Now, are you a rusher, or are you a dragger,
or are you going to be on my [BLEEP] time?
I'm going to be on your time.
This is Terence Fletcher.
In this film, JK Simmons delivers
an Oscar-winning performance as the sadistic conductor
of the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory's competing studio
band in New York City.
Terence Fletcher is highly intelligent and violently
manipulative, utilizing an array of draconian tactics
like exaggeration, triangulation, and humiliation
to erode the psyche of his eager and naive students,
in effort to bend them to his will.
He then justifies these behaviors
as coming off as a man who is just trying to get the best out
of his students, explaining it away
with an inflated rumor about two famous jazz musicians.
Terence Fletcher is representative
of the horrors that can occur when a malignant abuser finds
himself in a position of power and left unchecked.
If I ever find one of these lying around again,
I swear to [BLEEP] God I will stop being so polite.
Get the [BLEEP] out of my sight before I demolish you.
Whiplash is a 2014 Oscar-winning drama starring
Miles Teller and JK Simmons.
Written and directed by Damien Chazelle,
the film follows an ambitious young music student,
Andrew Neiman, as he navigates the inherent pressures
of working his way up the ladder as a drummer
at New York's most competitive music academy.
He eventually ends up under the instruction
of the conductor of the school's competing studio band, Terence
Fletcher, a teacher who goes to an extreme length
to get the most out of his students.
Student-teacher relationships are a crucial part
of our development as human beings.
Outside of our immediate family, our teachers
can be some of the most influential people
in our lives.
This is what makes films like Dead Poets Society and School
of Rock so impactful.
The student-teacher relationship is something
that we all connect with on a personal level.
This is even more true when you think about higher education.
As young students begin to hone in
on what it is they want to contribute to in this world,
they rely on the instruction and advice of their professor
to guide them into their careers.
In Whiplash, the character of Andrew Neiman wants greatness.
And he wants to become the next Buddy Rich.
And all these wants, drives, and skills
are set up perfectly during the film's opening scene.
We can see his focus and determination,
we see his passion.
When Fletcher enters the room, he uses the phrase--
You know who I am?
We understand that Terence Fletcher
is at the top of some power structure
within the confines of Shaffer Academy,
and that, whoever he is, it's important for Andrew
to impress him.
This is where Terence Fletcher's manipulation of Andrew Neiman
begins.
Abusers who are good at what they do
spend an inordinate amount of time
figuring out what people want before embarking on their quest
to bend them to their will.
When you put these people into an environment
like a music school, these abusers no longer
have to do any work whatsoever in figuring out
what people desire.
Just the fact that Andrew Neiman was accepted into the Shaffer
Academy of Music tells someone like Terence Fletcher
everything they need to know about what the student actually
wants.
The fact that this kid is up late practicing on drums
tells Fletcher that he's willing to do whatever it takes
to succeed at what he does.
And those two things add up to something
incredibly exploitable.
The thing that makes Terence Fletcher so terrifying to us
as viewers is that he seems to have a purpose for being
so terrible.
Everything Terence Fletcher does in this film
is a performance centered around one thing and one thing
only-- manipulating his students into delivering
the best performance possible.
When Terence Fletcher finally invites
Neiman to join the studio band, he
tells him to show up to rehearsal
at 6:00 AM, when the rehearsal didn't even
start until 9:00 AM.
Fletcher doesn't even care as to whether or not
Neiman is there at 6:00 AM or not, but Neiman does.
This is an early opening move in Fletcher's attempts
to bend Neiman to his will.
During this initial rehearsal scene,
we catch our first glimpse of Terence Fletcher's
abusive tactics when he intimidates a student
into a false confession of being out of tune.
After humiliating the student and kicking him out
of the band, Fletcher then reveals
that not knowing whether or not you're out of tune
is an even bigger problem.
For the record, Metz wasn't out of tune.
You were, Erickson.
But he didn't know, and that's bad enough.
This is the music academy equivalent
to a public execution, the one in which an innocent victim was
punished for something he didn't even
really do in the first place.
This entire situation feels like one of Terence Fletcher's ways
of establishing his dominance over Neiman before putting him
on the drums to see what he can do.
During a break, Fletcher approaches Neiman
and starts casually probing him about his personal life.
This all seems very pleasant.
But he's really just utilizing charm to disarm Neiman.
This is another abusive tactic known
as love bombing, in which an abuser attempts
to influence a person through demonstrations
of attention or affection.
There's a key moment in this dialogue, in which
Terence Fletcher asks Neiman--
Your parents musicians?
No.
What do they do?
From the outside, it seems like Fletcher
is asking this so he can throw it back in his face later.
But this question is really the moment
in which Fletcher realizes that he can do whatever
he wants to injure Neiman.
Without any ties to the music industry,
Fletcher understands that Neiman is reliant on his approval
alone to achieve what he wants, thus opening
the door for Fletcher to basically operate
from a position of total authority
over his career trajectory.
Once Neiman gets onto the drum set,
Fletcher continues the seemingly supportive persona
that he adopted in the hallway.
He even goes so far as to call Neiman Buddy Rich.
If you recall the opening scene of the film,
Neiman has a picture of Buddy Rich on the wall
of his rehearsal space.
This is Fletcher appealing to Neiman's drive and motivation,
before completely tearing it away.
During some of Neiman's drum fills,
Fletcher stops him and begins informing him
that he is not drumming at the tempo he wants him to play.
Little trouble there.
This is where the tactic of withdrawing comes into play.
The emotional high Neiman received from Fletcher
validating him in the hallway is slowly
being replaced with disappointment.
And inside a human mind, this tactic
causes chemical reactions akin to coming down
from a really potent drug.
Fletcher then begins moving the goalposts back and forth
for Neiman, creating an unreachable target.
This is an extremely concentrated version of yet
another manipulation tactic called crazy-making,
the goal of which is to make the victim doubt their own
abilities and/or , sanity, so that you can further warp
their view of the world later on.
Creating this impossible tempo to reach
frustrates and terrifies Neiman, who at this point
is just a sweet kid trying his hardest
to impress his instructor.
This continues back and forth until a physical threat
presents itself.
Why do you suppose I just hurled a chair at your head, Neiman?
Neiman supposes it's the tempo.
This is Fletcher basically screaming,
look what you made me do, at someone
he is currently abusing.
A now-stunned Neiman begins to flounder over his speech,
sweat, and become completely and utterly nerve-racked.
And this is where Fletcher goes in for the kill,
and begins physically assaulting Neiman in front
of the entire ensemble.
This 50-year-old man is literally beating his tempo
into this 19-year-old's psyche, while screaming in his face.
Humiliation is the next tactic Fletcher uses to break Neiman.
And when he finally begins crying,
Fletcher knows that he has succeeded
at what he intended to do in the first place, which
was to completely and utterly break his student down
to tears, and then embarrass him in front of the entire ensemble
before removing him from the drums.
He is stripping Neiman of his humanity in an effort
to mold him into the type of musician he wants him to be,
which was the goal from the moment he announced
he'd be placing him on the drums in the first place.
Neiman is completely and utterly broken.
And the next time we see him, he is practicing the drums
until his hands literally bleed.
If you delve deep enough into any artistic or athletic
pursuit, you will find some fringe mentalities
on how arts and athletics should be approached.
There seem to be a theme of needing to suffer greatly
in order to generate a desired outcome in performance.
The "no pain, no gain" mentality has been passed down
onto generations for centuries.
And the idea that in order to achieve greatness,
a person must be broken down and stripped of all their dignity
before proceeding with their career trajectory,
is not unheard of.
While Whiplash takes this mentality
to extreme and brutal levels, Damien Chazelle
is trying to show us that these tactics have a lasting impact
on a young and fragile psyche.
He's telling us that these practices can
begin to erode someone's self-perception,
and cause immense harm in just a few small moments.
After Terence Fletcher's assault,
we then observe Andrew Neiman's downward spiral
into a pattern of unhealthy behaviors
that end up alienating him from his family, friends,
and romantic pursuits throughout the movie.
All of that is borne from his introductory scene
in the studio band's rehearsal room.
He triangulates Neiman again, by bringing another drummer in
to compete for his spot on the band,
forcing three different drummers to play for countless hours,
until the studio drum set is soaked in blood.
He imbues Andrew Neiman with so much pressure,
anxiety, and toxicity that at one point
he leaves the scene of a serious car accident in which he
was severely injured, just to make it
to a performance on time.
Terence Fletcher is a truly terrifying character.
He is a sadistic perfectionist, hell bent
on using verbal, mental, and physical abuse on young adults
to force them into doing exactly what he wants.
JK Simmons delivers a performance
that is rich with subtleties.
And the choices he makes in bringing Terence Fletcher
to life are uncanny.
In the hands of a lesser performer,
Terence Fletcher could come off as seemingly stereotypical.
But the more you observe the nuanced layers Simmons brings
to life through his eye movements and facial tics,
the more you discover.
You begin to see the inner workings
of a victimizing maniac play out through the veneer
of a passionate teacher.
In the mind of Terence Fletcher, all of his abuses
and manipulations are justified because he's
trying to inspire greatness.
And there's nothing more terrifying
than a narcissistic sociopath driven
by a warped sense of purpose, sitting in a position of power.
That's it for this one, folks.
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