1) The document discusses the film The Emperor's Club and the prep school genre. It focuses on the plot of the film, which centers around a classics teacher and a rebellious student who challenges the strict order of the school. 2) It then examines the themes of conformity, tradition, and inheritance that are emphasized in both this film and the prep school genre generally. Deviance from rules is seen as a threat to the social hierarchy and system of the school. 3) While schools claim to produce independent leaders, the films and analysis show they actually reward conformity and punish individualism, contradicting this goal. Students are under pressure to give up their individual selves for the interests of the group.

1. SOCIAL CLASS
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Privilege

2. Learning Outcomes
Discuss characteristics of the prep/boarding
school film genre
Examine the role and function of deviance in
The Emperor’s Club
Explore the misrepresentation of educational
reality in the prep/boarding school film genre
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3. The Emperor‟s Club
2002
Michael Hoffman
Based on Ethan Canin‟s The
Palace Thief
Kevin Kline
Music by James Newton
Howard
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4. The plot
William Hundert (Kevin Kline) is a
passionate and principled classics
teacher. His lessons are strict but
inspiring. New student Sedgewick Bell
(Emile Hirsch) threatens his orderly world
while leading his fellow students astray.
A battle of wills ensures, leading Hundert
to an action that will haunt him for quarter
of a century.
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5. The Setting
St. Benedict‟s
Academy
Andover
Massachusetts
Prep School
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6. The Phillips
Academy, Andover
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8. Film Location: Emma Willard
School
Troy, New York

10. The American Prep School
Genre
Conformity
Tradition
Inheritance
Internalising
Knowledge
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11. British Public School Genre
Comparison with ‘Goodbye Mr. Chips’
“holistic British public school ideal” (McDermott, 2008: p. 8)
Mind shaped by academic & classical study & compulsory team sports
Leadership by birthright
Plot and narrative conventions
Long career, headeship & competition, retirement
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12. Conformity
“Walk on the Path”
“Tyranny is what we have
in this classroom It works”
Reciting of the emperor‟s
in chronological order
Humiliation of Sedgewick
Bell
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13. Tradition
Mr. Julius Caesar
Gothic architecture
Honour, rules, discipline
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14. Inheritance
Martin Blythe
Father was crowned „Mr.
Julius Caesar‟
Robbed of inheritance
Sedgewick Bell‟s inheritance
“Ilia iacta est!”
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15. Internalising Knowledge
“Walk where the great
men before you have
walked”
Classics
“ROME-All roads lead
to it”
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16. Popular Construction
Self-replicating hierarchy
All male
Elitist
• Marginalisation of poorer/ different students
Tradition, rules
Individuality is repressed
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17. Popular Construction
Spatial isolation from society (preservation of time)
School buildings in gothic architecture style
Physical apartness
Social expectation
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18. “[S]ince their inception the elite schools
have had the responsibility of melting
down the refractory material of
individualism into the solid metal of elite
collectivism. By isolating students from
their home world and intervening in their
development, it is hoped that they will
become soldiers for their class. A good
many soldiers, however, also run the risk
of becoming prisoners of their class. The
total institution is a moral milieu where
pressure is placed on individuals to give
up significant parts of their selves to
forward the interests of the group.”
(Cookson, C.; and Persell, P.H (1985: 127)
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19. Deviance
Sedgewick
Bell‟s arrival
Disrupts the
equilibrium
Does not
conform
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20. Deviance as Individuality?
Sedgewick‟s deviance
• Pornography
• Rule breaking
• 7 dwarves & The Beetles
“Mould him? Jesus God in Heaven, son.
You're not gonna mould my boy”
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21. Sedgewick‟s fate
The die is cast
Individuality gets its comeuppance
Successful, powerful, just like his father
Sedgewick‟s son sees his immorality
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22. Contradictions
Schools exist to reproduce elite
Produce the next generation of leaders
Suggests - encouraging individuality
Yet conformity rewarded
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23. McCloskey
“While the popular film image of life and
education in elite boys' preparatory schools
reinforces an impression that entrance into these
schools is related to the entrance into the halls of
societal power, these same films also convey the
image of an institution hostile to individual
freedom and personal dignity. These films show
people punished, or at least muted, when they
exercise the freedom and voice the theorists
presume the people in such schools have.”
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24. Bibliography



Atwood, T. A., Lee, W.M. (2007) „The Price of
Deviance: Schoolhouse Gothic in Prep School
Literature‟, Children’s Literature, Vol. 35, pp. 102126
Cookson, Peter W., and Persell, C. H. (1985)
Preparing for Power: America's Elite Boarding
Schools. New York: Basic Books
McCloskey, G. N. (1994) „Conformity, Conflict, and
Curriculum: Film Images of Boys' Preparatory
Schools‟, in Farber, P., Provenzo, Jr., E.F, and
Holm, G (Eds) Schooling in the Light of Popular
Culture. Albany: SUNY pp. 173–90
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