Facha in San Francisco
Whew -- a long day at San Francisco State is behind me. In fact, that's the last of my on-campus interviews for now, so I'm breathing a sigh of relief. Now for the post-mortem:
First of all, these classes are huge. I was expecting 20 students, tops, and there were about 35 in the culture course and probably 45 in the language course. All very engaged, though, which was really nice. I started the culture course giving a stripped-down, 10 minute timeline of 20th Century Spain: Civil War, Franco dictatorship, Franco's death, transition to democracy. Censorship and state-sponsored control of politics, culture, civil rights, etc. under Franco. Newfound artistic liberties, political upheaval and wild hedonistic indulgence during the Transition. Great. Everyone's with me so far. I toss out a discussion question: "How do you imagine artists would react to Franco's death and the artistic freedom they sudden aquired?"
A woman raises her hand. "Well, actually, things were better under Franco. The streets were empty. There wasn't any crime, or drugs. There was poverty, but there was also an upper class, and there wasn't any middle class. When Franco died, people just went crazy." In Spain, we call people like this "fachas:" Franquists who wish the clock would turn back so all the dirty, dangerous, democracy-loving wierdos would just go back into the caves they were forced to ride out the dictatorship in so they wouldn't be executed. Fachas are fairly commonplace in Spain, but they're an indangered species in San Francisco. Where did this woman come from? My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her to save it for whatever masonic ritual she has after hours, but instead I was civil. I told her I was trying to boil 50 years of Spanish history into 50 minutes, so obviously I was polarizing the issues, and that, yes, the Transition was more complicated than a dictator dropping dead and women immediately taking their tops off on the streets of Madrid.
The rest of the class was successful, I would say. I chickened out a little with the Almodóvar clip, and stopped the tape just before things got really raunchy (when I had mentioned to the professor who regularly teaches this course that it was a "racy" movie, he broke out in a nervous sweat, so I decided to tone the clip down from R to PG-13). But the class still got the point I was trying to make, clearly enjoying the Spanish punk music and the transsexual Alaska, one of a host of Spanish fringe actors named after remote and funny-sounding states (see also: "El Gran Wyoming").
And, I found out later, that my little facha visitor is in fact from Spain, and she causes the professor headaches by airing her "When I was in Spain, everyone loved the Inquisition" rants on a daily basis. One of the other professors on the hiring committee insinutated that he would have just thrown her out of class, so I guess I handled her pretty well, after all.
First of all, these classes are huge. I was expecting 20 students, tops, and there were about 35 in the culture course and probably 45 in the language course. All very engaged, though, which was really nice. I started the culture course giving a stripped-down, 10 minute timeline of 20th Century Spain: Civil War, Franco dictatorship, Franco's death, transition to democracy. Censorship and state-sponsored control of politics, culture, civil rights, etc. under Franco. Newfound artistic liberties, political upheaval and wild hedonistic indulgence during the Transition. Great. Everyone's with me so far. I toss out a discussion question: "How do you imagine artists would react to Franco's death and the artistic freedom they sudden aquired?"
A woman raises her hand. "Well, actually, things were better under Franco. The streets were empty. There wasn't any crime, or drugs. There was poverty, but there was also an upper class, and there wasn't any middle class. When Franco died, people just went crazy." In Spain, we call people like this "fachas:" Franquists who wish the clock would turn back so all the dirty, dangerous, democracy-loving wierdos would just go back into the caves they were forced to ride out the dictatorship in so they wouldn't be executed. Fachas are fairly commonplace in Spain, but they're an indangered species in San Francisco. Where did this woman come from? My knee-jerk reaction was to tell her to save it for whatever masonic ritual she has after hours, but instead I was civil. I told her I was trying to boil 50 years of Spanish history into 50 minutes, so obviously I was polarizing the issues, and that, yes, the Transition was more complicated than a dictator dropping dead and women immediately taking their tops off on the streets of Madrid.
The rest of the class was successful, I would say. I chickened out a little with the Almodóvar clip, and stopped the tape just before things got really raunchy (when I had mentioned to the professor who regularly teaches this course that it was a "racy" movie, he broke out in a nervous sweat, so I decided to tone the clip down from R to PG-13). But the class still got the point I was trying to make, clearly enjoying the Spanish punk music and the transsexual Alaska, one of a host of Spanish fringe actors named after remote and funny-sounding states (see also: "El Gran Wyoming").
And, I found out later, that my little facha visitor is in fact from Spain, and she causes the professor headaches by airing her "When I was in Spain, everyone loved the Inquisition" rants on a daily basis. One of the other professors on the hiring committee insinutated that he would have just thrown her out of class, so I guess I handled her pretty well, after all.
posted by SJB at 11:09 PM
2 Comments:
So here we go again....did you get this one? I voted, I commented over and over.....but on email, not on comments. DDB helped, and now you should get an old person's comment.....great review of SF's day.
I got it, and well done "anonymous old person!"
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