Recently our family went to the movies. It was my wife’s idea that we and our teenage daughters see Emperors Club. A radio station had been touting the film and suggesting to listeners that families should support family movies.
Clearly Lacking Faith Connection
My wife and I were keen on seeing this movie because the setting is in a school classroom where the subject is The Classics — Ancient Rome and Greece, and our daughter will be attending a college with a GREAT BOOKS program this Fall.
After the movie ended we walked into the lobby together and overheard two couples in their 30’s. One of the women said “Well, gee, there wasn't too much action was there?” He replied, “no unless you consider a spelling bee action.
In an industry that aims movies at teenagers and disguises them as video games, many reviews made it clear that this is not an action film. That’s because Emperor's Club is about a dedicated teacher and his students — one in particular named Sedgewick Bell — and their trials with right and wrong. Many of the scenes are centered on learning and the classroom and the effects of making good and bad decisions. It’s a good movie for the family to see together and talk about.
During our conversations, I wondered how the action of this movie fit within one of the precepts of Catholic School Education: that the family is the primary educator of the child.
The National Council of Catholic Bishops on their website describe the film as an “ethics-centered drama [that] sensitively explores the crucial importance of personal and professional integrity and its lifelong consequences.”
Nearly all the reviews I read online lumped Emperor's Club in a genre of movies about high school and college. The list includes Dead Poet’s Society, Finding Forrester, Good Will Hunting, Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Paper Chase, October Sky, Blackboard Jungle, To Sir With Love, Mr. Holland’s Opus, and Stand and Deliver. Except for gratuitous scenes or language, they send a message about inspirational teachers lighting fires in the youngsters under their wing.
Yet the focus of those films is on a student hangup or academic subject like rebellion, puberty, poetry, writing, calculus, contracts, rocketry, or music. The specific issue of love of learning or character development is not directly addressed. But that’s typical of our lives, isn't it?
In Emperor's Club, Mr. Hundert, played by actor Kevin Kline, teaches The Classics at a school called St. Benedicts. The subject matter, more than the tony setting of an exclusive boys prep school, removes this school from any we are likely to encounter where we live. That’s because The Classics just aren't taught in schools these days. And in most cases, the larger issues are not discussed either.
Although the school is named St. Benedict’s in reverence for one of the venerated, this is not a religious school. And it was the absence of a recognizable theology that most troubled my wife and left her feeling empty when the movie ended. She wanted the movie to be a Christian story and argues that without faith in God, none of the lessons experienced by the characters have relevance. I argue that this is not a movie that needs to be a Christian story in order to be entertaining.
The confrontation scenes between teacher and student contain some of the best acting in the movie. In one of them, young student Bell is asked to read a portion of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. He monotones the passage and then responds to the teacher's admonishment with a sassy retort. When Bell is asked to complete a list of 41 Roman Emperors, he responds that the material has no value for him and that he knows only seven of the emperors, and begins to name the recognizable dwarfs from the fairy tale and Disney movie. The class laughs — the audience laughs.
Certain Need for Parental Ethic
In Kevin Kline's actor's eyes we see the teacher's frustration and dumb-foundedness — that anyone could challenge the premises upon which Hundert has functioned his entire life. The eyes say “how can you say such things?” and the youngster’s smirk communicates right back some four letter expletive. You want someone to smack the kid. Even Roger Ebert in his Chicago Sun Times review calls young Bell a smart aleck.
But instead of getting a smack, young Bell becomes the leader of his peer group and is universally admired. Yet he still rises to the challenge from the teacher to not let his stubbornness become stupidity. It’s a fine example of what an adult sometimes does to a child in lieu of corporal punishment, cutting them down to size with piercingly honest words. And it works with Hundert and Bell — for a while.
At a point in the movie when the teacher is particularly frustrated with young Bell he makes a visit to the boy’s father, an influential U.S. Senator to whom he offers the opinion that his role at the school is to ‘mold’ the boy.
The Senator-father rebuffs the teacher with the words “you can teach him his times tables…who killed who, when and where… but I will mold him.” And as we get glimpses of the Senator and see what the boy has become and will continue to be, it is clear that he has been molded by his father.
I think that one reason for Hundert's failure with young Bell is that the teacher is freelancing his instruction without assistance from mom and dad… and God. And in this sense I agree with my wife. Can such an effort ever succeed in igniting the love of learning we advance in Catholic Schools without the parents’ help and without Faith? I think not. Young Bell didn't fall far from the tree of Senator Bell. It's the Senator who can use some lessons… and a psalm… and The Gospel… every Sunday… at church with the family.
To my wife's complaint about the theological void I have suggested that the world of our teacher is the world of The Classics — Ancient Latin and Greek Culture and its important effect on Western Civilization. I am ready to assume that the other boys will be getting their theology, rhetoric and mathematics from one of the others on the school staff and at home. But I agree with her in many respects.
As for The Classics, Hillsdale College in Michigan has supporting comments to make on their website. Once taught on every campus in the land, The Classics have been put aside as parents and students turn toward technological advancement and relevance to the job market, forgoing the lessons of the past and what they warn us to avoid.
Illumination of Truth
It’s a coincidence of sorts that at the same time Emperor's Club was opening in theaters around town, a news story was circulating about Jack Grubman, a well known stock analyst who had exchanged misleading comments to investors on stocks for favors from the companies’ executives which included references that would get his young children accepted to elite pre schools in New York City — a Faustian bargain if there ever was one. Banned for life from his former industry, will Grubman ‘mold’ his young twins differently now that he has suffered the consequences of his sin? Maybe, but only after he re-molds himself.
In a December 27, 2002 article, Philosophy Professor Thomas Hibbs of Boston College adds to his list of fine articles in National Review Online with a reflection of what were the best movie efforts of the year.
On the greater issues addressed in certain recent films Hibbs reminds us that “instead of providing a crude and simplistic vision … of good and evil as clear-cut, easily divisible realities, [movies such as] Spiderman, Clones, Harry Potter, and Lord Of The Rings depict evil as parasitic on the good, as arising from a twisted pursuit of goodness. For example, numerous characters in Lord Of The Rings must resist the temptation to use the Ring for good ends….All these films reject the naïve supposition that good intentions are sufficient for virtue, even as they underscore virtue's costs.”
That phrase ‘good intentions’ brings us back to Hundert, the good meaning teacher in Emperor's Club who changes the grade of young Bell so as to reward him for his improved effort in class, and eliminates another student with a deserved higher score, making Hundert complicit in Bell’s character molding in a not-so-admirable way.
To digress: In the 1973 movie The Paper Chase, a first year Harvard law student is enrolled in a contracts class with Professor Kingsfield. The opening scenes are famous for the ‘skulls full of mush’ sentence, but the more important clue to the professor’s teaching technique is his statement that he will “train [their] minds.’
That’s really how learning occurs isn’t it? Good teachers condition your brain just as good coaches condition your body. They teach you the rules, show you some techniques and help you through rough spots with advice during the competition. No good coach I’ve known presumed to mold an athlete. He got them ready. They did the work.
Hundert had it all wrong about what his job was at school. Yet his job would be made harder in that Bell’s parents weren't doing their part ‘with the light of Faith.’ In making the same kind of mistake as the boy and lowering his ethical standards, Hundert showed the same need for the ‘illumination of truth’ that eluded both Bells — and which eludes all of us when we ignore God and the laws He has placed before us.
See Emperor's Club with your kids — it’s surely to be released on video soon.
© Kenneth Larson 2003
Ken Larson is the web editor for The Department of Schools, Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in Southern California.
