Comments on: Love in the Time of Cholera and won’t somebody please think of the children

By: pritu

pritu — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 23:48:52 +0000

I am shocked and dispirited to discover that people with attitudes like Bantick’s are still are still in the classrooms of Australia.

By: On banning Macbeth | Teacher in the Rye

On banning Macbeth | Teacher in the Rye — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 05:20:43 +0000

...] course has been shuffled off the stage, after elegant if bewildered responses from critics like Bethanie Blanchard and Danielle Binks. (Binks calls out a central confusion in Bantick’s piece: that it applauds [...

By: The 39 books of 2012: 11-20 | COOL BEANS

The 39 books of 2012: 11-20 | COOL BEANS — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:03:00 +0000

...] that a womanizing paedophile eventually achieves his ends? It’s problematic, certainly, but this piece does a good (and witty) job breaking down the problems of condemning works of art for portraying [...

By: moonkid

moonkid — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 03:55:22 +0000

Christopher Bantick should be banned from the VCE syllabus. He contains warped ideas that will corrupt the minds of impressionable youth.

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 01:58:26 +0000

This is the same Christopher Bantick who wrote a piece dissecting his wife’s menopause. He really shouldn’t be teaching impressionable young people.

By: Baudinette Jarna

Baudinette Jarna — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 04:12:32 +0000

Okay, Mr Bantick – and Toni Morrison’s Beloved says it’s all right for mothers to just kill their children at whim, right? There couldn’t possibly be any deeper analysis of what it means to be a human being going on in there. We must protect the children (who are really almost adults, and may have already turned 18 given this is VCE?) from the idea that sometimes unspeakable things happen in the world.

And yet happen they do, and we are forced to speak about them and understand them, because that is what life is.

I studied American Psycho and The Satanic Verses as an undergrad. A good deal of the criticism seems to come from people who haven’t actually read the books, or who don’t have the basic understanding of literature Bethanie is talking about here, which would allow them to engage with the text in a meaningful way. So I think it’s very sad this particular accusation comes from a senior English teacher, who is supposed to be imparting these skills onto the next generation of readers.

I think one of the greatest strengths of contemporary literature is that it forces you to question your understanding of the world you actually inhabit. As a third-year I had to take an introductory course I’d missed, and the first assigned text was Disgrace. It was fascinating to watch a new group of students discover that a book wasn’t “bad” just because it made them deeply uncomfortable, and that this perhaps said more about them than it did about the book, and that the ability to cause such discomfort might actually be a sign of the text’s value. You do not have the right to go through life unoffended, but the ability to evaluate why you feel the way you do, and to search for empathy and understanding in the most frightening or upsetting of circumstances, is invaluable.

(Also invaluable was the gentle but hilarious reminder from our tutor that one does not win a Nobel Prize for Literature for having written “bad” books.)

By: HB

HB — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:44:25 +0000

Thank you for this post. I must admit that, as I read the Bantick piece, I felt that he was somewhat missing the point of teaching literature. I missed the 3AW flurry, thankfully, and can only conclude that it was a slow news day for them.

By: Bethanie Blanchard

Bethanie Blanchard — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:23:59 +0000

Ha it happens to the best of us, clearly! Thanks Casey, I’ve changed that instance in the text.

By: Ccasey

Ccasey — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 06:40:56 +0000

Er, change that Bethany to Bethanie will you? Okay, bye now.

By: Ccasey

Ccasey — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 06:39:17 +0000

Great points. A teacher might ask their students to interrogate the narrator instead of just accepting that the author is promoting “child sex” (Interesting Bantick chose that term anyway). BTW, quick, Bethany. Change that “Gabrielle” to “Gabriel” before all the pendants (sic) make a strike for their fifteen minutes. Unfortunately they are out there, whole jewellery stores of ‘em.

By: Hindrum Cameron

Hindrum Cameron — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 06:05:31 +0000

Bantick’s piece was simply dishonest. He was patronising and offensive. I remain unclear as to his intentions in trying to mount such a thin, unsubstantiated, narrow-minded argument, but so far it has only succeeded in making him look foolish. How can a ‘senior teacher of literature’ so completely misunderstand literature?

By: Aidan Wilson

Aidan Wilson — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 05:41:38 +0000

How depressing that society has to have this discussion every few years when another old toff gets offended by the subject matter of a book or film for the VCE/HSC. Usually however, the conversation is limited to a brief exposé on A Current Affair or similar, replete with interviews of indignant octogenarian prudes taking umbrage at the lack of Shakespeare and the presence of modern trashy literature.

How degrading that academics have to point out such self-evident truths as ‘representation is not advocacy’.

I pity the poor Trinity Grammar students who will be going through the VCE with Bantick as their teacher next year, as they will surely only be taught what to think, not how to think.

By: Wombat

Wombat — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 03:43:10 +0000

Wholeheartedly agree. Literature is not reality.

I’m currently reading The Kindly Ones, which is narrative from the point-of-view of an unrepentant Holocaust perpetrator on the Eastern front in WW2. It’s frightening and obscene, but I don’t read it assuming the author wants me to believe that atrocities like the Holocaust can be justified.