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I was gonna post about this a couple of weeks ago, but I figured there was no point. later, I thought about it and felt that apart from being entertaining, it raises some interesting issues…
The Film Snob Dictionary in this month's Vanity Fair is kinda funny… it's a spin-off from their annual Rock Snob's Dictionary. but what I find interesting is how much more vicious they are towards the people they perceive as Film Snobs than they are towards Rock Snobs. but that's not surprising, because I've found that in general, people are more accommodating of exacting tastes in music than they are of the same in film. the Rock Snob is viewed as a passionate, somewhat overzealous misfit, while the Film Snob is more of a… well, just a snob. here's how they define it:
"The Film Snob's stance is one of proprietary knowingness - the pleasure he takes in movies derives not from the sensory experience of watching them, but from knowing more about them than you do, and zealously guarding this knowledge from the Julia Roberts-loving masses, who have no right whatsoever to be fluent in the works of Samuel (White Dog) Fuller and Andrei (the original Solaris) Tarkowsky."
I don't know… some people have called me a Film Snob, and most of the entries in this directory are contents of my everyday vocabulary. but I swear to God, I watch these films because I honestly like them. and I don't get into things just because I think it's cool to do so. for example, I still reject 80% of Godard's oeuvre, no matter how genius he's supposed to be.
how about you? do you praise certain films just because they are revered by "Snobs"? and do you diss stuff just because it's popular?
anyway, here are a few sample entries… obviously, I can't reproduce the entire article, and no, there is no link. enjoy.
Bollywood: Broad term for India's Bombay-based film industry, which, though it has produced visionaries like Raj Kapoor, more routinely pumps out soapy, mass-market movies that, when projected in theaters in American university towns, somehow morph into art films.
Cahiers du Cinema: The single greatest force in inviting ridicule of French intellectuals as absurdist twits. Founded in 1951, the still-extant Paris-based monthly first attracted significant American attention when, in 1954, it published contributor Francois Truffaut's auteur theory, which posited the director as the sole author of a film. Subsequent issues built auteur-ist mythologies around such red-blooded Americans as DON SIEGEL, SAMUEL FULLER, and Nicholas Ray, putting far more thought into analysis of these directors' B pictures than the directors had put into making them. Cahiers du Cinema also abetted the French mania for Jerry Lewis, deeming him "le Roi du Crazy."
Criterion Collection, the: Achingly tasteful video-reissue company that, like Starbucks, has found success by convincing consumers that connoirsseurship always comes at a cost. (The lovingly packaged two-disc Criterion version of Straw Dogs - with Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0, a Peckinpah documentary, and a new interview with Susan George! - will set you back 40 bucks.) Having all but cornered the market on the works of prestige directors like Jean Cocteau, Federico Fellini, and Akira Kurosawa, Criterion has branched out into repackaging rock documentaries (Gimme Shelter, Monterey Pop) and "acceptable" fun movies such as My Man Godfrey, Armageddon, and Withnail and I. (AFKAP'S note: I didn't know there was a Criterion Armageddon! wtf!)
Film Comment: Smug, aggressively elitist bimonthly magazine published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Where Snobs go to read (or write) dithery articles about BOLLYWOOD and despairing critiques of popular cinema.
Office Space: Mildly diverting 1999 comedy about cubicle life in corporate America, puzzlingly accorded classic status in Snob circles, where ritual mass viewings are common. The sole live-action feature by Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill creator Mike Judge, Office Space is representative of a whole strain of underperforming studio films that only Snobs "got," such as John Boorman's Excalibur, the Keanu-Swayze surf movie Point Break, the Val Kilmer vehicle Real Genius, and the PAULINE KAEL-anointed Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai.
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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali
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