What makes a good teacher? I think of a person who enjoys working with students, communicating and collaborating with them in a genuine and mature fashion. Someone who is rewarding when the student demonstrates excellence, but isn’t afraid to show a little bit of authority. Someone who knows they are in charge, but doesn’t abuse the power dynamics at play between them and the students.
Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), the menacing jazz teacher in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash (2014), doesn’t tick any of those boxes. He’s a power-hungry, psychopathic, gaslighting egomaniac. Fletcher is authoritarian, but his rule over the classroom is without mutual respect between teacher and student. Instead, he utilizes his advantages in power dynamics to enact abusive, unpredictable strategies to drive students towards dangerous perfection.
Chazelle makes it clear that this is no glorification of Fletcher’s behavior towards Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller), his own new prodigal student. Despite its acclaim, however, many have misinterpreted Chazelle’s intentions in two separate aspects.
GQ listed Whiplash in an article titled We Are Genuinely Motivated by These 7 Movies. Good Will Hunting, one of the other movies present, purposefully crafts a heartwarming dynamic between a genius janitor and professor, carrying an inspirational story at its core. Breaking Away, another film on the list, is about a rag tag biking team facing off against organized sports. Whiplash isn’t something to be motivated by, but to be terrified of.
Fletcher calls students offensive slurs, throws cymbals at Andrew and a select other few, and plays with students’ respective egos to take full control, turning them against each other. In essence, his classroom is the Hunger Games, and whoever’s on top of all the bodies in the end gets to be the lead drummer. Fletcher takes sadistic enjoyment in elaborate verbal torture, and sometimes it’s all just to get someone on tempo. Perfectly on tempo. No pain, no gain.
In yet another list, HubPages puts Whiplash in an article titled 18 Fascinating Movies Like Whiplash Everyone Should Watch. In the paragraph introducing Whiplash, Rahul Pandey calls it an “inspiring, blood-pumping tale.” What follows is a listing of other “inspirational” movies, in which half of them are definitely not.
Birdman, a film about a schizophrenic washed-up actor, is on the list. The author justifies Nightcrawler, of all films, as inspiring, because of the main character’s commitment to his “passion.” The film’s lead, Lou (Jake Gyllenhaal), takes up a profession of illegally documenting crime scenes before the police arrive. Many don’t seem to understand the line between passion and obsession. Whiplash is a movie about a teacher driving a deeply unhealthy obsession for drumming into his student. It’s not something to be emulated.
MovieFone declares one of the “life lessons” we learn from Whiplash is that “tough love works.” If only Fletcher’s behavior could actually be classified as such.
Another misinterpretation of the movie is its apparent “glorification” of abuse. This is a valid critique for sure, as it can be difficult to tell whether Chazelle is justifying Fletcher’s behavior or not.
Two major plot points must be examined. Andrew befriends a girl named Nicole (Melissa Benoist). They quickly start dating, and she provides this key factor to balance the scale between a passion for drumming and a relationship.
Fletcher’s obsession with driving his students past their human limits puts Neiman at a crossroads between choosing drumming or Nicole, and he inevitably picks the former.
Secondly, there is an entire section of the film devoted to Andrew filing a lawsuit against Fletcher due to the abuse inflicted upon him and other students. Andrew and his father, Jim (Paul Reiser), meet with a lawyer who represented the parents of a former student of Fletcher’s who hanged himself due to the anxiety he faced in the class. Andrew testifies anonymously, and Fletcher is fired from teaching at the conservatory.
If Chazelle’s intentions here were really to glorify or justify the relationship between Andrew and Fletcher, this plot point would not exist. Instead, he writes the actual firing of Fletcher into the script. The movie’s attitude towards this character could not be shown in a more obvious manner.
The concluding sequence to Whiplash is something that’s frequently critiqued as well. Andrew meets Fletcher at a jazz club, and Fletcher invites him to perform at the JVC Jazz Festival to replace their current drummer. Fletcher assures him that the band would only be playing music that Andrew had been previously taught. Andrew accepts.
Right before the performance, Fletcher reveals that he knows Andrew filed a lawsuit against him. The band begins playing music unbeknownst to Andrew, and he walks off in humiliation.
Andrew returns to the stage and cuts Fletcher off. He cues the band in himself to “Caravan,” a piece he’s practiced obsessively. Fletcher goes along with it eventually, conducting the band. Andrew carries on with an extended solo.
Chazelle’s last shot, a nod of approval from Fletcher to Andrew, seems positive, but it’s a rotten apple core with a beautiful facade. Andrew has fallen into the hands of Fletcher entirely, ignorant in his new found glory.
In an interview with ScreenCrush, Chazelle shared his pessimistic view of what would happen to Andrew following the ending.
“Fletcher will always think he won and Andrew will be a sad, empty shell of a person and will die in his 30s of a drug overdose,” he says. I have a very dark view of where it goes.”
Chazelle is correct. Andrew will never be pleased with himself, always pushing for the inhumanly perfect, and that’s the tragedy of it all. The supposed win at the end of the film isn’t actually a win.
The larger issue at hand here is that Whiplash, a film about serious classroom abuse, has been interpreted as motivational by so many simply because Andrew masters drumming in the end. Chazelle intended this as a cautionary tale, but there is a greater harm in blending obsession with inspiration. Cinema is a powerful tool, and it’s dangerous when misinterpreted.
Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
