The Block of Time Called Class (1:00pm - 2:15pm) and Billy Elliot as Today's In Class Movie With Play by Play Commentary by Yours Truly

I'm still a fan of British cinematography despite my inability to understand what the people are actually saying which really has nothing to do with how good the film looks. I'm going to go ahead and blame my lack of comprehension on my welfare upbringing and bilingual saturation. Oh what the heck, I'm blaming it on Waking Ned Devine too.

In my Race and Minority Relations class, a sweet daughter of God made this comment that made me embarrassed for her and her beliefs: “I’ve met Asians who dye their hair lighter and wear blue contacts and that goes to show their oppression and support for the Aryan race.”

The class I’m sitting in right now is Gender Roles.

Yes, I’ve got quite the volatile semester.

But back to right now.

From the get go, I realized that the TA was incompetent because of her inability to use the media console. I can't be too mad at her because there was a moment when white snow static rumbled on screen. I don't think many people are this lucky to experience white snow static in high definition--it pierces the eyes like sand whipped up by the wind at the beach.

She finally got the movie going.

Premise.

Billy is a 10 – 12 years old kid who is trying to be a boxer but decides he wants to do ballet instead much to the chagrin of what I am assuming will come at the behest of the He-Man Woman Haters Club members of his family. It's like that one horrid show on Fox with that washed out hockey player who teams up with a figure skater to do pairs competitions only there's not so much skating involved and I understand and believe most of everything I see and hear on Fox.

Okay—recap.

So, we're watching this film in my Gender Roles class. The class so far has been a foray into wishful egalitarian thinking. My favorite part is the comments from newly married guys who seem to have taken on new personas of pro-feminist agendas because apparently marriage has provided them with enlightening ventures into the hardships of the female life. As far as I'm concerned, these guys have just started to learn that they too will do laundry, they too will cook, and they too will clean; so I sure don't buy this magical presentation of their new female friendly manhood.

Back to the movie.

The cinematography feels English. And I am totally making this assertion from watching the first 30 minutes of this movie and my obsession with Dear Frankie.

Ah, the awkward silence of being caught in the act of doing ballet by your coal mining father. The biting tension of "I want to do what I want to do" erupting into fatherly putting down of the metaphorical foot.

There...the movie isn't about dancing or coal miners on strike but some conglomeration of the Little Mermaid, Garden State, October Sky, Shaun of the Dead, and maybe a better film interpretation of Spider-Man--it's quite the thematic potpourri.

And I'd be a horrible liar if I didn't admit that the song Safety Dance hasn't been going through my mind the whole time. The question now is do the filmmakers give in to the conventional and throw in the song somewhere? Or do they slyly pass it off during the credits like at the end of Iron Man courtesy of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man? If this were a Rocky movie, I would feel more comfortable with the film being rife with training montage music that swells with fervor as the voices of an invisible choir chime in AND BAM! Eye of the Tiger!

And now the boxing turned ballet kid feels a little better because his friend is a cross dresser...

I have to hand it to the ballet instructor--she's the quintessential Mr. Miyagi of ballet.

Heart.

If this movie is about heart, there's something to say about good acting and the tried and tested Disney formula of absent parenting. In Lilo and Stitch we get the double whammy of the removal of both parents but it's Lilo's character that sells it with solemnity and passion. Here in Billy Elliot, the mom is dead and the lack of nurture is markedly noticeable. At least in Hot Fuzz the death of the mother was catalyst to the formation of a cult society that killed for their version of the greater good.

The English are pretty good with pre-pubescent angst. You haven't been slapped until you've been b-slapped by a red headed possibly middle age chain smoking Irish woman.

Is it human nature that makes us relate to those who live life with chaos all around them? Is this connection foil for our own lives? Are we examining the loss of innocence, comparative to our own? Maybe innocence is the wrong world. Perhaps the idea is that we are asked to make choices in life based on little if any direction. The choices we make don't seem as daunting when the scenes of this life are superimposed on white, with shadows overlapping by distance and perspective, interconnected and layered with purpose, the idea of many making the one.

The one...

Billy's older brother is a singular player.

He runs to escape the Fuzz and exits out of a stranger's house, sipping away at what could only be stereotypically placed as Irish coffee. He emerges and is faced with a No Man's Land separating him and the system, the man, the strike breaking arm of the law, the wall of police against the one.

Well, class is done for the day so I won’t know what finally happens until Thursday.

This concludes your daily broadcast of what I’m doing to pass the time in classes that are very, very, very boring that my death in any of these classes could be easily counted as voluntary slaughter by boredom.