Janitors in pop culture #4

Posted: April 23, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Janitorial work | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

I haven’t written one of these since 2014!  That’s way too long!  My spouse and I just watched Another Earth for the second time, and I had forgotten that the protagonist, Rhoda, is a high school janitor.  Heads up – this post might contain spoilers!  And also, although I’m being critical and having fun with it (the portrayal of a janitor), I actually really do love this movie (hence, the wanting to watch it for a 2nd time!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t start out as a janitor.  She’s a promising student that just got accepted to MIT, but her path takes a sharp turn when she kills a wife and child in a drunk driving accident.  She spends the next four years in prison, instead of college, and when she gets out, she struggles with even wanting to be alive.  When talking to a social worker about a job placement, she says,

“I don’t wanna really be around too many people or do too much talking.”

And that is, in a nut-shell, what being a janitor is all about!  She gets placed at West Haven High School.  We see her in a bunch of scenes at work.  I’ll try to break it down a bit:

Uniform:  She’s wearing workboots in the style of Timberlands.  She has a hoodie and a full-body jumpsuit on over that.  Plus a beanie.  It is winter, but this is what she’s wearing while working in the building, and she is WAY overdressed!  I’d be sweating bullets in this get-up, plus the footwear is too heavy-duty.  Even running sneakers would be better – you do a ton of walking as a janitor.  I wear a t-shirt, pants, and sneakers, and I still get hot – school buildings are usually kept super warm.

The Work:  We see her pushing her cart through the building, mopping halls, and scrubbing at bathroom grafitti.  This is fairly realistic, although where I work, we have an auto-scrubber for halls, and I’d never use that much elbow-grease on anything the way she’s going at that grafitti – I’d blow out my ligaments!  I already struggle with “tennis elbow” from regular repetitive motions.  Not worth it!

Storyline:  There’s a sub-plot where her co-worker, Purdeep, is noticeably blind, and you’re left wondering how he gets his job done without seeing.  Then, one day, Purdeep isn’t there, and Rhoda asks about him.  The reply?  He’s not coming back because he poured bleach in his own ears.  This was the 2nd incident – he had previously blinded his own self by pouring bleach in his eyes.

“He said he was tired of seeing himself everywhere.”

Later on, there’s a scene where Rhoda visits him in the hospital, and she writes letters on the palm of his hand in order to communicate with him.  It’s a tender connection, but other than that, I’m not sure what’s being coveyed through this other than here was a janitor who incrimentally lost his mind and self-destructed.  ???

There’s one other scene, early on, that I think is really relevant.  She runs into an old classmate at a corner store, and from his demeanor, it’s apparent he’s super surprised to see her, and he knows all about what happened to her, going to prison and everything.  Their dialogue reads, starting with him asking,

“So, are you working?”
“West Haven High.”
“Yeah? What do you teach?”
“I clean.”
“What?”
“I clean the school.”
“Oh, that’s cool.  …That’s probably very … therapeutic.”

It might not be apparent from the words, but his tone is sooo condescending, his classism is really shining through.  I often tell people that I’m a janitor, and I feel fortunate I don’t come up against this kind of bias, generally.  But there was a long period of time where I did feel shame about my job, especially because I work for the same school district I went to school at, and I too was a “promising” student, and I actually did go to college (and not prison), and I would brace myself for those moments where I might run into someone I knew from school.

Back to school / Janitors in pop culture #1

Posted: September 4, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Janitorial work | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

The day before yesterday was my first day back to cleaning up after students.  It was terribly hot and humid (more so in the school than outside) and I promptly got a gross warm-weather cold; all stuffy in the head!  I’m back to working late nights.  Overall, it will be good to get back to it; right now it feels awfully lonely.

As an ode (of sorts) to my co-workers, and working all together this summer, here’s a partial list of the most frequently talked about topics:
– basements / sheds / generators / dehumidifyers
– cell phones / provider plans
– donuts and other snack foods
– retirement
– grilling food / alcoholic beverages / being a host
– “got any weekend plans?” / “how was your weekend?”
– teacher quirks
And not a whole lot else…

The cool thing about having been writing here for over a year is I can go back and find out what I wrote, at this time last year.  Here’s what it was.

I’ve been thinking lately that I’m writing lots about trans and queer identities and experiences (awesome!), but that I’ve been ignoring the other half of my moniker.  So, I’m going to start a new series, from time to time, that highlights portrayals of janitors in movies, TV shows, books, whatever.  I’ve been meaning to do this for a while!

First up:  Good Will Hunting.  1997.  Directed by Gus Van Sant.  Screenplay by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.

In this movie, Matt Damon plays a bad-ass boy genius working as a janitor at MIT.  He solves an impossible math equation (in secret).  He then is “discovered” by a professor, is forced to see a therapist in order to avoid jail time (for assault – he likes to get into fights), and is trying to find a balance in his life between love, his natural talents, and what he actually wants to do.  (Writing out this summary from memory, the movie sounds so outlandish and absurd.  It’s actually pretty gripping; look out for Robin Williams in one of his more serious roles, as Will’s therapist.  Also look out for an awesome soundtrack by Elliott Smith.)

The first time we see Will, he is mopping a hallway floor.  The movie people might have wanted to get a janitor-consultant for this movie (haha), because he is doing it all wrong.  Will is pulling the mop straight out of the bucket and slopping it all over the floor (without wringing out the excess water ahead of time.)  Completely unrealistic.  Also, the hallway is full of students, which is not an ideal time to pull out the mop.  Talk about slipping all over huge puddles of water en masse!

Hardly working. Doing math.

Hardly working. Doing math.

Later on in the movie, Will is talking with his therapist, Sean, about careers.  (I’m condensing the dialogue a little, for efficiency.)

Sean: I mean there are guys who work their entire lives laying brick so that their kids 
have a chance at the opportunities you have here.
Will: What's wrong with layin' brick? That's an honorable profession. What's wrong with... 
with fixing somebody's car? Someone can get to work the next day because of me. There's 
honor in that.
Sean: Yeah, there is, Will. There is honor in that.  And there's honor in, you know, 
taking that forty minute train ride so those college kids come in the morning and the 
floors are clean and the wastebaskets are empty. That's real work.

I could be reading too much into it, but  the tone of the therapist’s voice, while delivering that last part, is complete, total snark (his character plays up the snark quite a bit though – to match Will’s tone.)  Basically saying, “just keep sticking to what’s ‘honorable,’ and see how far you get.”

Sometimes, I too talk with my therapist about being a janitor.  She has said, “you are probably the smartest janitor.”  She must not have caught Good Will Hunting, haha.  I’ve conveyed that sometimes I find it totally absurd that this is my job.  (I may not be a bad-ass boy genius, but still, in a lot of ways, “janitor” is a strange fit for me.)

In spite of this, I can easily see myself retiring from this job.  (Retirement at age 55, here I come!)  There is absolutely no “career” I can envision pursuing (I’ve always felt this way.  Maybe that will change with time; I won’t hold my breath.)  I mean, I envision pursuing lots of other endeavors – writing, radio DJ-ing, volunteering in myriad ways, but “janitor” seems as good a way as any to actually make money…