Mick Travis and the Deadly Quadrangle

I suppose this is as good a time as any to finally get around to watching Lindsay Anderson's If.... (1968). I'm getting near the end of the "Up Series" of documentaries, in which at least three of the boys attended schools much like the public school depicted in Anderson's film. And in another ten (?) days, the final volume of the most celebrated series of novels about British public schools ever written, Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows, will be released.

The first thought that occurs to my mind is that I don't have enough "real-world" evidence to go on about British public schools ("public" here meaning upper-class and exclusive) to make a considered judgment, even though I've been absorbing British culture all my life. How realistic is the depiction of public schools meant to be in If....? Was corporal punishment by other students still allowed in the late Sixties? (I know the young Eric Blair and other Etonians were rejecting it in the early Twenties.) Was OTC mandatory in the late Sixties, as depicted here? The precise nature of reality is important because so much of If.... is a fantasy, and that fantasy is never clearly demarcated.

If.... is the story of three public-school sixth-formers who rebel against their school finally by shooting and blowing up their classmates, masters, and their families. Of course, the shadow of Columbine looms over such a depiction. And issues from that tragedy span reality and fiction: bullying, ostracism, labeling. The ending of the movie, almost everyone seems to agree, is a fantasy (one of the mothers, for instance, grabs a rifle and starts shooting at the rebels). Right here I'd like to make some sententious declaration, but I remember what happened to another maxim-giver at the hands of a college student ("Thou, wretched, rash, intruding fool...").

To J. K. Rowlings's credit, she does show the evils of prejudice (in this case ethnic) and of bullying as well at Hogwarts, but there are still the worship of sport (quidditch is like rugby) and the rivalries among the various houses. Harry Potter, like Mick Travis, is pretty much the outsider (again, often forced to be), and a rebel, but for a good cause.

The first time we see Mick, he is called Guy Fawkes for his hat and the scarf hiding the moustache he grew over the summer.

It's the first time audiences saw those eyes up close, those eyes that could be so faun-like, yet a centimeter wider, become a gargoyle's, and with a little liner, are those of a--well, use your gulliver and supply your own Nadsat phrase.