Well, here’s a new one…
Today, during a screening of Psycho‘s infamous shower scene, I stopped the film to give the students a bit of trivia: “This is the first toilet shown onscreen,” I informed the class of 120 as Hitchcock’s camera focused momentarily on the john at the Bates Motel.
And then, shortly after this comment, I asked, “Does anyone recall, from our first lecture in particular, why it would take Hollywood until 1960 to reveal a toilet onscreen? After all, cinema has been around since 1895.”
I kid you not, from the back of the completely darkened classroom, a student yelled out in the voice of a pirate, “Arrrr, the Production Code, matey!”
WTF?
While the answer is correct — i.e., the Production Code, a form of censorship in early Hollywood, did not promote hygienic issues — why are my students talking like freakin’ pirates?! I later found out from said student buccaneer that evidently today, September 19, is Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day. Yeah, it’s for real: http://www.talklikeapirate.com. And I also learned (as did the poor student) that I’m not a huge fan of swashbucklers in my classroom. Well, unless they look like Cap’n Jack Sparrow…
NOTE: I originally wrote this on September, 19, 2008, about a month after I accepted a teaching position in Toledo, OH. As of this week, my three-year tenure at the University of Toledo is up (no worries; it was a visiting position), so I thought I’d take a look back at a few of my experiences here.
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Professor of film and Shakespeare. Advocate of social media. Lover of popular culture,