Teaching Postmodernism in the – um – age of Postmodernism or how Cool Hand Luke has affected my ideas on authority.

When I think back on it I think that my first role model was Cool Hand Luke. A fantastic anti-authoritarian character brought to life by the impish grinning Paul Newman. I clearly remember seeing this film on TV some time in the fourth grade. I suspect I have a class journal somewhere where I rave about the film, although this may be a constructed memory. In any case, as a role model he embodied the idea of flouting any and all authority. He attacks capitalism by cutting the heads off of parking meters; family in the heartbreaking scene in the back of a pick-up truck; arbitrary authority as deliciously portrayed in Strother Martin’s “what we have here is a failure to comun'cate” by not being broken by the system; and finally the big man upstairs when Luke shouts “Let me know you're up there. Come on. Love me, hate me, kill me, anything. Just let me know it.” Faced with silence he concludes “I'm just standin' in the rain talkin' to myself.” Clearly Luke dwelled in a post-Nietzsche world. He is a hero who chooses not to be one.  I like to interpret the moment near the end of the film with Luke standing before a window a choice to be taken out by the sniper’s bullet rather than acquiesce to authority and imprisonment. But Luke understood that this was a solitary, individual choice and not one to be slavishly imitated when he shouts at the other prisoners after another failed escape attempt to “Get out there yourself. Stop feedin' off me.” But they didn’t get it and spend the final moments of the film mythologizing the now Christ-like Luke. So – in a way – not only is he my first role model, but my first anti-role model as well. The anti-hero hero. How postmodern.

I have been thinking about his flouting of authority mainly because I am gearing up to teach a class on postmodernism in which I know I need to find a way to flout my own authority. I, like many teachers of my generation, came of age when theory abounded and the “academy” seemed to be on the verge of change. We were among the first to learn from and teach such things as graphic novels, video games, pop music, TV, and B movies – exalting the lessons and complexities of these genres the way preceding generations talked about Shakespeare and Eliot and Joyce. So, in some way I guess I saw embracing pop culture as rebellious, as anti-authority, as representing some kind of change. But then many of us got absorbed into the academy. We became teachers and (gasp) administrators, scholars, authors, and “authorities.” Our exaltation of pop culture as dreary and depressing as the previous generation’s lauding of the “classics.”

So here I am, an “authority” who despises authority, especially my own, getting ready to teach a class on a subject that fostered a supreme distrust of authority, especially in me. I have to admit that part of me is fascinated by this conundrum, until I realize that thinking this way and acting this way is the difference between looking at an Escher drawing and then trying to walk in it. So, in structuring this class I find I will be tinkering with when and where my authority is asserted and when it is deliberately marginalized. Of course deliberately marginalizing my own authority is ultimately an authoritative act. So – I need accomplices in this gesture – which is where the students come in. Part of the deal on the first day is to see if they want to play this game, after all, it is far easier just to sit in the back of a classroom and regurgitate what is said by the teacher than taking on a bit of that role yourself.

The hard part is trying to create a level playing field in which I am not the only one in charge. This is not a new thing, since I have developed a number of strategies over the years to do this. My favorite, employed last spring for a class on the aesthetics of dissonance, is simply to fade way. As the class progresses I do what I can to remove myself from the proceedings, to the point where I basically set a class in motion and leave the room allowing whatever to happen to happen. Some students step forward, asserting their own authority, but as a student among students they truly are on even ground. Students that use these moments for an open exchange of ideas are probably the right students for this type of method. Students that see the removal of authority as a means of escape probably don’t get much out of this structure. My hope is to make this clear on day one. I find that while this type of gesture works when the subject is the avant-garde - akin to the Situationionist’s idea of lighting the cultural fuse but refusing to deal with the detonation - it seems like a cop-out when approaching the postmodern ideas that developed in the wake of the avant-garde. In many ways this class is in response to the previous class – which really only I and perhaps one or two students will see.

So – I suspect I will hang around for all of this class, but work to create a space where I am not “in charge” or seen as the “judge,” or the “authority.” Hard to do within a system that demands feedback and grades. The trick is to get the students to stop looking at the grades as some sort of validation or punishment. The deal with this class is the same deal with all classes – show up, do the work to the best of your ability, engage in class discussions, execute the projects on time, and you will do fine. Probably easier said than done. My intent is to track the development of this course and these ideas here.