The Department of Pedagogical Failure

The film poster for After the Hunt. Courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios.

In 2020, philosopher Amia Srinivasan published an article in the Yale Law Journal titled “Sex as a Pedagogical Failure.” In it, Srinivasan critiques sexual relationships between professors and students, characterizing these relationships as a systemic failure that is inextricably tied to power imbalances such as elitism and patriarchy that are present in the academy. While Luca Guadagnino takes Yale as a stage, the characters of his latest picture, After the Hunt, clearly have not done their prerequisite reading.

Elitism is atmospheric on this Gothic campus, where hierarchy isn’t only in the curriculum vitae but also in the air itself. It’s exhaled in cigarette smoke outside seminar rooms and fermented in the tannins of faculty wine nights. The film is a thriller exploring how privilege corrodes intimacy, a portrayal of sacred boundaries crossed, and an excavation of skeletons in closets.

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