"Oh, you're too young to have heard of it"

A large part of my job at Paramount entails giving tours to the public. Last week I gave a tour to a group of mentally disabled adults visiting from Chicago. They were an absolute blast - super enthusiastic, and full of questions. One gentleman in particular was especially inquisitive, and one of the group leaders warned me that he'd talk my ear off, but I didn't mind a bit. At one point, he asked "what's the name of that John Wayne movie with his son and Maureen O'Hara? And it's funny?"

Without hesitation, I replied, "Oh, do you mean The Quiet Man?"

A chorus of impressed murmuring ensued before he responded nonchalantly, "Nope, the other one."

The other one? I was stumped. I contemplated it for a moment.

At this point, one of the other group leaders interjected. Condescendingly, she told him "Oh, leave her alone. She doesn't know what you're talking about."

Welcome to the life of a 24-year-old classic film buff.

*

Look, I get it. There aren't a lot of us out there. If you were to assume that I preferred the onscreen company of Robert Pattinson to Humphrey Bogart, the statistics would be in your favor. I'm not necessarily begrudging the people who make this assumption, although it is narrow-minded and frustrating. What bothers me the most is when I prove that I know what I'm talking about, and people don't hear or listen. In the case of the above woman, I admit I was a tad confrontational. I said something like "I know perfectly well what he's talking about. You know what I did this weekend? Watched silent movies." That may or may not have been what I actually did on the weekend in question, but my point was that it happens often. She replied, as if I had just described my workout regimen, "Good for you!" but quickly added "you probably do it for your job, right?"

NO.

Why could this woman not comprehend that I watched classic films of my own free will? And why is that okay to say, but I'd probably get smacked if I told her "Oh, I bet you haven't heard of Twitter because you're too old"?

What's especially puzzling is that movies (and TV) are the only art form(s) where this happens. No one blinks an eye when people are interested in the literature, drama, music, or visual art of a time before their own. Our culture keeps these artifacts alive - does it not do the same for cinema? Perhaps it's because other art forms are more likely to be taught in school - you're more likely to read Shakespeare and listen to Mozart than you are to be shown Godard. And people invariably know of events that occurred before they were born, so is knowing about that culture really such a stretch? My default comeback to "Oh, you wouldn't have heard of it, it was before your time" is "The Civil War was before your time. Have you heard of that?"

Again, maybe it's a bit catty, but the assumption that people are too ignorant or close-minded to explore culture other than their own is downright rude. I used to work at a video store where I'd get this all the time. Many people snapped out of it once I demonstrated I knew my stuff, but others would continue like the group leader woman and keep condescending to me because of my birth year. If you alter this sentiment somewhat, it pretty clearly becomes something you could not say in public. How about "oh, you wouldn't know about sports, you're a woman" or "you wouldn't know about Easter, because you're Jewish." Please don't think I'm classifying people's attitudes toward me as a hate crime or anything. But it's just so disrespectful to approach people like that.

I know I don't. I'll give people the benefit of the doubt, no matter how small a chance they have of knowing what I'm talking about. If I'm greeted with a blank stare, only then will I go back and clarify. Giving tours day in and day out, you learn to cater to the lowest common denominator. But if people seem pretty savvy, I'll roll with it, no judgment.

So, I implore you: don't make narrow-minded assumptions about people's tastes based on external factors. Talk to them and find out. 

Do you find this to be true? If you're a youngish classics fan, do you get this treatment? Or in general, do people make exclusionary comments about your taste based on some demographic you're in? Relate and commiserate!

Employment in film

Due to the unfortunate timing of my birth, in 2009 I found myself graduating from college smack-dab into a recession. With a film degree, no less. Needless to say, I had a rough couple years there before I wound up in Los Angeles and miraculously snagged an entertainment industry job. It's a temporary position, however, so I'll soon find myself out on the proverbial streets again.

Granted, I didn't have much hard job-searching experience before I graduated, but I can say with confidence that the system has become Kafkaesque and absurd. Applications for menial, minimum-wage positions get thousands of applicants within an hour. You need 2-4 years experience doing PRECISELY the job you're applying for if you are even going to CONSIDER bothering anyone with an application. If you're lucky enough to get an interview, employers ask trick "Google questions" to suss out vague and undefinable characteristics. Or sometimes you just need to be attractive - I've been to interviews where they clearly just wanted to look me up and down, and nothing else.

It wasn't always this way. How do I know? Well, my job-searching experience prior to the recession was relatively painless. A few emails, a few questions, and boom, I'm behind the counter of some retail establishment. But I also know because of movies. One of the many reasons I love cinema is that is gives you a glimpse not only into the more exciting and prominent aspects of a time and place (war, culture, social customs, etc.), but the mundane as well. From an anthropological standpoint, I love watching people in older films go about their everyday business. So as someone who has frequently felt the hopeless, infuriating frustration of unemployment, I have particularly latched on to depictions of work acquisition in films. Now, I understand that narrative films don't always show things exactly as they are - either to streamline them or make them more interesting. But you can still learn a lot about the employment culture of a period from its cinema. Therefore, I present a rough history of American employment as told through the movies:

Obviously, in the way-back times, getting a job was a cinch. This becomes apparent from watching silent comedies, where a hapless hero would often have several jobs over the course of a single film. Normally, the process goes like this: Keaton/Chaplin/Lloyd etc sees a "Help Wanted" sign in a window, goes in to inquire, is asked "can you do (x)?" to which they naturally respond yes, and are hired on the spot. Now, I would imagine this has something to do with storytelling efficiency, especially since these films are often quite short. But the 1920s especially were bountiful times for America, so it's not hard to imagine that many blue-collar workers were hired in this way. (In College [1927], Keaton even manages to find work as a "colored waiter" by applying greasepaint. Naturally, it backfires.)

 

But then, of course, came the Depression, and suddenly things weren't so easy. Even more upbeat films tended to always have the Depression in the background, such as in Gold Diggers of 1933. Four sassy showgirls are between gigs, and never know where their next meal is coming from (frequently, it's the neighbor's windowsill). They understand that job-searching is a full-time job, so they spend every waking hour cajoling, persuading, manipulating and seducing producers and backers in order to get a new show off the ground. Their resourcefulness serves as an inspiration to modern-day job-seekers (well, perhaps minus the seduction part).

Alternately, if you were an employer in the 1930s looking to hire, you could literally pluck men off the streets. That's the approach taken by wealthy families in both My Man Godfrey (1936) and the eerily similar Merrily We Live (1938). Both have daffy women in search of household help - in the former, she finds a butler at the city dump, and in the latter, a tramp on the doorstep becomes the new chauffeur. Irene Bullock in Godfrey finds the titular butler as part of a scavenger hunt, the item in question being a "forgotten man" (a common term at the time for victims of the Depression). Matriarch Emily Kilbourne in Merrily, by contrast, has a patronizing habit of "collecting" and reforming vagrants. There were certainly enough to keep her busy.

The economy improved with WWII, but men returning from overseas were often faced with the unsavory reality of either finding a new job or being stuck with the same one. Dana Andrews' character in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) is forced back into the same minimum-wage soda jerk position he had before the war, working under a younger man he had previously trained. His disillusionment eventually gets him fired, and despite attaining the rank of captain in the Air Corps, he can find no corporate or civilian equivalent. Broke and refusing to parade around in uniform, his hastily acquired wife leaves him. Fortunately, he eventually convinces a fellow veteran to give him a job building houses, foreshadowing the growth of suburbia and the economic boom of the 1950s.

Things get easier in the 50s. Smooth-talking Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas) creates a position for himself at a newspaper in Ace in the Hole (1951), despite having been fired from many previous employers (no background checks or references!). The deal is sealed by the brilliant but desperate line, "I can handle big news and little news. And if there's no news, I'll go out and bite a dog." In Imitation of Life (1959), Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) rather suddenly hires Annie (Juanita Moore) as a live-in nanny simply because Annie found Lora's daughter on the beach and looked after her for a bit. Letting a total stranger live in your house? People were just more trusting then, I guess...

  

In 1961, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying opened on Broadway; by 1967 it had gotten the silver screen treatment. Although the musical is a Pulitzer-winning satire, it's actually based on an autobiographical account of a man working his way up from the mailroom to the vice-presidency of a company. Its fundamental premise is that success is entirely contingent on saying the right things to the right people - words to live by to this day. A more direct form of deception was practiced by Frank Abagnale Jr, in the 60s-set true story Catch Me If You Can (2002). Starting at the age of 16, Abagnale conned millions of dollars by impersonating doctors and pilots. Con artists obviously still exist, but I'd imagine that technological innovations have made it exponentially more difficult (in case you were considering it as a career path).

Films of the 1970s featured many drifters who seemed to pick up employment with ease. As with prior decades, jobs that now require advanced degrees and certifications were entry-level - such as Pinky's (Sissy Spacek) new gig at the start of 3 Women (1977). She works at a physical therapy facility for the elderly, but based on the lackadaisical attitude and lack of qualifications among of the employees, it could just as easily be a roadside diner. Today, any physical therapy position (even an aide) requires two-year certificate. Lawsuits much?

The 1980s saw Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie (1982) dressing up as a woman to get work as an actor (well, actress), and succeeding. I would not, however, recommend this as a course of action for job-seekers.

The freshly graduated slackers of Kicking and Screaming (1995) have mostly themselves to blame for their unemployment, but there is a moment that inadvertently foretells the current insanity: "You have a second interview - for a video store?" For the most part, though, the 90s are a boom time, but with abundance comes discontent. Thus in 1999, a significant trio of anti-establishment, job dissatisfaction films were released: American Beauty, Fight Club, and Office Space. Beauty focuses on a more all-around unhappiness, but does feature its protagonist theatrically quitting his corporate job and rebelliously taking up at a fast-food restaurant. (How ironic that many workers today are following similar patterns involuntarily.) Edward Norton's job in Fight Club could not seem more soul-sucking - greenish lighting, sickly-looking employees. Office Space takes a comedic approach, but still depicts the white collar workplace as a unique form of hell from which one must escape.

Career abundance continued into the 2000s, which is why Seth Rogen's character in Knocked Up (2007) gets a cushy tech job despite having never worked anywhere before.

...And we all know what happened next.

Not many films have dealt with the recession head-on. The ones that have, such as Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) and Margin Call (2011), explore the actual happenings of Wall Street as opposed to the effect on the common man. More peripherally, Wendy and Lucy (2008) focuses on a young woman who's out of money and trying to relocate to Alaska, but the circumstances of her situation are vague. Tiny Furniture (2010) chronicles a mopey underemployed grad who mostly has herself to blame. The title character in Larry Crowne (2011) sets off on a journey of self-discovery after being laid off from the business where he has worked for 20 years. Shawn Levy's Interns will soon go into production, starring Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn as two laid-off businessman who start back at square one as - you guessed it - interns. 

Ultimately, what it comes down to is that recessions don't make for great cinema. You can't have forlorn hobos wandering through dusty roads, Grapes of Wrath-style. You can't have repressed office drones rebel, like so many movies of the 90s did. From my experience, recessions just create a million little frustrations and disappointments. Perhaps when something or someone breaks through the lingering effects of this recession, we can have a film about it. Another con artist, perhaps?

This is by no means comprehensive - please chime in with more employment-related cinema. How has the recession treated you? Any wisdom and/or horror stories gleaned from movies?

War of the sexes

***Friends and countrymen, I have returned! The excuse I offer to my millions of devoted fans is that I got a job at Paramount - yes, that Paramount - and have been going through a grueling training process. But I'm back, and ready to dish up more of the wit and biting insight that you all adore. Onward!***

It's no secret that the media influences (and reflects) society. Most people agree on that point, but can't reach a consensus on the what or how. The most famous argument is that movies and TV (but also video games, commercials, etc) promote and glorify violence. Conservatives complain that the media is too liberal, and vice versa. Minorities lament their poor representation, or complete lack of it. TV shows like "Glee" are accused of promoting a gay agenda. You could have endless debates on any of these points, but I'm not going to focus on any of them for the time being. Instead, I'll direct your attention to a media trend I not only find quite troubling, but very insidious and rarely addressed.

I worry that the media is driving men and women apart.

Let me back up a bit and refer to some history. In films of the late 1930s and into the 40s, men and women were quite often equals. No matter how different their backgrounds, they could typically spar, scheme, and dream on the same wavelength. Screwball comedy comes to mind as the best example of this, but film noir typically had a dame that was just as cunning and deadly as her leading man. It's no coincidence that this period in cinema coincided with WWII - women were supporting most of the homefront war effort and leading scrappy, independent lives. 

Then the war ended and, as we all know, Americans retreated into the suburbs and women retreated into the kitchen. Rosie the Riveter was dead; long live the housewife and mother. The cinema of the time reflected this change, and many romantic comedies become downright antagonistic. The plot was typically that the woman was trying to trap a man into marriage, while he was trying to trick her into sex (the films that Doris Day and Rock Hudson made together are a perfect example of this). To paraphrase the author of a great article that I unfortunately cannot find, the cinematic couples of the 30s-40s played with each other, but in the 50s they played against each other. So that brings me back to my main point: when you turn on a TV or walk into a movie theater these days, the gender dynamic is often 1950s 2.0.

This dynamic is usually played out in stereotypes that make both sexes look bad, but typically the onus is on the woman, depicting the Castrating Wife. The CW can take one of two forms: 1) a woman who makes totally unreasonable requests of her male significant other, or 2) a woman who makes totally reasonable demands, but it still portrayed as unreasonable and controlling. Having a character be the former is lazy; having her be the latter is just unfair. 

Leslie Mann's character in Knocked Up is a good example of the first type of CW - many criticized Judd Apatow for creating that type of character, but he's hardly alone in doing so. Stu's fiancee in The Hangover is so strict that he flees into the arms of a stripper. Nick's wife in Hot Tub Time Machine somehow bullies him into hyphenating his last name after their marriage (because they can't just discuss it like adults, apparently). In Grown-Ups (or the trailer, anyway - I respect myself too much to watch the movie), Kevin James looks on in helpless disgust while his wife continues to breastfeed their four-year-old son against his pleas. In The Proposal, Sandra Bullock forces Ryan Reynolds to marry her for a green card. These are not little indie movies. These are movies that made a ton of money. I also watched a couple episodes of the new ABC sitcom "Happy Endings" recently and, despite the otherwise sharp writing and younger, hipper audience, the character bio of Brad on Wikipedia is just that "he does whatever his wife says."

The other type of CW is found more frequently on TV, in both shows and commercials. The main premise of "According to Jim" was essentially that Jim Belushi hates women. Debra Barone on "Everybody Hates Raymond" looks like a jerk for trying to get Ray to help around the house. As much as I love "Scrubs," Carla would sometimes fall on this spectrum.  In the five or so minutes I saw of one episode of "Two and a Half Men," Charlie is annoyed that his girlfriend wants to do something other than have sex, so he pawns her off to his brother so they can do totally lame shit like see movies and have meaningful conversations. The CW also runs rampant in advertising (as does her counterpart, the Castrated Man), such as the Coors Light commercial where a man lies to his girlfriend about studying for the bar exam so he can go out drinking. Dockers' "Wear the Pants" campaign blames disco and salad bars for "leaving men stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny." There was a similar commercial a couple years back (I don't remember what it was for) about reclaiming your manhood by rejecting your wife's requests to do completely reasonable things like clean your hairs out of the sink after shaving.

These are just what I can think of at the moment. How many times on screen has a man chafed at a request to do housework? How many times has a woman made it her mission to keep her man from attending guys' night out? Why do men and women seem to hate each other so much?

I want to blame the predominantly male writers. But the new NBC show "Whitney," created by comedienne Whitney Cummings, is being promoted with nuggets like "women are like emotional ninjas." So that can't be it. Plus, it hardly helps my crusade to point my finger just at men.

Is it the chicken or the egg? In real as well as reel life I wonder why men hitch themselves to women they seemingly can't stand, or the other way around. Men tell their sons things like "the woman is always right" and try to prep them for dating high-maintenance women; mothers tell their daughters that they can expect men to be infantile and need constant care (my own mother said as much). We perpetuate and enable the worst of each gender by creating conditions in which the bad apples thrive. I always joke that if men knew that women like me existed - women who don't really like girly stuff and take an uncomplicated, rational approach to life - the diva types would die out, Darwin style.

You may notice the pattern that all the examples I cited are comedies. I think another reason that these archetypes rub me the wrong way is because I think that comedy of differences doesn't really make sense in modern culture. I think comedians of all stripes have fully explored all differences between races, sexes, ages, etc. - there's nothing left to say, and in a fragmented society like the United States, why would you want to keep saying it? I'm not saying everyone has to hold hands and be super PC all the time; I love offensive humor as much as the next guy. I just feel that comedy of "isn't it silly when men do this" or "ever notice how all black people do this" is stale and played out. My favorite comedians, sitcoms, and comedic films focus on the humor in either specific individuals or the human race as a whole.

So what, you say? Well, this is a movie blog, and I'm always fighting the good fight for better content on our screens. But furthermore, despite all the real-world knowledge we acquire to the contrary, people still draw on fictional media characters on which to model their own relationships, whether it be a notion of a fairytale Disney romance or the procedure and biology of sex. Honestly, a fair share of couples in sitcoms or comedies are fundamentally mismatched and dysfunctional and are only together for comedic value. But it seems entirely plausible that single and/or younger people viewing this media mistake these relationships for healthy ones. Or perhaps commercials that side with men in saying that cleaning your hair out of the sink is too much to ask will subconsciously bolster their resistance against their wives. It's hardly the downfall of Western civilization, but I do believe that these types of signals are absorbed and digested in ways that can't be quantitatively studied. Pushing past these types of depictions might provoke not only unity, but more creativity as well.

What do you think? Have you noticed this phenomenon, or am I just overthinking it?