YMMV / Blackboard Jungle

• Diagnosed by the Audience: Santini, played by Jameel Farah (later Jamie Farr). He exhibits signs of being on the spectrum, though he is cruelly referred to by Miller (Sidney Poitier) early in the movie as "an idiot boy."
• Just Here for Godzilla: The film is remembered (among other things) as the film that launched the Rock and Roll Era thanks to the use of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" as the theme song. Stories are legion of teenagers flocking to see the movie specifically to hear the song, with little interest in the rest of the picture.
• Once Original, Now Common: Today the movie comes off as a very standard Save Our Students plot: privileged white person goes to inner city school and connects with the troubled minority students through the use of more empathetic teaching techniques. It's hard to hear Mr. Dadier lament that he needs some way to reach his kids without thinking it sounds cliche. But at the time, it was amazing to show that high schools, an American institution no less, were flawed.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Klinger stars as one of the students, using his original name Jameel Farah.
  • A somewhat ironic example comes in the form of Sidney Poitier, who plays a student in this film before going on to play a teacher at an inner city school in To Sir, with Love.
  • "Rock Around the Clock". When the movie came out some theaters cut the opening because they thought the song was evil and inspired delinquency. Nineteen years later it would be used as the theme song for Happy Days to evoke a simpler, happier time.
• Values Dissonance: Dadier uses several racial slurs in one scene, up to and including the n-word. While he was actually condemning racism in said scene, it's considered completely unacceptable today for white people to use those words in any context. Although Dadier's job is later threatened over it until he explains himself, it's likely today a teacher doing this would be fired regardless.
  • (Or possibly Values Resonance depending on how you look at it). Following a scene where Richard saves the Hot Teacher from being sexually assaulted by a student, he's back at home telling his wife Anne about the incident. She then proceeds to imply that the teacher simply must have somehow led the boy responsible on, somewhat snarkily accusing the woman of dressing sexily and, when told by Richard that she was wearing nothing revealing in the slightest, comes to the conclusion that the flesh-covered stockings must have been what did it. The whole thing is then promptly forgotten by both the characters and the movie. Today, it would be a struggle to have Anne seem in any way sympathetic following her all but outright stating that women somehow deserve to be sexually assaulted based on what they're wearing, even with all the harassment she herself is put through. On the other hand, Richard making as clear as possible that the teacher did nothing to provoke the attack and framing Anne as being in the wrong for insisting as much has aged much better.
• Values Resonance: Over fifty years later and inner city schools still have the exact same problems.

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