#*whiplash

If you want the fucking part, earn it!

but it keeps getting reblogged w/ this added tag meta saying that this scene — andrew eventually choosing to talk about what happened — is andrew “becoming fletcher” and how andrew has “no sense of justice” and speaking out is just andrew’s way of spitefully getting back at fletcher

and every time i see those tags i feel sick. because i’ve been where andrew is, where a teacher has hurt you physically and otherwise, but that teacher is in such good standing in the community that you feel like maybe you’re just imagining it and that by complaining you’re being a pussy, that maybe you should just accept the honor of having studied under this brilliant mentor no matter how they hurt you. 

and andrew’s response, his kind of seemingly cool, detached resentment at being pressured to talk about what fletcher did and therefore admit to being a victim, is absolutely standard of people who have been abused. 

and to see that moment going around w/ this commentary that andrew — a nineteen year old kid who was terrorized and physically assaulted by his teacher — is just morphing into another version of that teacher by virtue of reporting his abuse? 

fletcher screams at andrew that’s he’s not strumming his acoustic guitar gently enough

i would be lying if i said my first instinct upon seeing that video wasn’t to make a whiplash joke but your friendly anonymous message has given me an excuse to talk about a thing in whiplash that i like, which is:

andrew is not a naturally amazing drummer. he wasn’t a naturally amazing drummer as a child. he isn’t a naturally amazing drummer at the beginning of the story. fletcher didn’t walk into a practice room and see a prodigy, he walked into a practice room and saw a teenager and a capable drummer with a well of passion that was theretofore mostly untapped. a teenager with drive.

i think there’s a heft leant to the story by andrew’s ordinariness. it wouldn’t have been as interesting or as transformative a movie if andrew was an established genius, because like. to what end would fletcher want to bring this boy under his power — to encompass and push and carve him into a Real Artist™ — if andrew started the movie off as the fuckin drumming mozart?