some_stars | (no subject)

So I finished watching Edward II and it flat-out blew my mind. Being naturally anxious as well as sleep-deprived(and therefore ten times worse), I then spent a half hour or so looking up mortality rates and statistics and dates and timelines, and also Jarman's bio on Wikipedia. When the professor brought up the movie in class, and people started talking about how bizarre and disappointing they found the ending, I raised my hand and delivered--with permission, talking about five times faster than normal, hopefully without too much freakish intensity--a two-minute lecture on the AIDS crisis.

Unfortunately the only numbers I could find from quick googling were American, from the CDC, and the only political context I'm more than passingly familiar with is the U.S. and the Reagan/Bush admins, so it was sort of not entirely appropriate? (Which I admitted up front.) But mostly I was just really urgently focused on communicating the cultural context, and why Jarman's ending isn't "wtf" but rather it is BRILLIANT. (And so is the rest of the movie.) I'm not sure if I succeeded in not being freakishly intense, but the professor seemed to approve, at least, so it was most likely not a total fiasco.

Then 45 minutes after that, I got into the car to drive home and started playing the Rent soundtrack from where I'd left off on the drive in, which happened to be the beginning of "Another Day," and started crying before I was even out of the parking lot. Because that is the kind of emotional depth I possess, apparently.

(And then "Will I" came up next and I hit 'skip forward' so violently I nearly broke a nail, because I'm not a masochist.)

(I'm not, like, super proud of doing this, I'm actually feeling kind of embarrassed and wanting to go back in time and slap myself because it's looking like my main problem this semester is going to be never shutting up ever and also, I'm 26 and not an actual historian/scholar of this topic even as a hobby so what the fuck do I know that I should be lecturing people, and also I really need to stop losing my shit so entirely and preemptively over this kind of thing. But I have not slept and apparently that makes the not-shutting-up problem even worse.)

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I have the same problem in a classroom setting. I once made Made A Stand on mental illness and visibility, when my lecturer drew an ill-advised comparison between madness as constructed in the seventeenth century and the mental health system today. There was this terrible silence, and then the lecturer calmly went on with the class.

I flipped out and yelled at the head of my training department at work over classism in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People course. It happens. I think professors, in any case, like students providing context for discussions.

Which movie is this? I have the filmed stage production with Ian McKellen on DVD, though I shamefully haven't watched it yet.