What Makes Terence Fletcher One Of The Most Terrifying Villains In Film History

Now, are you a rusher, or are you a dragger, or are you going to be on my f***ing time? I'm going to be on your time. This is Terrence Fletcher. In this film, J.K. Simmons delivers an Oscar-winning performance as the sadistic conductor of the prestigious Shafer Conservatory's competing studio band in New York City. Terrence Fletcher is highly intelligent and violently manipulative, utilizing an array of draconian tactics like exaggeration, triangulation, and humiliation He then justifies these behaviors as coming off as a man who was just trying to get the best out of his students, explaining it away with an inflated rumor about two famous jazz musicians. Terrence Fletcher is representative of the horrors that can occur when a malignant abuser finds himself in a position of power and left unchecked. If I ever find one of these lying around again, I swear to f***ing God, I will stop being so polite. Get the f*** out of my sight before I demolish you. Whiplash is a 2014 Oscar-winning drama starring Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons. Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, the film follows an ambitious young music student, Andrew Nieman, as he navigates the inherent pressures of working his way up the ladder as a drummer at New York's most competitive music academy. He eventually ends up under the instruction of the conductor of the school's competing studio band, Terrence Fletcher, a teacher who goes to an extreme length to get the most out of his students. Student-teacher relationships are a crucial part of our development as human beings. Outside of our immediate family, our teachers can be some of the most influential people in our lives. This is what makes films like Dead Poets Society and School of Rock so impactful. The student-teacher relationship is something that we all connect with on a personal level. This is even more true when you think about higher education. As young students begin to hone in on what it is they want to contribute to in this world, they rely on the instruction and advice of their professor to guide them into their careers. In Whiplash, the character of Andrew Nieman wants greatness, and he wants to become the next Buddy Rich. And all these wants, drives, and skills are set up perfectly during the film's opening scene. We can see his focus and determination. We see his passion. When Fletcher enters the room, he uses the phrase, You know who I am? We understand that Terrence Fletcher is at the top of some sort of power structure within the confines of Schaefer Academy, and that whoever he is, it's important for Andrew to impress him. This is where Terrence Fletcher's manipulation of Andrew Nieman begins. Abusers who are good at what they do spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out what people want before embarking on their quest to bend them to their will. When you put these people into an environment like a music school, these abusers no longer have to do any work whatsoever in figuring out what people desire. Just the fact that Andrew Nieman was accepted into the Schaefer Academy of Music tells someone like Terrence Fletcher everything they need to know about what this student actually wants. The fact that this kid is up late practicing on drums tells Fletcher that he is willing to do whatever it takes to succeed at what he does. And those two things add up to something incredibly exploitable. The thing that makes Terrence Fletcher so terrifying to us as viewers is that he seems to have a purpose for being so terrible. Everything Terrence Fletcher does in this film is a performance centered around one thing and one thing only, manipulating his students into delivering the best performance possible. When Terrence Fletcher finally invites Nieman to join the studio band, he tells him to show up to rehearsal at 6 AM when the rehearsal didn't even start until 9 AM. Fletcher doesn't even care as to whether or not Nieman is there at 6 AM or not, but Nieman does. This is an early opening move in Fletcher's attempts to bend Nieman to his will. During this initial rehearsal scene, we catch our first glimpse of Terrence Fletcher's abusive tactics when he intimidates a student into a false confession of being out of tune. After humiliating the student and kicking him out of the band, Fletcher then reveals that not knowing whether or not you are out of tune is an even bigger problem. This is the music academy equivalent to a public execution. The one in which an innocent victim was punished for something he didn't even really do in the first place. This entire situation feels like one of Terrence Fletcher's ways of establishing his dominance over Nieman before putting him on the drums to see what he can do. During a break, Fletcher approaches Nieman and starts casually probing him about his personal life. This all seems very pleasant, but he's really just utilizing charm to disarm Nieman. This is another abusive tactic known as love bombing, in which an abuser attempts to influence a person through demonstrations of attention or affection. There's a key moment in this dialogue in which Terrence Fletcher asks From the outside, it seems like Fletcher is asking this so he can throw it back in his face later. But this question is really the moment in which Fletcher realizes that he can do whatever he wants to Andrew Nieman. Without any ties to the music industry, Fletcher understands that Nieman is reliant on his approval alone to achieve what he wants, thus opening the door for Fletcher to basically operate from a position of total authority over his career trajectory. Once Nieman gets onto the drum set, Fletcher continues the seemingly supportive persona that he adopted in the hallway. He even goes so far as to call Nieman Buddy Rich. If you recall the opening scene of the film, Nieman has a picture of Buddy Rich on the wall of his rehearsal space. This is Fletcher appealing to Nieman's drive and motivation before completely tearing it away. During some of Nieman's drum fills, Fletcher stops him and begins informing him that he is not drumming at the tempo he wants him to play. This is where the tactic of withdrawing comes into play. The emotional high Nieman received from Fletcher validating him in the hallway is slowly being replaced with disappointment. And inside a human mind, this tactic causes chemical reactions akin to coming down from a really potent drug. Fletcher then begins moving the goalposts back and forth for Nieman, creating an unreachable target. This is an extremely concentrated version of yet another manipulation tactic called crazy making. The goal of which is to make the victim doubt their own abilities and or sanity so that you can further warp their view of the world later on. Creating this impossible tempo to reach frustrates and terrifies Nieman, who at this point is just a sweet kid trying his hardest to impress his instructor. This continues back and forth until a physical threat presents itself. Why do you suppose I just hurled a chair at your head, Nieman? Nieman supposes it's the tempo. This is Fletcher basically screaming, look what you made me do, at someone he is currently abusing. A now stunned Nieman begins to flounder over his speech, sweat, and become completely and utterly nerve wracked. And this is where Fletcher goes in for the kill and begins physically assaulting Nieman in front of the entire ensemble. This 50-year-old man is literally beating his tempo into this 19-year-old psyche while screaming in his face. Humiliation is the next tactic Fletcher uses to break Nieman. And when he finally begins crying, Fletcher knows that he has succeeded at what he intended to do in the first place, which was to completely and utterly break his student down to tears and then embarrass him in front of the entire ensemble before removing him from the drums. He is stripping Nieman of his humanity in an effort to mold him into the type of musician he wants him to be, which was the goal from the moment he announced he'd be placing him on the drums in the first place. Nieman is completely and utterly broken. And the next time we see him, he is practicing the drums until his hands literally bleed. If you delve deep enough into any artistic or athletic pursuit, you will find some fringe mentalities on how arts and athletics should be approached. There seems to be a theme of needing to suffer greatly in order to generate a desired outcome in performance. The no pain, no gain mentality has been passed down onto generations for centuries. And the idea that in order to achieve greatness, a person must be broken down and stripped of all their dignity before proceeding with their career trajectory is not unheard of. While Whiplash takes this mentality to extreme and brutal levels, Damien Chazelle is trying to show us that these tactics have a lasting impact on a young and fragile psyche. He's telling us that these practices can begin to erode someone's self-perception and cause immense harm in just a few small moments. After Terrence Fletcher's assault, we then observe Andrew Nieman's downward spiral into a pattern of unhealthy behaviors that end up alienating him from his family, friends, and romantic pursuits throughout the movie. All of that is born from his introductory scene in the studio band's rehearsal room. He triangulates Nieman again by bringing another drummer in to compete for his spot on the band, forcing three different drummers to play for countless hours until the studio drum set is soaked in blood. He imbues Andrew Nieman with so much pressure, anxiety, and toxicity that at one point he leaves the scene of a serious car accident in which he was severely injured just to make it to a performance on time. Terrence Fletcher is a truly terrifying character. He is a sadistic perfectionist, hellbent on using verbal, mental, and physical abuse on young adults to force them into doing exactly what he wants. J.K. Simmons delivers a performance that is rich with subtleties, and the choices he makes in bringing Terrence Fletcher to life are uncanny. In the hands of a lesser performer, Terrence Fletcher could come off as seemingly stereotypical, but the more you observe the nuanced layers Simmons brings to life through his eye movements and facial tics, the more you discover. You begin to see the inner workings of a victimizing maniac play out through the veneer of a passionate teacher. In the mind of Terrence Fletcher, all of his abuses and manipulations are justified because he's trying to inspire greatness, and there's nothing more terrifying than a narcissistic sociopath driven by a warped sense of purpose sitting in a position of power. That's it for this one, folks. Be sure to let us know what you think in the comments section below. You might see a couple of links to some of our other videos in the player window here. 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