Consider The Dark Knight. It’s awesome! It has all the best actors, directors, special effects etc. Now imagine if you took the same script and asked the local middle school to reproduce it. It’d suck. That’s education.
Oddly enough, sometimes you get the opposite effect. “Arsenic and Old Lace” is hilarious when performed by random high school students, but under no circumstances should professional actors ever be allowed to perform it. If the performances are too “good”, the atmosphere goes from ridiculous and starts veering toward creepy (but not quite creepy enough to be genuine horror).
There might be an uncanny valley effect involved, in which the play becomes good again if the actors are of superstar quality. I could see this happening if certain “amateur mistakes” are actually required for the play to succeed, and ordinary actors who aren’t superstars wouldn’t realize this.
I loved the version my local high school put on, but when my local community theater—which does hire professional actors—put it on, they played everything far too straight and it stopped being funny. I’ve never seen the movie, though, but my father reported the same experience as I did; he also loved Arsenic and Old Lace when his high school put it on, but he never cared for the movie very much.
Sorry, I don’t think I’m understanding your point. Are you saying that education is analogous to “Arsenic and Old Lace”? That it’s better when it’s performed by incompetent people than when it’s performed by competent ones?
There is no deep point, other than that throwing more resources at a production doesn’t always make it better. (Consider the film adaptations of various stage musicals—many excellent stage musicals have made mediocre movies.) Mostly, though, I’m just a compulsive nitpicker. ;)
I will now proceed to miss the point. ;)
Oddly enough, sometimes you get the opposite effect. “Arsenic and Old Lace” is hilarious when performed by random high school students, but under no circumstances should professional actors ever be allowed to perform it. If the performances are too “good”, the atmosphere goes from ridiculous and starts veering toward creepy (but not quite creepy enough to be genuine horror).
Disagree. The movie, which is a straightforward adaptation of the play, is creepy and hilarious; it’s quite good.
There might be an uncanny valley effect involved, in which the play becomes good again if the actors are of superstar quality. I could see this happening if certain “amateur mistakes” are actually required for the play to succeed, and ordinary actors who aren’t superstars wouldn’t realize this.
I loved the version my local high school put on, but when my local community theater—which does hire professional actors—put it on, they played everything far too straight and it stopped being funny. I’ve never seen the movie, though, but my father reported the same experience as I did; he also loved Arsenic and Old Lace when his high school put it on, but he never cared for the movie very much.
Sorry, I don’t think I’m understanding your point. Are you saying that education is analogous to “Arsenic and Old Lace”? That it’s better when it’s performed by incompetent people than when it’s performed by competent ones?
There is no deep point, other than that throwing more resources at a production doesn’t always make it better. (Consider the film adaptations of various stage musicals—many excellent stage musicals have made mediocre movies.) Mostly, though, I’m just a compulsive nitpicker. ;)