“Evil” Inspires (When Taught by Prof. Carrillo)
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| Had you taken Prof. Carrillo’s class on “Evil,” you, too, could have written about Marilyn Manson. |
For this post, I’ll just quote at length from GW student Ali Peters, writing in Monday’s Hatchet:
It began with Marilyn Manson. One of my first college assignments was to dissect the lyrics to “The Beautiful People.”For a kid coming from a suburban high school where slapstick poet Billy Collins and artist Salvador Dalí were considered controversial, Manson’s “The Beautiful People” brought education to a whole new level. I was completely out of my league.Filing through YouTube videos of zombies, women in lacy straight jackets and dental torture devices, I began to wonder: Was this professor serious? It was the first time I had ever heard of shock rock, and as it was chock-full of cryptic one-liners like, “Hate every motherfucker that’s in your way.” I was definitely shocked.The class was called “Evil.” Looking back, it’s not surprising that the simple, one-word nomenclature in itself prompted so many eager students to register for the course. The professor asked us to call him by his first name, so Hache quickly became the subject of my weekly phone calls home. Evil is where I was introduced to what would be a never-ending slew of ‘ism’s, like Panopticism and other concepts I had never encountered before. Every class was an adventure, whether we were picking apart Manson or debating post-Columbine massacre literature. I was excited and challenged. I finally felt like I had arrived. I was in college.
High praise indeed for Prof. H.G. Carrillo, affectionately known to students by his first initial. Students considering their spring schedules should consider Prof. Carrillo’s ENGL 1310, “Critical Readings in English,” a course that will focus on the short story and on techniques of literary analysis. The course will be held Mondays and Wednesday at 3:45 p.m.
