WDL 2 Late - Annoyance and Future Pleasures

I meant to post last night but got too tipsy at a garden party and then was just too tired to do anything but watch an episode of Poirot.
I've been busting my hump to get all papers graded before tomorrow and I only have six left.  I was thinking last night about two things:  What I will miss least about teaching and what I will continue to do with my scholarship.

I will least miss grading.  I will especially not miss students like these two.

1. One who didn't read directions on a major course paper and got an F.  How?  By completely ignoring the directions for a question worth 100 points on a 160 point assignment that the class had five weeks to complete.  I had to award this paper with an F.  This hurt because I really liked the student.
2. One who didn't read directions on the same assignment mentioned above and then didn't bother to write answers to the final exam questions.  As I entered grades into Blackboard I watched this individual's course grade drop first from an A- to a B- and then from a B- to a D.  (The final was worth 20% of the course grade.)  

When students make decisions like this I feel annoyed.  I don't enjoy grading.

Although I will abandon the ickiest part of teaching I will continue thinking about media and will probably create a new blog where I can write analyses that interest me. 

One such interest, of course, is the meaning of NCIS.   While I was department chair I often thought about what Leroy Jethro Gibbs would have done as an academic department chair.  Not very well, I bet, because of the paperwork.  And he would have been hard-pressed to withhold the Gibbs' headslap.  I was all too often tempted to use that particular management tool during my four years in the hotseat.  I want to write more about Jethro and team and so I'll not abandon blogging completely, just this site.  I might even put together a short article about Gibbs' Rules for Department Chairs.  (Regular viewers will understand when I say  "Rule 13" should be a guiding principle for all chairs.)

I've realized that I'll probably have one or two more stories to share after Saturday.  I'd planned, of course, to make graduation day the last blogpost.  But I fear I shall need to offer a few addenda between then and June 30, my last official working day.  (I'm sure eager readers will want to see a picture of my cleaned office!)

LY #24 Two Faces of the Total Surveillance Society

This week I got to view both sides of the total surveillance society.  in episodes of Bones and NCIS.

 I've written about the latter before, most thoughtfully in a paper delivered at a conference of the Pacific Western Division meeting of the Community College Humanities Association.  In that paper I argued that the "family" of workplace friends in NCIS serves to legitimate the team's regular use of the invasive technology. 

Using Twitter to track a low flying plane on NCIS

This week in "Under the Radar" they moved into the Twitterverse as Tim McGee drew on his knowledge of computers by having the fans of a rock band look for a low flying plane.  As with every moment of increased investigatory penetration performed by the good guys, the use of citizens to spy out the bad guys was presented as having no downside, just like all of McGee's warrantless phone tracking.  In the NCIS world, it's all for good.

(I'm wondering also if Twitter sponsored last night's show since the gang sold it like the folks on Bones sell Toyota products.)

On the other hand in Bones we watched the death of computer genius Christopher Pelant, the darkest face of the surveillance genius -- McGee's evil twin.   (But I'm not sure I'll believe he's dead until I hear it from another source or see his body on a slab.)  Pelant was spying on "the team" and killing off various friends in order to get close to Temperance.  While this story seems to play into our fears of surveillance, it locates the source of that fear in a single evil, obsessive genius rather than fixing it onto corporations and government, the real holders of power.  


Both shows want us to be comfortable with our caretakers and watchers being able to find us, wherever we are.  They just use different methods to get us to accept the inevitable.

Gibbs' Head Slap

The trouble with being a slow thinker is that it removes me from the primary interest stream of "Today's News."  This is old news to the people who care and unimportant news to everyone else.  This is why my blog is silly.  Nevertheless....this is what interests me today as I just rewatched the February 7, 200th Episode of NCIS, called "Life Before His Eyes."

Gibbs staring down the bullet.

That's why I'm only posting now about the 200th episode of NCIS -- the A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life episode in which Gibbs is visited by the "ghosts" of past and possibility as a bullet moves slowly toward him.  During the milliseconds of bullet travel time, his unconscious mind gives him both negative and positive messages about how he lived his life.  It's a trip into the memory vortex we all will take.

Negative:

• If Gibbs hadn't encouraged her, his wife would not have testified against the drug dealer who had her and Gibbs' daughter murdered.
• if Gibbs had been perceptive enough to spot Ari on the rooftop and kill him, Kate wouldn't have been shot, she and Tony (and Tim and Abby) would have gotten together and Kate would have had Tony's kid.

Positive:

• if Gibbs had remained a Marine, rather than becoming an NCIS agent, his wife and daughter would have suffered from having Marines come to the door with the message of his death in the first Iraq war. 

"If you'd stayed a Marine, Gibbs, the loss would have fallen on us instead."

• if he had remained a Marine, he would have not have brought all those murderers to justice. 
• if Kate hadn't been shot by Ari, Ziva would have remained in Mosad (but she and Tony would still have met).
• if Gibbs had not murdered the drug dealer who killed his family, he would have quit NCIS early and become a mean, reclusive drunk in his basement, making a rocker and a hope chest rather than a boat, and insulting the caring Abby, Tim, and Ducky.
• thus, if he hadn't killed the drug lord he would not have solved all those cases and brought all those people to justice.



Gibb's and the memory of his mother.

• Gibb's mom says she's proud of who he was as a boy, proud of who he became as a man.

What we discover about the Gibbs by the end:

• He believes his mother was proud of him even though she never said so.  This explains why he rarely praises the people he loves.
• He believes that his mistake in not shooting a badguy resulted in less life and love for his young colleagues.   
• He believes that his action of murdering a different badguy was ultimately justified.
• Although he says he is just doing his job, he believes, deep down, that his job is very, very important.  This last belief winds up being underlined in the non-dream world by Tim McGee who decides to turn down a better job in Japan in order to stay with the crew he knows and loves.

Why is all this important to us 20.98 million viewers (according to TVPressfeed) of the 200th episode?  To the extent that we admire or identify with Gibbs, it allows us to think about how we would address our own mortality and life choices.  In doing so, it also provides us with a "tragic view" of life as it shows good and bad in balance with bad sometimes winning out. At least twice Gibbs says that he wanted things to be different, once when he says about work and family,  "But I wanted both."  He is told, at least twice:  "It doesn't work like that."

Another lesson Gibbs learns is that, as the Bible says, "No man knows the day or the hour" of his own death.   Several times during the show Gibbs says, "I didn't expect this." The universe Gibbs inhabits is a chaotic one where humans are not in charge.

This is a rare point of view for  an American drama, especially a police procedural.  Usually, the American worldview is one in which good is achievable, in which the heroes get what they want and need and the bad guys suffer.  The very reason people enjoy detective shows, according to some theorists, is because they offer the promise of order.  In the world of Gibbs' unconscious mind, however, the good guys suffer from the world's unmanageable disorder.  The Good News is that, through their suffering, they make a difference for the rest of us.

NCIS

Another reason I value NCIS is the mentor/mentee relationship between Gibbs and his subordinates.  He is gruff, demanding, quietly loving, and absolutely loyal.  We see the model of Gibb's leadership in his own association with Mike Franks.  These men remain psychologically close even though they rarely see each other or speak.  Each knows that the other is there if needed.  This season's (the 8th) finale featured the great ritualized event of Mike Franks' funeral.  (See Wikipedia's  entry on Jethro Gibbs.)

If the paragraph above sounds like a turn in an ongoing conversation, it is.  I've been thinking about NCIS for a few seasons and presented a PowerPoint on the program last year at the Pacific-Northwest Division Conference of the Community College Humanities Association.  In my presentation, I started with the axiomatic assumption that all popular texts both support the dominant ideology AND support the minds of individuals seeking to manage the challenges of their lives.  The nastiest bit of ideological work that the show performs is justifying the "total surveillance society."  What it offers in return is a vision of a family of workplace friends who accept each others' foibles (as long as such quirks don't involve workplace incompetence) and grant each other absolute loyalty.  What I've been thinking about the past few weeks is how I've also hoped for a relationship like the one between Gibbs and Franks.  Loving, protective, admiring.

But such a relationship can't really exist in my profession.  The bond among those whose work involves the management of death is simply different than the one that is forged among those who don't face life's ending with regularity.