Should Hundert have been so very straight?

However, I'll close by saying that if you think that the film has a hidden meaning of homosexuality, then you’re entitled to your opinion.

Thanks; I appreciate your "agreeing to disagree" :) If it's not flogging a dead horse, however, I'd like to just explain what I meant by a few things.

I didn’t see this at all. There’s nothing unusual about a teacher playing baseball with students at a private boarding school.

Yes, but this was a school where it was established, earlier on, that you "keep to the path". An easy-to-understand metaphor establishes the path as the way of rules and order, and the grass as the less clearly defined area. With this in mind, watch Hundert as he steps off the path onto the grass and joins in with the boys in their not-strictly-allowed game of baseball. When he runs off instead of owning up, he's *definitely* in the dodgy moral zone.

And I think his ball smashing through the headmaster’s window was done more for comedic pause in the movie and to show that his character can have fun and not always be a stuffy professor. They weren’t breaking any rules by playing baseball and the window breaking was merely an accident. It wasn’t a big deal.

It was to the teacher who had his car window broken by that thing! :) Furthermore, Hundert has been going on about responsibility, truth and consequences right up until that point, so for him to hide instead of marching up to his colleague and apologizing/offering to pay for a new window... As I said before, it's a real step down from the high moral pedestal. For someone like Hundert, that is a big deal.

I think the scene simply shows how he can relate to the boys on their level and be a friend and ordinary guy. Since the movie centered around Bell, yes he was featured in the baseball scene. But to say Bell had some sort of influence on Hundert to break rules is really a stretch.

It is Bell who invites Hundert to step off "the path" and join the boys in their game of baseball. Hundert accepts. When he smashes his colleague's car window with the ball, Hundert does the lax moral thing instead of the principled thing.... Yes, I still say Bell is a bad influence on Hundert.

He was a great teacher who tried to help a boy within a powerful family to become a better person. Every example that you gave for your Hundert is attracter to bell theory could be expalined by this more simple explanation as well.

So he's not a gay man, but rather a snob who thought it would be a good thing to "get in" with the scion of a powerful family? To the extent that he's willing to screw over scholarship-boy Blythe in order to favour rich-boy Bell? If that is the case, I've just lost all respect for Hundert and would dispute your definition of him as a great teacher! ;)

Plus, to say that Hundert was helping Bell because of homosexual motivations, completely goes against the meaning of the movie, IMO. He was not driven by selfish motives.

To my mind, "gay" does not necessarily mean "selfish". I don't see it as a case of a gay man being a sexual predator, I see it as a case of Hundert falling victim to a romantic infatuation. He sees Bell as a boy with potential for goodness, and decides that he, Hundert, will be the one to bring this goodness out. However, this romanticization of Bell makes him deliberately blind to Bell's nastier qualities. Hundert excuses these qualities whilst a stronger teacher would punish them, or at the very least take care to see Bell's good AND bad points together. Most importantly, Hundert moves the goalposts so that Bell gets a chance he really doesn't deserve, and protects Bell instead of exposing him as a cheater. That, to me, implies that his feelings for Bell are something more than teacher-pupil.

Finally... If there's no attraction or affection there, why does Bell get under his skin so much? Hundert must have had problem pupils before, why does this one matter? ;)

He was driven by his desire to see society progress and for his students to make a positive contribution.

True, in the main he was, and I would argue that it is this trait which redeems him. He "stepped off the path" briefly with Bell, but at the end of the film it's established that he did so much good overall that he shouldn't let one lapse of judgement mar his view of what was, on the whole, a brilliant teaching career.

I think this is a brilliant post, and probably deserves its own thread on this forum!

Your point is an entirely valid one - why does it all have to boil down to sex, why can't it just be about admiration and wanting to do the best for this boy?

To which I can only offer the answer that in my opinion Hundert's actions have that downward spiral which I usually associate with romantic infatuation. Note how he keeps on pushing his own moral boundaries further and further, until he does things which could get him into serious trouble (running off after sending the ball through his colleague's window) and which are morally indefensible (cutting Blythe to favour Bell). Bell means so much to him that he is willing to trangress his own moral code not once, but several times. Friendship, respect, even pity doesn't usually cause Person A to do that for Person B. Devotion, however, does.

There's also a certain "gut reaction" I got from Bell's contemptuous remark about the togas, and indeed from the fact that he is good-looking and charismatic. Professional teachers should be immune from their pupils' charisma: when a seasoned educator starts to fall for the charisma of one student to the extent that discipline and fairness goes out of the window, one has to ask why. It could be that that student represents everything that the teacher wishes he was, but nonetheless the teacher should maintain enough distance to distinguish between what is good in the student, and what is bad. Hundert doesn't do this.

To sum up, we both agree that Hundert loses his professionalism over Bell - it's just a disagreement as to the degree of personal feeling involved here ;)