Teacher of the Year Shows His 4th Graders the Winnie the Pooh Slasher Movie
I'll admit I'm a little particular when it comes to the horror film genre. Scroll through that category on any of your streaming services and you quickly realize that practically of the content is cheap, amateurish, forgettable dreck, not worth 90 minutes of your life, no matter how much you're trying for a Halloween Season aesthetic.
But even as I say that, I can respect something that is made intentionally to be schlock. There's room for that. Take, for instance, this Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey that came out last year. Here's the storyline from IMDb:
The days of adventures and merriment have come to an end, as Christopher Robin, now a young man, has left Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet to fend for themselves. As time passes, feeling angry and abandoned, the two become feral. After getting a taste for blood, Winnie-The-Pooh and Piglet set off to find a new source of food. It's not long before their bloody rampage begins.
It was another example of a weirdly specific subgenre of slasher movies based on familiar children's IP. Other examples of which include The Banana Splits Movie, which was based on a Saturday morning weirdo hippie variety show that I knew was garbage when I was it's target demo. Before that, there was Snow White: A Tale of Terror, with Sigourney Weaver as the Wicked Stepmother and Sam Neill as Snow White's father. Another called Gretel and Hansel. I guess there's just something deeply psychological about being scared by the very things that used to give us comfort as kids. I mean, I've still never recovered from seeing the son in Poltergeist get terrorized by his clown doll. So even if I never watch them, I can respect this odd subset of horror films.
I can also respect a public school teacher giving up a day of actual teaching and just showing a movie. The Blow Off Class is a proud tradition in American education. It's probably been the second most popular hangover treatment since The Ol' Hair o' the Dog That Bit Ya. When Mr. Smith abandons all pretense that you boys and girls are going to leave here smarter than you came in, and just lets the old Electronic Babysitter kill an hour of your school day while he closes his eyes in the back of the room. And any kid who complained that they weren't getting taught anything would be scarred for life with social Cooties.
What no rational person could possibly respect, though, is combing the two. As one teacher in the great state of ... you guessed it ... Florida just did:
Source - Florida fourth-graders expecting to have a fun movie day at school were traumatized as they watched one of the most lovable characters turn into a murderous savage.
Students in one class at the Academy of Innovative Education in Miami Springs were shown the slasher film “Winnie the Pooh: Honey and Blood” by a math teacher on Monday, Oct. 2, for nearly 30 minutes before it was shut off after several of the children complained. …
One mother, whose twins were in the class, was left dumbfounded by the teacher’s decision to show the movie.
“I feel completely abandoned by the school,” Michelle Diaz said to CBS Miami following a meeting with the school’s principal.
The teacher didn’t immediately stop the movie after the more terrifying scenes began.
“He didn’t stop the movie, even though there were kids saying, ‘Hey, stop the movie, we don’t want to watch this,'” she added. …
The movie, which has an NR rating for not rated, was decided upon after the teacher allowed the students to choose, according to Diaz.
As a former government worker myself, I can admire this teacher's lack of effort. Those Monday mornings after a big weekend can really constitute a hard landing. And you hate to use up your sick days so early in the year. So a movie is the perfect middle ground. But you've got to at least pretend you have some fucks left to give. Create the illusion you're not completely checked out and still have some professionalism. Halfass it; don't zero-ass it.
And I appreciate he's a math teacher, which doesn't offer a whole lot of choices when it comes to pretending there's some educational benefit to the movie choice. Once you've run through Hidden Figures and The Imitation Game, you've exhausted all the films about heroic mathematicians saving the day. And I suppose Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land that my middle school teacher showed us is no longer available. But that's no excuse. This bozo brought this shit on himself.
Once again I find myself hearing about the monkeyshines that go on in American schools every day and realize this isn't happening in a single classroom in places like South Korea, India, Sweden. Name any country. They're kicking America's collective ass in every subject - including English - while our 4th graders are either on their phones all day or watching Winnie the Pooh and Piglet go on a bloodthirsty killing spree. Which might be great for their mentally checked out teacher, but aren't going to help the rest of us when we need someone to design our bridges and skyscrapers in 20 years.
Once again, I weep for my nation.