A Better Song to Sing

The above quote comes from the (god awful) film Educating Rita, the metaphorical wish of a woman who wishes to better her life through studying English literature, something she previously had no interest in. My arm has been twisted into writing about the feelings evoked in watching this movie. Guess I better focus on something other than how sick the quality of the acting and horrid crew of caricature supporting actors made me.

The permed Liverpudlian, our would-be heroine, wishes to shed the mediocrity of her working class setting, to swap pub songs for literary discussions - "a better song to sing". It probably would have cost less time and money to find another pub and/or boyfriend, but oh well.

She finds herself at University, studying books she doesn't like and surrounding herself with pretentious fools (Yah's to the power of 10). At first she doesn't understand the texts presented to her, doesn't feel as if she is able to do the work, considers herself less than the aforementioned asshats. Her tutor, 'Sir' (lol) Micheal Cane, suggests that perhaps this is not such a bad thing - he knows that despite their understanding of English, they are feckin' idiots all the same - but Rita is determined that going through a university course will broaden her horizons. Why Cane doesn't suggest she studies something she actually enjoys is beyond me.

By the end our our adventure with Rita, she gets to where she wants to be, with a firm grasp of the written word. But as Cane predicted, she sounds like another elitist automaton when she reels off criticism of literary works that's all words and no feeling.

So what are we, the class of Access to Languages, Arts and Social Sciences who were forced to watch this drivel, to take away from this?

Obviously, the moral of the story is that anyone, age or background regardless, can succeed in Higher education. I never had any doubt about this in the first place though, so focused more on possibility that Rita was there simply to learn something, anything, so she could feel... well, learned (perhaps discounted by the fact she seemed to enjoy it at the end, but selective memory suits my argument).

Personally, having already made a crack at university, I found myself thinking maybe I had dodged a bullet in choosing not to continue studying something I didn't enjoy. Might have ended up with my head up my anus at the end like Rita.

This time, I'm going to study because I like the subject matter, not with the aim of getting a slip of paper than makes my more employable. I'm also going to take a large selection of weapons with me in case I get stuck in a class with any of Rita's cronies.