The Educator as Neurotic: A Rankian Analysis of Impotent Teachers in Film

The phrase “those who can't do, teach” is almost literally made manifest in a series of 20^th Century films that portray educators as impotent. Beginning with the classic Goodbye, Mr. Chips , and carried through 1992's Waterland, a subset of increasingly bleak narratives has centered on protagonists who seem to compensate for an inability to have children of their own by instructing the children of others.

“Impotence,” like any other disability or disease, is socially constructed and means different things at different times in history. As just one example, whereas historically in Western societies impotence was judged purely in terms of the ability to reproduce in successful marriages, it has in more recent decades come to have a more restricted meaning centered on the capacity for ejaculation (McLaren, 2007). I use the term here in a very broad sense, which only rarely explicitly involves a (male) physiological impediment. I highlight instead the high number of films that portray educators as in some way childless - a condition that itself manifests in a variety of ways, either in lacking any children, having stillborn children, or having children who are in some sense viewed by society as disabled (e.g., birth defects, cerebral palsy) - and powerless - unable to influence society more broadly, but also others in their lives, superiors, and the children they are supposed to instruct. Such themes are not merely incidental in films about educators. Burbach and Figgins (1993) argue that, prior to Dead Poets Society , teachers were very commonly portrayed in films as powerless, loveless, or both. In a content analysis of 18 popular media depictions of teachers, Swetnam (1992) found that 78% were portrayed as single (and childless). Thus, when impotence is broadly construed, it seems to be a prominent theme in 20^th Century film and literary depictions of educators. The question for analysis becomes: What is the significance of this theme?

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