Every now and then a movie comes along that irritates the crap out of me before I’ve actually seen it. This week it’s Smart People.
Why is it interesting or useful to imagine that all English professors are narcissists? Does the trend to do so somehow connect to William Deresiewicz’s recent chicken-little act about the decline of the profession?
How is Sarah Jessica Parker, playing her standard self-absorbed navel-gazer, less a narcissist than someone who at least reads? The clip from the movie played on NPR during an interview/feature has her character indignantly remarking (something like) “I’ve been in this room for 45 minutes. When are you going to ask about me, my family, how I’m feeling.”
Reading is not a form of narcissism. Understanding reading as narcissism, however, is a (currently wide-spread) form of idiocy. I think it comes from the old American anti-intellectual prejudice against English professors (etc) as mere readers and not “doers.” And maybe it’s also some kind of defensive Hollywood self-image of the movies and TV as more public and more democratic than books. Being “smart” is snobby, reading is snobby, etc.
I base this more on the NPR interview with SJP than on the (celebratory) NYT review.…
