Lean On Me

Morgan Freeman's character, who, as the reluctant principal of a ****awful school charged with turning its grades around for a basic standards test, is partly enjoyable and partly irritating, but not significantly in either direction. Per his character he's frustratingly brash, arbitrarily assertive, and has a tendency to monologue because he's Morgan Freeman.

On the other hand he's Morgan Freeman.

Personally the charm wore off pretty fast for me, I can pinpoint the moment when he finishes giving an over-the-top speech about education and then it cuts to him giving another over-the-top speech at an emergency parent-teacher meeting, complete with clapping and cheers, as when I knew this movie wasn't going to rank high with me. A stilted pace with forced plot beats can really ruin the tempo of your movie and that's not really helped when you immediately run into the ground your character's central eccentricity which is to walk into any given situation, point at the nearest person, yell in their face, and then leave after making some grand proclamation about what will be done differently from now on.

One of these things is asserting that every student should memorize the school song. Apparently "school spirit" and the football team are exceptional weak points in the school so naturally Morgan "Joe Clark" Freeman must divert his time away from correcting teachers and reforming the curriculum, two things which could have a tangible impact on test scores to focus on them, but **** that the kids need to know how to recite a stupid song, in chorus, on command.

To be honest, Lean On Me almost feels like a social conservative power fantasy. Guy roles in in a suit, smacks kids across the head, tells them to jump to their deaths if you smoke crack, publicly humiliates students for their choice of clothes, insists that test scores are relative to character and the best way to build character is to be patriotic towards your school.

I hate that "school spirit" ****, honestly, but moreover the problems that resulted in this school being a ****hole in the first place were not even resolved by the end of the movie. The premise is that Eastside is a city public high school, not to be confused with a private high school. The characters bitch that "the state" will come take their school away if they fail to pass the Minimum Basic Standards Test and in that moment I was taken back to George W. Bush passing the No Child Left Behind Act.

You remember that act? It has one of those sceevy scum**** names like "Black Lives Matter" which sounds unobjectionable, but in reality it's a hellacious nightmare of unspeakable evil. But hush, you're not supposed to say that, because if you do you'll offend all the political ignoramuses who can't be bothered to read past pretty names.

Or headlines.

So yeah, in actuality "the state" already runs the school, the state just happens to be a city run by a mayor and school board. They're weeping into their cereal because a bigger more encompassing state is setting quotas. And further they're complaining that they can't meet those quotas because an even bigger state than that, the Federal United States, won't give them enough money to buy security alarms for their exits or afford regular teachers.

So to clarify, a state is the government of a given area; Eastside High School is a product of a tertiary state, the city it resides in. That tertiary state is subject to a secondary state, the "state" the city resides in. That secondary state is also subject to a primary state, the federation of "states" the city resides in. All in all this school had 3 separate governments sticking their fat ****ing fingers into the gears trying to get it to work and failed.


OOH, but ONE MAN, one special dictatorial man has the experience and the willpower to march into that school, point his fingers every which direction and FIX EVERYTHING.

Nevermind the literal cronyism that orchestrated to put him there and take him back out in the first place. See, this is where your "modern liberal" just blows my ****ing mind because this platform of "we the people" and "democracy" just evaporates out the window when it comes to government intervention. You could even say that Morgan Joe Clark is a quaternary form of government, how did we solve this terrible education dilemma? WE JUST NEED THE RIGHT KING OF COURSE! One with an iron fist that won't take any ****!

This exact same model is what failed your school in the first place and you think the problem is solved by swapping out bad people for better people? You're delusional. Literally as delusional as every single revolutionary regime in history.

I refer you to TVTropes' wonderful page on "Full-Circle Revolution":

The beginning of the movie, set 20 years prior, the school is shown to be relatively well off with the teachers bitching about the budget.

And by the end of the movie, the school has apparently recovered from it's obscene descent into chaos and anarchy, the school is shown to be relatively well off with the teachers still bitching about the budget.

What has the changed? The only difference is the guy the state happened to appoint to the position. They could just as easily have appointed someone else or yet appoint someone worse after Clark leaves. What is to stop the school descending back into the mess it fell into?

A traditionalist, a social conservative might argue that it's merely a matter of having the right person, but that assures nothing, and there is no legal mechanism to ensure that you have the right person even if it did.

A progressive, a New Deal liberal might argue that it's merely a matter of having enough money, perhaps to hire the right person, but that also assures nothing, and there is no legal mechanism to ensure that you hire the right person even if it did.

Firing the old guard and throwing money at the problem solves ****ing nothing because the problem is endemic to the way the system is organized in the first place, there is no mechanistic cause in the bureaucratic machine that makes it spit out quality schools, money and job candidates are not mere ingredients for "good schools", that assumes that the government is a blackboard on which you can scrawl whatever you aspiring little heart desires on it so long as you have tax-dollars to do it with.

It's not, that's utopian command economy bull****, if they didn't want the state ****ing with their school, they shouldn't have opened a public school in the first place. **** public schools, a private school is under a constant market pressure to offer a quality education at an affordable price under conditions that are voluntary.

If you can't afford to send your kid to a private school, then teach them yourself. What the **** are these parents doing going to a parent-teachers meeting and calling Morgan Freeman a fascist cause he expelled their scumbag drug-dealing son? **** you, bitch, take this time you're wasting telling us how how to educate your damn kids and educate them yourself.

I don't see your son with you now! Whose watching your son? Whose dropping the ball right now, MOM?


And on a funny, if slightly irrelevant note, the child actor who Morgan Freeman verbally abuses and tells to kill himself for doing drugs has been arrested multiple times since for exactly that.

Seems not even Morgan Freeman can save these kids. Case in point.