A Personal Reflection on Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993)
Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993) – A Personal Reflection
Happy New (School) Year, lovelies! I cannot wait to get back in the classroom and back in the habit of teaching 👏 them 👏 youths 👏👏👏 (as some of you might remember 👏).
Tomorrow I begin again, and I am so excited, so this week I watched the obvious back to school choice, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), in which Delores (Whoopi Goldberg) returns as Sister Mary Clarence to inspire a community and save a rundown Catholic school with the power of her soulful sounds and Gospel music in a climactic ensemble performance.
I did spin the Review Roulette wheel, but as I was watching, I had a change of heart. I want to write something a little more personal about Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.
As you surely know, I am a huge fan of The Blues Brothers (1980) and also School of Rock (2003) and Sister Act 2 is both of those films at the same time or, in other words, a gift. In that review of The Blues Brothers, I wrote about the significance of centering African American artists and their music to the mission of saving the brothers’ Catholic orphanage. The film argues that in order to get our shit together and actually help the people in our country, we have to start correcting the record and giving proper dues to the Black artists and communities in American history, a lesson we are desperately in need of right the fuck now, too. The review linked to School of Rock is actually about Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995), a breathtaking film about time and travel, but I put it in conversation with two of Linklater’s other films, Dazed and Confused (1993) and School of Rock, to discuss his approach to both the passage of time and capturing something beautifully human in each stage of life, including for the latter, childhood.
Sister Act 2 does all of this, and I found it really moving to return to this film as an adult who is going back into the classroom at such a fucked up time in this world to try to help young people navigate it better and encourage their interests, even when this cold ass world might find them frivolous. Sister Mary Clarence helps kids whom society and the Church’s administration have given up on. She encourages them to quite literally find their own voices and raise them up together in a choir, helps them see their potential and (crucially) decide for themselves if they want to pursue it.
That Before Sunrise review is titled “Not All Potential Has to be Realized” and I stand so fucking firm behind that sentiment. You should never feel guilty for not living up to the vision someone else has for you, and I think that guilt is something we have to unlearn ourselves and help others unlearn too. Some “potential” is actually just the projection of others, and maybe you would be good as hell at the thing they didn’t do, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it. This expectation is so central to how so many students approach education, especially in higher ed because society tells young people they should go to college or major in a “high earning potential subject” (which means fuck all), even if they aren’t certain it’s for them.
This dichotomy is central to the main student who ultimately carries the final performance. Rita (Lauryn Hill) is desperate to be a singer, but her mother (ironically Sheryl Lee Ralph) refuses, arguing that she cannot make a career out of singing. Her expectations are later mimicked by the parents in School of Rock who pressure their children into a rigorous classical education and shun the idea of frivolity, aka creative intelligence and expression. Rita ultimately finds the confidence to support both her own dreams and her community, and she defies her mother’s limitations to pursue the potential she has chosen for herself to pursue.
And I think this message is really important for us to keep in mind as teachers, professors, and facilitators. My expectations for students are not always correct, and I am so excited to go into class tomorrow with those expectations and walk out with different ones. I hope to inspire my students in the way Sister Mary Clarence does by bringing her big energy, her own talents, and her empathetic dedication to the classroom. Admittedly, the film’s presentation of the rest of the school really, really falls apart on the whole dedication to education message and does not stand up to even minimal scrutiny, but there is a heart we can follow.
In one excellent moment of solid teaching, Sister Mary Clarence gives Rita a copy of Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke and tells her the key bit of advice as pertains to her situation: “if you wake up in the morning and can’t think of anything but singing, you’re a singer.” Where her mother framed singing as not worth doing because it had no earning potential, Sister Mary Clarence stripped away that capitalist approach. Singing has intrinsic value because it makes Rita happy. Singing brings her closer to her community, and it empowers her to be more herself while having fun doing something she loves and is good at. I can only hope to find that thing for my students and encourage the hell out of it.
History education is “worth it” for so many reasons (financial among them as we know from so many damn studies of businesses hiring history grads for their critical thinking and sequencing skills!). Cultural studies are “worth it” for so many reasons. Watching movies and writing essays about them is “worth it” for so many damn reasons, and I cannot wait to teach the intrinsic value of learning for the sake of learning, thinking for the sake of thinking, and experiencing new information for the sake of experiences. I absolutely love that Sister Act 2 says “fuck your capitalist audit of education, learn what you want to learn and expand your mind, cherub, and have fun doing it” because that’s what I want to say all the damn time (and something Ben recently wrote about in The Saturday Evening Post).
My late father-in-law was a professor for 45 years, and for the last decade+ of his career, would watch School of Rock before every new school year because of this shared philosophy. You have to believe in your students. You have to remember that the potential they see in themselves is the most important potential they have, and you have to nurture that. And above all, you have to have fun, because if we’re not having fun in the classroom, if the students aren’t invested in the fun-factor of thinking and processing and unlocking the map of their own minds to see that potential you’re trying to nurture, what actually is the point? What are we even doing if not putting our students at the center of our pedagogy before exams and essays, before grades, before content even? Early in the film, Mother Superior (Maggie Smith) asks Delores to come teach at the school and bring her invigorating spirit. Delores is shocked and asks “what would I teach?” to which Mother Superior says, “Teach the children!” That’s the good shit right there. Teach the children. Spirit, confidence, conviction, encouragement, thoughtfulness, passion, skills, all of this comes before content.
Going into this school year, I’ve been thinking about my father-in-law a lot. He told me to use the time when I was unemployed to read everything I possibly could about my subject, and I definitely did not do that, I opted for rigorous therapy instead, but I’d like to think he’d forgive me by my remembering that bit of pedagogical advice. I may not have watched School of Rock, but Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit predates it and is actually a lot closer to the kind of classroom I’ll be going into tomorrow, although I won’t be leading a Gospel choir in a hip hop version of “The Hymn of Joy” featuring the line, “You down with G-O-D? Yeah, you know me!”
Leave a Reply