The little guy

I was at a party last night for a friend of my girlfriend who is off to Columbia University in New York. It was an interesting experience for me. They were all pretty bright kids: forensics here, five years of french here, latin here, deciding between USC and UC Davis here, spending my senior year in France because I only have 10 credits left to graduate, etc.

They were all central Fresno kids interestingly enough. I heard Roosevelt and Edison in there and I think maybe Fresno High. They were all pretty liberal, Clovis-haters, agnostics/athiests/UU's, etc.

Anyway, what this is all leading into is a brief conversation on movies I had with three of them. They were talking about their film class and how the teacher was a goof because he talked about movies like Zoolander and such. The metaphor I heard was, "It's like taking an english literature class and having to read those stupid chicken soup books."

Fair enough, but today I was thinking about this. So Zoolander isn't the greatest film of all time. So it's plot is standard fair for comedy and it's a bit predictable. That does not make it a film worth disregarding. It seems pretty elitest to declare some film inappropriate for a film class. If you're studying films, why not study all kinds?

So, then I started thinking about why I don't feel so elitest about things like movies, music, etc and I came to the idea that maybe it ties in with my furniture making. I don't want to disregard other people's art as second tier because I'm afraid people will do the same thing with my stuff. So then you get into all kinds of things like my not liking Ikea, and social contracts and all that stuff. It's a complicated, twisted web.