Ryan Sheely and Matthew Wrather discuss Skins series 2 episode 5 (“Chris”) and 6 (“Tony”), focusing on the function and commercialisation of education (the Brits are rubbing off on us), the relationship of the small social order to the larger societal and economic order, a visitors guide to Pride Rock, the travesty of Milton-less English Literature programs, and the psychological meaning of self-boning.
They also answer the backlog of listener emails and voicemails, falling under the sway of the mellifluous voice of Professor Dave. We’re getting to the end of the summer session…keep the reading responses coming!
There will be no spoiler warnings and there will be many naughty words. If either of those things bothers you, don’t click!
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Hey, just though I’d throw in another British TV recommendation, if I haven’t plugged it already – Channel 4’s The Inbetweeners I very much see as a companion piece to Skins, given that it tells of people of a similar age, but played for laughs a lot more, and by my reckoning a million times more like the life of most sixth-formers. And yet there are some parallels – an evil head of sixth form (Greg Davies, cf. Chris Addison’s character in Skins), a certain TFT obsession with sex as a rite of passage, and comical misadventure.
Being Human is fantastic, funny, dramatic and very philosophical for a show that started with no supernatural elements (the characters just happened to strongly resemble the classic vampire/werewolf/ghost personalities…)
One thing that I found interesting was that why Chris was expelled for all the mischeif he got into while on the college campus the principal/headmistress gave the number one reason as being that he hadn’t done any course work and would bring down the school’s test scores.
I viewed Tony’s confrontation with the professor as another cautionary tale of how he could end up, in some university toying with the students for his own enjoyment (like a more advanced version of how he was in series 1).
And I agree with Timothy, Being Human is fantastic. It really takes a look at what humanity really is and how only when a person loses it do they realize that they had it in the first place and what lengths they will go to in order to regain it.
I spend a lot of time ranting about the level of education the Skins kids get up to… given this week’s discussion, when do you think the classics of literature should start to be taught? A tension in present British education is the extent to which skills/feelings/thoughts should be focused on as opposed to knowledge and being ‘made to read’ the classics at an earlier age. Sometimes I think it can work – we started on Shakespeare at the start of high school, but they tried to give us Chaucer in second year and we weren’t ready for him.
MW: Doesn’t everybody want to stay in school forever?
RS: Programs have resorted to bribing children to attend class.
I am utterly befuddled by the encounter with the scarred soldier (apparently the same actor as the professor) on the train. Anyone?