'A Teacher': Is the FX on Hulu show playing on the older woman fantasy to excuse a female predator?
Spoilers for ‘A Teacher’ Episodes 1, 2, and 3
Hannah Fidell’s FX on Hulu series, ‘A Teacher’, is loosely based on her 2013 film of the same name. And in both works, the story follows the romantic relationship between a female teacher and a male high school student.
Claire Wilson (Kate Mara) is a young teacher at a suburban Texas high school. New to the school, she soon gets close to a student called Eric Walker (Nick Robinson). Eric is an intelligent 17-year-old who works hard both in school and at his part-time job. He’s good-looking, sensitive, and intelligent. Claire, who is also a good-looking woman, is in an unsatisfied marriage to her college sweetheart Matt Mitchell (Ashley Zukerman).
Unlike the film, where we see the two already in a relationship from the very beginning, this show (because it is stretched over ten 25-minute episodes) takes the time to build to the relationship. We see the two get close, share secrets, have sexual fantasies about each other, and at the very end of the third episode, finally give in to it and have sex.
The problem with this is that the setup does not feel quite convincing. Yes, Claire is unhappy with her marriage, but does having a predatory relationship with a high school senior who she knows for only a brief period of time feel like the next eventual step? Not by a long shot, especially given that we have not seen her act in a self-destructive manner at all (save one shot of her stealing lipstick from a departmental store while buying a tonne of other stuff).
For Claire, this is a dangerous move that would lose her everything from her job to her reputation to her marriage should they get caught. So, the way they got into the relationship feels thin and somewhat of a forced attempt to present the idea of a female predator.
Women teachers having predatory relationships with young boys is not unheard of, even if it is a lot less common than the opposite happening. But the flimsy setup almost makes it feel like the show wants to make this happen one way or another. And that brings us to a problematic proposition.
This show, while presumably not intending it, plays into two male fantasies. One is the sexual fantasy of the older woman -- a common trope in erotica and pornography, especially in terms of a student-teacher relationship. The idea of an attractive teacher having sexual feelings for a young student would appeal to men simply because it is a fantasy fed to us by popular culture. This, in ways, endangers the female predator getting excused by viewers, just because they like what they see.
The other fantasy is much more insidious. It plays into the idea of women being predators almost as much as men. Can women be predatory? Yes. Have there been women predators? Yes. But is it intrinsically the same thing as predatory men? No. Is there a global crisis of predatory behavior coming from women? No. So, while definitely not attempting to do that, the show veers into territory that can very well become a representation of this fantasy.
Fidell’s handling of the film and of the show seem very different -- almost impossible to recognize in all honesty. But this is just the setup. Hopefully, the show takes a more concrete approach towards the story going forward.
‘A Teacher’ premiered on Tuesday, November 10, 2020, on FX on Hulu with three back-to-back episodes. More episodes in the 10-episodic series will follow every week starting from Tuesday, November 17.