Sunday, February 22, 2009

Great Lost Moments in TEFL History

Two recent films that I've seen strike me as great lost moments in TEFL history.

At the beginning of the film THE INCREDIBLE HULK, Bruce Banner (played by Edward Norton) is living in hiding in Brazil. And get this -- to support himself, he's doing menial labor in some kind of cola bottling factory! When he could be fucking teaching English to hot chicks at a salary which, while low, is probably considerably better than a factory worker.

Ditto the fourth film in the Rambo series, RAMBO. Rambo (of course played by Sylvester Stallone) is in self-imposed exile in northern Thailand working at some kind of touristy snake show and also piloting a river boat. It's perhaps a little more understandable that a guy like John Rambo, who doesn't seem to like talking much beyond grunting and the occasional quotable aphorism, would pass on the English teaching.

(But indeed I knew plenty of less suitable people doing the job there.)

"The brain is the most powerful weapon," indeed.

3 comments:

Mike Why said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike Why said...

I'll take piloting a river boat over dealing with a class of 9 year olds on a Saturday morning any day.

Gorilla Bananas said...

Making them English teachers wouldn't have worked. The macho male audiences for such movies would have thought they were gay.
The only male characters who can teach English without looking gay are gorillas.