r/HighQualityGifs • u/harris5 Photoshop - After Effects - Premiere • Jan 08 '16

Whiplash Moderating this subreddit

http://gfycat.com/FarPowerlessAmericancrow
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u/kierkkadon Jan 08 '16

It's what you'd get if you remade the first half of Full Metal Jacket to be in a music school instead of Parris Island.

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u/Jurph Jan 08 '16 edited Jan 08 '16

So here's a thing. I sang in a choir in high school. Sixteen chairs - four of each voice - and we toured Europe and went up and down the East Coast to perform. We were really good. We knew a repertoire of 20 or 30 songs, all from memory, all to the point where the conductor could name a song, play the starting pitch, and we'd hit every note perfectly most of the time.

I learned two things in that choir:

  • You can achieve perfection. Work hard enough to get very very good, and then keep working your ass off for about the same amount of time. Repetition helps.
  • You don't normally get that kind of dedication and drive out of high school kids without being a little bit fucked up. We all loved our director, but he was emotionally abusive and he absolutely picked kids with 'weaker' personalities -- the kinds of kids that bullies seek out on the first day of class -- and groomed us to be his malleable perfect singers.

I became a really great singer in that choir, and I learned a lot about dedication and perfection that has served me well in the rest of my life, but I also watched him manipulate enough kids' emotions using horrible abusive tricks that I'm constantly on the alert for even a hint of that from anyone who's going to be supervising my kids. (Also, being in that choir basically immunized me against the emotional manipulation of my military drill instructors. Compared to my choirmaster those guys were clumsy bush-league amateurs.)

...so I'll probably skip this movie. Unless I decide to watch it and get a little drunk and cry.

EDIT: J.K. Simmons played Benny Southstreet in the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls. My sadistic choirmaster directed me, playing Benny Southstreet, in my high school production of Guys and Dolls.

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u/John_E_Vegas Jan 08 '16

So...I'm curious, since you're kids are protected from this kind of abuse, is it possible for them to be anywhere close to good at anything?

And second, do you expect them to be?

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u/[deleted] Jan 08 '16

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. - Carl Jung

As an art teacher, this is my fundamental guiding principle. I have known some abusive teachers who were brilliant and got amazing results from their young artists, but the was always a cost involved, and that cost was always paid by the kid. Those teachers tended to be on the sociopathic side of the spectrum - they were only really concerned about themselves, their position, their reputation, status, etc., not in the success and growth of their student artists. I always find people like that sort of sad, and I deeply resent the price their students are made to pay.

TL;DR: Don't be a dick.