ( btw, I was trained as an interrogator ). Extra help, she got, but not one on one. And I could sense its not what she wished. So it goes both ways, seems like it might come from the student more from the prof these days, at least girls might tend to open the door a bit. She didnt reckon I keep my ego ( and package) under tight lock and key.

Now if it had been one of the sistas, or the Yemeni gal ( who were aceing the course), I might have had to ask for special dispensation from my lady.... I simply dig their skin tone.... its not ego there, its asthetics! But my lady knows to keep me away from pretty sistas. All that funk bass playing has done wore off on me - bad.

Nubile = inexpereinced aint all its cracked up to me. Must be a pure power/ego thing.

Peace Out.

I taught in a juco for a couple of years -- Human Anatomy & Physiology, one of the make-or-break courses for nursing and allied health. As a general rule, the students were highly motivated and hard-working. But I had a couple of young women who looked to boost their average on their backs and I could sense it wasn't their first rodeo. I NEVER had a one-on-one except in my office and I made sure the door stayed open. Not quite true: I held set hours for assistance with the lab portion of anatomy. It would take a looney to get frisky in an anatomy lab.

My opinion of teachers is in conformity with WINGAS. Including an expectation that teachers are mindful that they are in a far greater position of authority than a cop or a judge, IMO. Judges and cops are adversarial for the most part. Teachers are trusted guides. People do not go to a cop or a judge in order to voluntarily seek a fundamental change in themselves.

The more open a student is to intellectual change, the more vulnerable the student will be to unscrupulous manipulation by teachers.

I'm dwelling on that beautiful piece of ratiocintion. Not its validity, but its extent.

They are like little sponges, much akin to my own two young boys.

I played some psyops on them and had a lecture entitled " corporate survival 101 ". It dealt with washing away what people expect of you byt eh way you look, etc, and finding the real you. And then defending that real you against all enemies, sometimes who are your friends and family who cant see the real you yet, but the "societal variant" or the "expectation" of you.

Used some lyrics from Jimi Hendrix, and particualrly a song called " No One can Be You But You", by Slave, circa 1976.

A lecture given by a 40-some odd year old , crew cut , jock looking type. How to counter the water cooler assasins of the world by holding true to YOUR vision of you, and not what the world expects. Expect that from a long haired pot smokin' hippie , now dont ya. Or a philosphy prof.

a few of them got it. One, who is a evening student working for a mechanical contractor appraoched me mid way through the semester adn told me how what I had tuaght him so far blew away anything any prof had done heretofore.

"Huh, so you never learned capital budgeting?"

" No, no one ever explained corporate survival 101 to me."

Apparrently the young guy in the shop stood up to the architectual firm on a design issue, argued and won his case. Much to the disbelief of his senior comrades.

And I hope my little "angel" found that she could perfrom at a high level with her clothes on and her feet on the ground. Something that may do her well to hold onto.

Had to share my one big success. Oh yeah, and I taught kids whom I told were 'math challenged' by the faculty( this is a state school and doest attract the highest caliber of student), some pretty far out algebra, graduate level. And I warned them to " forget about what anyone told you about having difficulty with math, my mission is to get you to calculate like you were born to. You must check your ego ( bad ego in this case) at the door of the classroom, and forget about who you've been told you are."

And they ALL passed the final. ( and why 240 lbs weaklings can bench double their weight - all about the mind )

BTW, botnst, my "spatial" solution to the young chicky poo with unvoiced intentions was to hold my office hours in teh lecture hall. Frankly, the office they assigned me was a ****hole. Two birds with one stone.

Yeah, I dig my part time gig and take the mission seriously with botnst's axiom firmly in my mind. And I honestly do beleive that having a US Army Special Forces trained finance professor is an excellent thing! ( I've never, or will I ever, share that fact with the students - only with anonymity here. The faculty have never asked me about my military service, typical liberals and likely wouldnt dig it much )

Have a wonderful day y'all!

Be ALL YOU can be!

which beats the pants off the current " Army of One" , what effing dribble....

btw, if I was doing content analysis for the NSA, I'd call this one the " tittie thread" , subtle and not so subtle refernces all around... Mistress brings out the best in us!? I do dig the cadence of the wiggle.

Boy, o boy! Somebody just talked himself, well lubricated, out of a 500lbs+ power lift. What a shame...

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Caught me. The big lift was in my glory days. Can only put up less now.

Com'on , I'm a FINANCE professor by God!