Chapter 4

It was my first day back to school; it was, like all previous years, highly uncomfortable. Surrounding me were fifteen unrecognizable faces, each filled with the eagerness that comes with a new semester of college. With the time I had taken off from school, I was at least a year older than any other student. Being in a three-hundred level course meant, more likely, that I was two years older than the other students, maybe three.

Out of place and extremely self-conscious, I purposely sat in a corner, keeping my eyes on my notebook in front of me while absorbing the sounds of the quickly filling room. Being the first day, everyone was early – a full 5 minutes before class was even scheduled to start. I could sense the anticipation of the entrance of our professor. The course was brand new, titled, enticingly enough, “Alternative Readings of the Television sitcom” and taught by a Professor Becker; since our English department was on the small side, most students recognized the names of our more prominent professors immediately. From the buzz around the room, I gathered that no one had heard of Mr. Becker. With two minutes until start time, he walked in.

Everyone stopped, all heads turned towards the door. He was younger than I expected; in fact, he looked like a newly minted Doctoral student just embarking on his road towards full-fledged professorship. (Later online research would reveal him to be just that; recently appointed, this was his first year as a full-time faculty member) To give Mr. Becker credit, he took the sudden attention with the casualness of a tenured faculty member. He just nodded, a quick grin spreading across his face,

“You don’t need have to pay attention to me yet…class doesn’t begin for at least another minute and a half…”

The comment set the tone for his course – one that I soon found great pleasure in. I was an English major, in a school where an English major studied Literary and Cultural Studies rather than straight literature. And when I saw the course, I immediately thought that studying television as a cultural text would be a fine excuse for my habit of having the thing on constantly.

For some reason, whether it was his slightly off-beat humor, the occasionally self-deprecating revelations he made off-handedly during a class discussion, or that aura of a slightly nerdy academic, I was intrigued. Unlike others, whether professors or fellow students, I found him engaging. He spoke with a sense of…well…knowledge may be the best way to describe it. He emanated an air of casual confidence; you trusted his analysis of the subject matter but felt that, if you disagreed, you could approach him. Perhaps it was because of his age, which meant his distance from us, his students, was not that great. Whatever it was, it was appealing to meet someone who could teach without being didactic, who seemed open to discussion rather than lecturing.

Mr. Becker taught the course in ways that appealed specifically to someone as slightly obsessive/compulsive as me. The semester was completely laid out, down to the pages for the weekly readings and the time needed to view specific shows. This allowed me to read about a week ahead, which always made me feel better. It was his approach to television watching that truly hooked me. It looked at ways in which television characters played with the standard stereotypes, using identities specifically chosen to make them relatable to both the audience watching and their function within the show. We talked about ways in which certain character “quirks” made the character accessible or “real” without alienating the core viewing audience. We dove into the reasons why viewers became attached to who they were watching and why. Through his class, I was finding importance in a pastime that was, unfortunately, becoming a larger and larger part of my life.

For me, it wasn’t a chore to go to class, to do the homework, to participate in the discussions. I found myself always looking forward to class, to see the ways in which the most common things about a sitcom could be interpreted, analyzed, talked about. The point was not to create bullshit about what you were watching, even though that was really easy. It was actually creating a line of argument to support how you saw what you saw. It was bringing meaning to a scene or a character’s behavior that seemed not only plausible, but integral, to understanding the basic premises of the conflict, action or dialogue. And when it happened, when I found that line of argument that made the pieces fall together, it was like seeing a full image after playing connect the dots – what was once impossible to discern was now impossible to ignore. And, to my great humor, it was giving meaning to a medium that was often brushed off as low-brow rubbish.

The greatest challenge facing me in the course was our semester-long research paper. In a month of research and reading, I had yet to figure out exactly what interested me. Googling various general headings, I eventually found an overview for a paper Mr. Becker presented at a recent literary conference. It was an interesting premise, discussing the developing role of the folly character in sitcoms. Mr. Becker argued that, beyond comic relief, the folly character was central to the success of the sitcom itself. Without appealing follies or sidekicks, characters that were obviously stereotypes but appealing enough to find a following among the viewing audience, the sitcom, he argued, was bound to fail. I was attracted to the argument since it dealt so specifically with characters that were generally dismissed.

I found the premise inspiring. I thought, perhaps, I might find something here to pursue. There was only one problem. The online text was abbreviated; I couldn’t find a complete version anywhere. As part of the conference, the paper had not yet been published, which meant there was no way to get a hard copy from the library. If I really wanted to read the material, or even get a clear understanding of the full argument, I had to go directly to the source.

My growing respect for Mr. Becker made the prospect of individual interaction intimidating. While class had been in session for over a month, I had never contacted him personally. In class, I answered the occasional question, handed in my work on time. But this was amongst a room-full of over-eager students ready and willing to call attention to themselves, each with the hope that their over-extended commentaries would help in defining them from the others. I mostly sat in my same corner, listening to the debates and secretly devising double-meanings to the comments of my fellow classmates. It was an intimate soap-opera running on the screen in my head.

The prospect of speaking to him seemed, somehow, akin to prospect of interviewing a famous movie star. I was nervous, jittery about a one-on-one meeting. It took me a full week after reading the abbreviated work before I contacted him through email. I think I was slightly shaking when I hit the send button. I developed strange and wild scenarios in my head about what might happen next. I wasn’t worried about getting the full text – he was actively assisting several students in finding research material. I was just afraid of what he might think of me doing work so closely related to his own. What if he wanted my opinions? What if my questions were insipid or simplistic? What would happen if he viewed my interest as foolish and unsophisticated?

I sent him an email late on a Friday evening, just before leaving the library. It was one of those hasty decisions made after hours of frustrated searching through the numerous books and references listings I had found. Everything seemed tangentially related to my own interests, but nothing seemed clearly usable. I was becoming somewhat frantic. The pressure of attempting to impress Mr. Becker with my own research, compounded by the fact that I was not actually finding anything to support it, was making me second guess my abilities. This was a rare experience, one of the few times when I was losing confidence in my academic prowess. And once that went, I had nothing to fall back on.

To my surprise, I had a response by the next morning. Since I was up at 7:00 am on a Saturday, and I had sent the email at around midnight on Friday, I was amazed that he had time to read the message. I checked the time stamp, which read 12:35 am. Damn, what the hell was he doing replying to a student’s email on a Friday night that late? Why was he even reading email that late?

++++

I am surprised you came across that paper. I’ll bring a full copy to Monday’s class. Since you are looking at my work, would you like to come in and discuss it? Let me know. I’d be happy to give you some more source material. I’ve attached a resource list that I think would be helpful to you. I’d also like to discuss the direction you are taking with your own work. Let me know when you are free to meet.

Mr. Becker

I re-read the message a couple of times. This was exactly what I had feared. He wanted to meet in person. Not only did he want to meet, he made it seem mandatory. There wasn’t a good way to get out of a personal meeting. That meant I would have to explain myself in person, without the filter of writing things down on paper and editing them. That meant I would have to talk on the fly. I would have to be spontaneous and well-spoken. I would have to speak without stuttering, stumbling, or mumbling. How the hell was I going to do that? I sent a response email thanking Mr. Becker in advance for that paper, completely ignoring the latter half of the email. Then I went out for a run.