Why, it's almost as if the conservatives, deprived of their canon baw-baw, have decided that liberal arts are of relative value in a money-oriented world. And maybe Pol Pot was on to something.
And Chris Hedges, in "Taking Back Our Universities From Corporate Apparatchiks," has us on edges in his very recent account of edu-corporatist greed and plunder to bring the vibe down further:
Most adjunct professors and graduate workers hang on because of their students, enduring economic instability and job insecurity for those sacred moments in the classroom.
Of course, some adjuncts in history should have let go a long time ago to what they were holding on to so devotedly: tu.be/k9DO26O6dIg
There's a new black comedy streaming series on AMC that tackles the roiling problems alluded to above that Americans have been forced to face since Reagan's trickle-down 80s, and the rise of Me Generation. Lucky Hank stars Bob Odenkirk, as an English professor and the head of the department, who transfers his Saul schtick and passive sardonic humor from shaky lawyer to reluctant writing teacher. There have been only four episodes so far, but it's clearly a winner, and a worthy successor to Better Call Saul, for Odenkirk. The IMDB storyline tells us:
An English department chairman at an underfunded college, Professor Hank Devereaux tows the line between midlife crisis and full-blown meltdown, navigating the offbeat chaos in his personal and professional life.
Lucky Hank is based on the Richard Russo novel, Straight Man. Composure amidst a farce storm of everything going to sh*t all around him. Lucky Hank is funny but, at the same time, when you think about it".
The series stars, besides Odenkirk (as Hank Deveraux), Mireille Enos (Lily Devereaux, Hank's wife), Olivia Scott Welch (Julie Devereaux, the daughter), Cedric Yarbrough (professor Paul Rourke, perhaps Hank's closest ally in the department), Dietrich Bader (professor Tony Conigula, another close ally), Sara Amini (Meg Quigley), and Kyle MacLachlan, as dean Dickie Pope, in what amounts to a cameo appearance. Many of the actors are from British Columbia, where the series was shot. Richard Russo wrote four episodes of the series. And Peter Farrelly is involved in a couple of episodes as a writer and executive producer. The contemporary series is set at Railton College in the Pennsylvania Rust Belt.
I have only watched the first four episodes, and that's all that's reviewed here. But there's plenty to observe and give a thought to, without doing any spoiling. The main thing is it's definitely worth watching. In the Pilot, we're introduced to the main groups of characters -- the faculty of the English Department; the classroom of aspiring writers that Hank teaches; and, Hank's home life, his wife, Lily, and, eventually, Julie. The TV script tells us, "Hank rants against Railton College, calling it 'Mediocrity's Capitol,' and the administration is pressured to fire him. Hank and Lily contemplate a future outside of Railton."
Hank's comment rattles his 'ideal' postmod multicultural department staff that includes an African-American, an Indian immigrant, a Chinese immigrant, a Zimbabwean-Canadian, an Iranian-Colombian-American, and a person with disability. Although his soft-spoken grumpiness is easy enough to get along, they don't like how Hank is down the world so often. It's clearly because he jumped to teaching after he was unable to follow up a well-received first novel, now well and truly lost in the abysmal spaces of the rear view mirror, and fell into a funk of mediocrity himself. Now they all have to pay for his lifelong writer's block.
Hank hates Railton, the town and the college. It's an old factory town, with the university now the highlight of the place, and the highlight is a bore, full, to him, of extras from an opera about geniuses. His staff regularly squabble over the trite and trivial, as it seems to him, and as the chair of the department he has to deal with it, and doesn't feel like it. When openly disrespects a student in his own writing class, a move is on to replace him as chair. He thinks the quality of work in his writing class is insipid and derivative. After insulting a student's story about characters who seemingly communicate by "telepathy," and gets resistance to Hank's indifference to the student's work, Hank just airs it out:
You are here, and even if your presence at this middling college, in this sad, forgotten town was some bizarre anomaly, and if you do have the promise of genius, which I'll bet a kidney that you don't, it will never surface. I am not a good enough writer, or writing teacher, to bring it out of you. And how do I know that? How? Because I, too, am here, at Railton College, mediocrity's capital.
An uninspired room of students is radically deflated now. This statement will become the filter through which Hank views the events that follow at the school and in the town. And in his marriage. After this incident Hank is replaced as chair -- briefly, as the department votes for a new one and Hank is the only one to receive more than one vote. So, he's chair again.
In Episode 2, Hank reluctantly gives in to the dean's desire to have the renowned author George Saunders come to the campus, for a fee, for a live, onstage conversation with Hank on stage in front of the student body. Hank wants to know how much he is being paid. He says to the dean, "With the impending budget cuts, it's distasteful to be paying this guy 10 grand for a one-hour talk." Hank hissy-fits when the dean tells him the fee paid is $50,000. George and Hank go way back as 'literati,' with George garnering enormous success (Booker, National Book Award, Time cover, MacArthur award), while Hank is stuck in the mediocrity capitol of the world. When they meet, George is loose and engaging, while Hank is tight and defensive. Nothing brings out their life and career development more than when Hank allows George to guest teach his writing class. George is generous, active in his listening, discerning of each writer's intent, genuine in his response -- the students come to life like desert flora depicted in time-elapsed splendor after a rare summer storm.
Hank wonders: "What is it about writing that attracts so many dickheads? I mean, somehow, the need to tell everyone about your rich inner life it's irresistible, but why would anyone care about somebody else's rich inner life? Have a rich outer life for the rest of us to enjoy." And Hank has proven, thus far, to be a quintessential d*ckhead.
In Episode 3, Hank discovers on his way to work that a huge storage container has been dropped off at his place and is blocking the garage, preventing him from backing out. It's his estranged Dad's stuff and it's a comic reminder of the baggage his returning Dad carries around and is now set to get in Hank's way -- again. Hank keeps smashing against the container with his Volvo, symbol of status and security, to get past, but the past won't budge. Plus, it's that time of year when impending cuts for the university budget are announced and Hank is tasked with "making a list." and the professors spiral when rumors of budget cuts threaten their tenured jobs. The contentious department is in an uproar, as the Humanities are a favorite area of the curriculum to cut. A voice-over tells us what Hank's thinking:
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