I just read your post on Jake as a non-classic YA hero (which was wonderful), and noticed you listed "My Teacher is an Alien" series with a "dumb jock" as a villain character, which is totally true as of the first (and second?? I can't remember) books, but if you have more thoughts on Duncan's development as a character, or that series as a whole, I'd be super interested to hear them! That was another series I loved dearly as a child. :)
Yeah, as I mentioned in this post, I really appreciate YA SF heroes that aren’t traditionally intelligent or otherwise talented who nonetheless make important contributions to fighting off alien invasions. Ergo, you are exactly correct that I have a soft spot for Duncan. I also absolutely LOVE a good redemption arc done right: Alloran, Chapman, Luke Castellan, Xanth, Septimus Heap, Edmund Pevensie, Jill Pole, Diggory Kirke… (This also explains why I have a Thing for C.S. Lewis. Sue me.) So yes, I really like Duncan Dougal as a character.
Anyway, I do really like Duncan… but. But I also really dislike that his redemption comes about so artificially. Duncan’s role in My Teacher is an Alien is really great, since I love how a) even at his worst the narration has sympathy for him and b) he drops the whole “dominate the nerds” idea the instant he realizes their school has MUCH bigger problems than who is at the top of the social pecking order. I feel like Bruce Coville had the groundwork right there for Duncan to come to the realization all on his own that there are more important concerns in the universe in general than the strong dominating the weak, BUT that’s not how it plays out. Instead, it takes Kreeblim “frying” Duncan’s brains with her intelligence-enhancing machine for him to start to question whether there’s another way. (By way of contrast, look at Edmund Pevensie realizing of his own accord “holy crap, what have I done?” or Boy 412 gradually admitting 90% of the way through Magyk that deep down he has been rooting for the wizards for quite a while now.)
There are still elements of the way that Duncan’s shift plays out that I appreciate. It’s heartbreaking and telling that he has to fight against the teachers’ negative expectations and assumptions that he must be cheating once he starts acing tests. He also doesn’t stop having a delicate temper so much as he gets better at controlling it. But I’ve always thought that Coville could have accomplished the same effect with a lot more power through just showing Duncan realizing of his own accord that sometimes class material is useful or interesting, and that using aggression never works out well for him in the long run. The groundwork for an “organic” shift is all there, given that Coville has already established that Duncan doesn’t so much like hitting people as he doesn’t know another way to relate to people after growing up in a household where physical aggression is the norm rather than the exception. Nonetheless the shift, when it comes, is artificial.
That sense of “like it overall, have some strong objections” actually sums up my feelings toward the series as a whole. I love that there aren’t just a bunch of nuclear families, nor is it taken for granted that nuclear families are some kind of default (contrast Peter’s and Duncan’s complex family situations with the number of super-traditional families in Goosebumps, for instance). I also get my shoulders up around my ears around the gender dynamics: Peter jokes that Ms. Schwartz must be living “every woman’s dream” to be frozen in time and thus not aging, Susan spends most of the first book being awesome and that descends into her spending most of the last book unconscious, etc. However, I also love the way that the aliens treat gender, Broxholm very casually mentioning that of course there are like 700 different possible genders and that some of them translate as genderless pronouns. However, I also also find myself frustrated that so many of the aliens so closely resemble humans, which (especially after K.A. Applegate spoiled me rotten) looks a little like a failure of imagination on Coville’s part.
On the one hand, I really love how the series looks at humanity from the outside in a way that is UTTERLY unflinching, as in “shows explicit scenes of torture, starvation, infant mortality, and physical oppression in a book meant for elementary schoolers” levels of unflinching. On the other hand, it disappoints me that the aliens are portrayed as actually being a lot more uniform than the humans in their culture (despite being from hundreds of different species) since none of them have any idea at all about concepts such as paranoia, defensiveness, or even fear. On the third, mutant, hand, the series is freaking awesome at vacillating between humor and horror without losing sight of either mood or allowing them to dilute each other.
Maybe what I really want for the series is for it to be republished in a post-Harry Potter era where children’s books are actually allowed to be long and plotty. This series is genuinely brilliant and insightful, subverting the traditionally Western idea of FREEEEEEEDDOOOOOOMMM as the be-all end-all virtue which is so important that it can come at the price of safety or equality (sorry fellow fandalites, but that’s where Animorphs always loses me) and instead showing that “freedom” for some at the expense of others’ ability to live full lives is its own kind of travesty. It has such great moments as Gurk very casually asking Peter whether he’s comfortable with touch and casting this as a standard etiquette question among most aliens. It resists the temptation to show tit-for-tat Revenge of the Nerds the way that a lot of YA SF does, instead showing that Peter needs to learn to forgive Duncan once Duncan is genuinely trying to make amends. IT HAS SO MUCH POTENTIAL, and it is also so short that it poses deeply troubling questions and then (partially by necessity) offers oversimplified answers.
