Saturday, February 17, 2024

Teacher's Lounge

     




      Teacher's Lounge is a nice movie. Nobody is raped, kidnapped or murdered. Only the six-grader hits and bruises his female teacher by a laptop. But it shows the degree to what fascism under the guise of "liberalism" and "democracy" proliferated in modern Germany. All human relations and even emotions are transgressions. All work relationships are regulated by administrative procedures or by laws, which do not always agree. 

    School is ruffled because of theft (happy are the Germans--no school shootings or rapes). Social workers -- a fixture of the Northern European movies -- possess undue power, even allowed to frisk six-graders, "voluntarily" [1]. Furthermore, the absurd rules of "democratic" representation presume that the confidential school meetings are attended by class "representatives" who are intermittently serve as the spies for teachers' and students' body. 

    But if the suspect belongs to minority, they are accused of racism even if a social worker is himself mixed-race. This is done by ubiquitous and self-righteous school newspaper, whose high-schooler editors take after British tabloids, with their prurience and demagoguery. And teachers are silent and cowed. 

    A robbed teacher videotapes a real thief -- a straight-laced administrative assistant and a single mother of the class nerd beloved by his teacher but ostracized by the class. But, instead the teacher and the school principal are threatened by a thief with a criminal lawsuit for violation of her privacy and parents of the students support her on social networks and not the besieged teacher. 

    The rest of the movie is a love-hate duet by the teacher and her student. 

[1] Juvenile justice system in the Nordic countries and Holland is obviously staffed by the types, which could be suitable for the Gestapo in olden times. In Germany, the situation, according to the movies, is slightly more benign.