No Substance #170: The Two Visions of Wake in Fright
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Wake in Fright opens in a one room school in Tiboonda, in the middle of nowhere. It’s hot. A drought is taking place and the land around it is flat, red, and empty. A single train track runs though the middle of the town. In the schoolhouse, the children are waiting for the bell to ring. It’ll signal the end of year. A young teacher, John Grant, is waiting with them. He’s a bonded teacher. The education department has sent him to work in Tiboonda for two years. He hates it. After the children leave, after they head outside into the heat and into the nowhere, he thinks, at least none of the girls are pregnant. You ask yourself, has he done his job right, then, or wrong? Later, when you realise that Grant is a virgin, the thought becomes one that reveals his small, growing misogyny, the characterisation of a man who could very well be termed an incel nowadays.
No Substance #170: The Two Visions of Wake in Fright
No Substance #170: The Two Visions of Wake in…
No Substance #170: The Two Visions of Wake in Fright
Wake in Fright opens in a one room school in Tiboonda, in the middle of nowhere. It’s hot. A drought is taking place and the land around it is flat, red, and empty. A single train track runs though the middle of the town. In the schoolhouse, the children are waiting for the bell to ring. It’ll signal the end of year. A young teacher, John Grant, is waiting with them. He’s a bonded teacher. The education department has sent him to work in Tiboonda for two years. He hates it. After the children leave, after they head outside into the heat and into the nowhere, he thinks, at least none of the girls are pregnant. You ask yourself, has he done his job right, then, or wrong? Later, when you realise that Grant is a virgin, the thought becomes one that reveals his small, growing misogyny, the characterisation of a man who could very well be termed an incel nowadays.