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The Kunstenfestivaldesarts Diary (11)Dateline: 30th May, 2008The Longest Lecture Marathon Rebekah Rousi should be given a medal. If the John Cleese Chair in Silly Lecturing at the University of Totally Trivial Pursuits really existed, she would certainly be its incumbent. At the very least, she should have subsidy from the Ministry of Silly Lectures because she keeps up this stream of hilarious nonsense for 27 hours. And it's obvious that a great deal of effort has actually gone into the writing of this 27 hour-long text and in learning it by heart. Not to mention a great deal of first-hand experience from the other side on the hard wooden benches of lecture theatres. With the help of a seemingly bona fide Powerpoint presentation, she overwhelms us with an endless stream of explanation, in a grating but soporific voice, didactically illustrating words, syllables and connotations in a way which is reminiscent of the Monty Python sketch called Word Association. She does this in the very irritating persona of a smart, young, be-suited and be-spectacled lecturer in one of those newfangled subjects who seem to be continuously deconstructing and analysing things already entirely transparent. This is a well-meaning young woman so utterly convinced of the need to explain, of the efficacy of her analyses, that you really don't know whether you want to laugh or slap her. I wonder what this young lady is called. She should have a name so that she can go down in the annals of university satire. David Lodge created the obsessive Maurice Zap and incompetent David Swallow, denizens of red-brick universities; Malcolm Bradbury created Howard Kirk, 'The History Man', the toad of the glass and steel universities. This young lecturer is the epitome of the mediocrity ubiquitous in Blair's brave new world of skills-based, vocational universities of the 21st century. She might be an Australian Finn, but her persona is contemporary British HE in a nutshell. It's funny and it's terrifying, which is the whole point. I popped back twice to see how she was fairing and even close to the final hour she seemed to be bearing up. I'm full of admiration, and, equally grateful that she finally gave me the opportunity to walk out on a lecturer who was excruciatingly boring in the way I never could have done in my own long university career. And, she was vastly more entertaining than many a toe-cringing lecture through which I've been obliged to grin and bear in the spirit of collegiality. This is performance art with stamina and gusto and pith. I wish I could have been there at the final moment to give her a round of applause and a handshake and even perhaps buy her a beer. >> Next
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