TV in the classroom

Teaching again. I was explaining the idea of a change in identity, perhaps apropos of the narrator of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, who discovers that when he dons a pair of sunglasses and a wide hat, he’s mistaken for the ladies’ man/numbers runner/preacher Bliss P. Rinehart. I reached for an analogy: “You know how in The Wire, Walter White shaves his head and wears a black hat and calls himself Heisenberg? Wait — was that The Wire, or Breaking Bad ?”

“I don’t like either one,” a student said.

“What TV show would you recommend?” I asked. And off we went, on to a class-wide discussion of television.

This is the twenty-sixth teaching dream I’ve had since retiring in 2015. In all but one, something has gone wrong.

Related reading
All OCA teaching dreams (Pinboard)

[Ellison said that the P stands for the shapeshifting god Proteus. My last semester of teaching has something to do with this dream: Elaine and I were bingeing Breaking Bad that spring. At the end of the semester, the students in my modern American lit tutorial presented me with POP! figurines of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman, now residing on a shelf of William Carlos Williams. And good grief: these figurines now sell for $100+ on Amazon.]