Matt
Stone and Trey Parker’s South Park has given rise to the term “underwear
gnome economics.” In an episode during Season 2, there are a group of gnomes
who steal undergarments in order gain riches. Their plan is explained thusly:
Phase 1: steal underpants. Phase 2: ?. Phase 3: Profit.
Daniel
Barnz’s Won’t Back Down follows the same game plan for dealing with America’s failing education system. Or it can be described thusly: Phase 1: enlist angry,
low-income parents to take control of a school by tearing up teacher union
contracts and throwing out bureaucrats. Phase 2: ?. Phase 3: cure dyslexia.
The
question isn’t how such a ham-fisted, clichéd and, frankly, stupefyingly
simple-minded film got made. The question is: How did it attract the talents of
Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis and Holly Hunter into its union-bashing ranks?
Never mind the fact that Won’t Back Down never seriously addresses
ever-decreasing school funding or the low wages of teachers or the avalanches
of standardized tests or the inequality of educational resources or the
politicization of school textbooks or the social agendas of meddling school
boards or our country’s eroding respect for science and critical thinking —
it’s the fault of greedy unions and soulless administrators. If they’d just get
out of the way, we’d have joyously creative elementary schools where
ukulele-wielding teachers (in this case, Oscar Isaac) would finally be able to
put in unpaid extra hours to help our struggling kids succeed.
Don’t
get me wrong: Won’t Back Down is made slickly enough to charm and weep
and outrage its way under your skin, setting up callous and manipulative union
leaders and odious tenured teachers as mustache-twirling villains for us to
despise. They’ve enlisted a pretty good group of actors to do it, and, in an
inspired bit of character recalibration, cast a white woman (Gyllenhaal) as the
impoverished yet spunky activist parent and a black woman (Davis) as the
upper-middle-class suburbanite teacher (her husband is some kind of hotshot
architect).
The
opening and closing moments of the movie make it perfectly clear how far the
filmmakers are willing to go with their pro-charter school propaganda. Things
kick off in the third grade classroom of adorable yet dyslexic moppet Malia
Fitzpatrick (Emily Alyn Lind), who is struggling to read a sentence on the
blackboard. Around her, her classmates play video games on cell phones, listen
to music on iPods, or nap at their desks. A wantonly uninterested teacher is
preoccupied with texting her friends. Later she allows Malia’s backpack (which
her low wage-earning mother invested $59, in we’re told) to be torn apart by a
class bully and then, if her villainy weren’t obvious enough, denies Malia a
trip to the bathroom, causing a humiliating accident. In a nutshell, the
failures of the American educational system have been laid bare and dropped at
the feet of underperforming teachers and the bureaucrats who enable them.
The
film’s final scene is a triumphant school assembly, where charter designation
has turned austere and crumbling hallways into colorfully decorated shrines to
learning and achievement. Malia is asked to read before her happy-faced
classmates. She does so wonderfully, having no trouble with the word
“permission” but stumbling over the word “hope.” Can you guess what Won’t
Back Down‘s final message will be?
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 2, 2012.