It’s October already, and along with the usual string of Halloween movies, Netflix has added a film to its catalog that was already controversial (and hugely successful at the box office). It’s the movie Bad Teacher, starring Cameron Diaz and Justin Timberlake. It was released 14 years ago, in 2011, and has brought a wave of nostalgia for those who lived through that era and wish it would return. For those who didn’t experience it as adults… it has sparked an interesting debate.
What was considered last decade to be a raunchy R-rated comedy film is now classified by many as “offensive on many levels” and “inappropriate.”
Bad Teacher back in 2011
When it was released, the film grossed no less than $216 million worldwide… on a modest budget of only $20 million. Today, most films have the opposite budget. This film propelled Cameron Diaz to fame for playing an unscrupulous character. In fact, she won several Teen Choice Awards, reflecting the film’s popularity among young people.
The premise is simple and entertaining: Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a selfish high school teacher whose only goal is to marry a rich man and stop working—with the state of public education in the United States is a totally valid opinion and way of looking at life at this point. However, when her fiancé breaks off the engagement, Elizabeth becomes obsessed with getting money for breast augmentation surgery in order to seduce the new rich substitute (Justin Timberlake).
Teacher Elizabeth Halsey is far from a role model: she smokes and drinks at work, shows movies to her students instead of teaching, bribes parents, and even commits fraud to get standardized tests. The bottom line is that this movie celebrates the fact that the protagonist is inherently bad; there is no moral or redemption for this character.
Whitewashing female protagonists
Depending on the era, the film industry will see more pressure to make its main characters completely moral. This already happened with Scarlett O’Hara, the protagonist of Gone with the Wind: although the film did things of dubious ethics, it is not even a hint of what the original character is like in Margaret Mitchell’s novel.
By the time the script was handed to actress Vivien Leigh, this female character had become meeker. In the film, she only has one daughter with Rhett Butler, Bonnie, while in the original novel she has children with each husband: Wade with her first husband, Charles Hamilton; and a daughter—described as “a bit plain”—with her second husband, Frank Kennedy. The production company thought it was too cruel and ambiguous for Scarlett to have children with husbands she did not love, so they chose not to show that detached motherhood.
Bad Teacher is not at all moderate: it reflects a type of self-righteous person that does exist in society. While the film could be accused of glorifying this type of behavior, it was released for viewers aged 17 and older. At no point did they consider showing it to a young audience that would not understand the satire. Bad Teacher is a parody of traditional romantic comedies. It was counterculture to the sappy Hallmark movies. The possibility that teacher Elizabeth will get away with it is what makes this film a dark and transgressive comedy.
At a time when female empowerment and slogans about owning your body are at odds with the explosive growth of the cosmetic surgery industry, Bad Teacher openly shows how the protagonist believes she can fix her life by getting silicone implants. Have cultural expectations changed, or are we simply unable to openly say what everyone is thinking? If you were an adult in the 2010s, you might enjoy having a laugh watching a film from that era. We miss seeing a little irreverence and political incorrectness in pop culture.