I Saved Latin!
What did you ever do in high school? This week we talk over-achieving, flunking-out and attempted murder in Rushmore.
Yankee Review editor-in-chief, French Club president, Model UN (Russia), Stamp & Coin Club vice-president, Debate Team captain, Lacrosse team manager, Calligraphy Club president, Astronomy Society founder, Fencing Team captain, Track & Field J. V. decathlon, Bombardment Society founder, Kung Fu Club yellow belt, Trap & Skeet Club founder, Rushmore Beekeepers president, Yankee Racers founder, Max Fischer Players director, Backgammon Society founder and member of the wrestling team.
These are just some of the highlights from Max Fischer’s ample portfolio of extracurricular activities from his time at Rushmore Academy. He may have one of the most colourful CVs of any Rushmore student, a would-be Renaissance man among his peers, but Max is also failing school and failing at life.
Rushmore (1998) is the second feature film from Wes Anderson, beloved filmmaker of hipsters, oddballs and neurodivergents everywhere. Max Fisher (Jason Schwartzman) is in danger of losing his scholarship to the private school of Rushmore due to his slipping grades. When he becomes obsessed with the newly arrived first grade teacher his mission to build her an aquarium on school grounds secures his expulsion. Max struggles to find his footing in a public school so underfunded, it doesn’t even have a fencing team. Meanwhile he is rejected by Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams) and discovers his ageing, married friend, Herman Blume (Bill Murray), is having an affair with her. This provokes an escalating rivalry between Max and Herman culminating in attempted (but failed) homicide. Max alienates himself from his friends and slips into a prolonged depression before reconciling himself to the reality of public school, repairing his damaged relationships and producing a new hit play.
Find something you love and then do it for the rest of your life…
Like many neurodivergent people, Max has deep and abiding special interests but also craves novelty. Unable to focus on his number-one priority - staying in Rushmore by improving his grades - his attention is dispersed between an already considerable portfolio of interests and many shiny new objects that catch his eye. As the movie progresses we see him pursuing more side projects, against the express warnings of Rushmore’s principal, including saving Latin, attempting to build an aquarium on campus and actively stalking a primary school teacher Miss Cross.
While I spent most of my first three years of secondary school simply trying to survive in this overwhelmingly hostile environment, in fourth year – a sort of ‘gap year’ between junior and senior cycles in Ireland – I came out of my shell and developed a Max-like, or Max-inspired, capacity for joining things. Increasingly disinterested in and uninspired by the academic side of school, I began volunteering for everything on offer. I visited the elderly, organised the school arts fair, went carol singing at Christmas, volunteered at the local charity shop, designed and painted the set for the school play, signed up for the mock trial and the President’s Award, and anything else that would keep me out of the classroom.
This pattern has continued throughout my adult life, in college and beyond where, for the longest time, I wanted to say yes to everything and be part of everything. Much of this was due to FOMO but I also had a genuine interest and delight in learning new things and trying new experiences whether it was swimming, hiking, languages, dancing, yoga, Tai Chi, art, theatre, musical instruments, healing, accompaniment, activism research, conferences, presentations or publications. I could make a project of anything and would fill my weeks with working, studying, socialising and multiple side projects with barely a second to catch my breath until I would, inevitably crash and burn, every few months or so.
The pandemic was the first thing in many years to really slow me down, pause and confront many of the things I had been running away from or distracting myself from. It’s no coincidence that this forced period of prolonged stasis eventually led me to discovering my neurodivergence. Before the pandemic I had never stopped long enough to let myself notice, never mind acknowledge many of my struggles. Since then I have embarked on a radical decluttering of my time and letting myself live my best hermit life.
But even with this new knowledge and understanding of myself, certain tendencies persist. Perhaps now, more than ever, I can relate to Max’s inability to focus on one thing. My writing life is testament to my propensity for distraction, my tendency to be working on multiple projects at the same time and my difficulties prioritising VERY IMPORTANT PROJECTS, like finishing my PhD thesis. The difference between then and now is that I've learned to let go of the guilt and find a balance between novelty (this newsletter) and long-term goals (my thesis).
With friends like you, who needs friends?
While Max dedicates himself fully to the maintenance of his renaissance-man ambitions, he also craves acceptance, concocting elaborate fantasies of academic achievement and popularity. In reality, he rarely finds either at Rushmore. This has much to do with class divisions and Max’s deep insecurities about his blue collar background in a world of boys ‘born with a silver spoon in their mouths.’ Yet Max, with his antiquated interests, dress and overly formal speech, is often simply out of step with his peers. Like many autistic people Max has few friends his own age, keeping the company of either much younger or much older people.
In secondary school I struggled to find my place and make friends in public school environment where difference and bookishness were rarely appreciated. Within weeks of my first term, I had already drawn all kinds of negative attention from teachers and students alike for asking questions, expressing my opinion and, crime of crimes, expressing an interest in the things we were studying. My insistence on participating in class, despite almost debilitating shyness, won me a reputation as an insufferable nerd and show-off.
The greatest difference between Max and I, was that I hated, rather than loved, my secondary school and wanted more than anything else to get out of there as soon as possible. During my last two years I dropped all my extra curricular activities and was consumed by the pressure to study, do well in my exams and prove to myself and everyone else that I was not a failure. Like Max, however, my grades were not stellar and certainly did not reflect the effort I felt I was putting in. But, I had not written a hit play nor done anything else that might set me apart from the crowd and save me from crushing mediocrity.
The only reason I survived six years of secondary school was because I found a group of friends who were equally bookish and nerdy and hardworking, many of whom I now suspect were also neurodivergent. I adored them and we formed a protective circle around each other, shielding ourselves from the worst of the disdain, bullying and isolation that may otherwise have come from our peers. (I was told a year or two after leaving school we had been known collectively, and rather derisively, as The A-Team.)
Outside of school I struggled to connect with people my own age, while having no trouble talking to adults or children. I avoided normal teenage activities like team sports or the village disco and aside from my tight circle of school friends, in any other context I always found myself on the fringes of any group, a perpetual outsider.
For many neurodivergent people school is a lonely, isolating and often traumatic experience. We struggle with social cues, our interests often do not match with those of our peers and secondary school fosters an environment where the slightest perception of difference can become grounds for suspicion, exclusion and bullying. In such a context, I feel lucky to have made any friends and, in particular, friends with whom I felt safe being myself and who sustained me through those turbulent years.
Take it easy, Max!
Max’s behaviour throughout the movie becomes increasingly problematic. He stalks Miss. Cross, maims and tries to murder Herman on multiple occasions, fights with all of his friends and lies, a lot, to everyone.
Though Max acts abominably, he’s never a truly detestable character. He’s a fifteen year old in crisis. The loss of his mother at seven is understated but present throughout, he’s rejected by the school he loves and the woman he thinks he loves, betrayed by his friend Herman and struggling to adapt to a new school environment. He goes through the kind of depression I most certainly felt as a teenager, but kept well hidden from the rest of the world and rarely even acknowledged to myself.
His lying is, perhaps, the thing Max has least in common with autistic people. I’m not saying autistic people don’t or can’t lie, but generally speaking we’re less likely to do so and more easily taken in by other people’s lies because we expect honesty and sincerity. Max regains his equilibrium, in part, because he stops lying, scheming and pretending to be something he’s not. By the end of Rushmore, Max has many apologies to make and he does, assembling all the people he has harmed along the way for the opening night of his new play.
Despite expulsion, rejection, depression and dropping out of school Max always manages to remains true to his own quirky and precious self. He finally resigns his Rushmore blazer and chinos for a rather fetching green velvet suit which he wears unashamedly at his new school. He makes friends and continues to pursue his passions, including setting up a kite flying society and writing more plays.
Watching as an adult it’s clear to me now all the ways Max could have and should have treated his father, Margaret or Miss Cross better. Different people will give you different - often polar opposite - accounts of what I was really like as a teenager. For many people I was a grade-A asshole and still am. As another teen desperately craving acceptance, this weighed heavily on me and Max’s detestability and eventual redemption gave me hope that not only can people change, but their opinions can too. I clung to Max, with all his flaws, as a character who made me feel better about all the ways I was failing to be just another normal teenage girl.
Sic transit gloria…