The other night, my partner and I went to the movies to see the enjoyable Art School Confidential, a winning satire based on the work of comic artist Daniel Clowes. Many of the jokes that inspired the biggest belly laughs for me were those that poked fun at the faculty at the film's fictional art college. John Malkovich, for instance, offers a hilarious performance as the pretentious windbag who has an overstated appreciation for his own paintings, a Donald Judd-esque minimalist series of triangles on monochromatic canvasses. But after I stopped laughing at the absurdity of the film's self-obsessed professors, I started to fret about the perennially unflattering representation of professors I always see on film. Well, art and humanities professors anyway. Mathematicians and research scientists get a semi-flattering light shone on them; they're allowed to be geniuses, if not recurringly schizophrenic. (Think Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind, or Anthony Hopkins in Proof.)
But literature professors, like myself, onscreen? Oh, they're a pathetic bunch. Literature professors in movies are longwinded, lecherous, and egotistical. They teach because they're failed writers. They parade foppishly through the ivy-covered walls of the mise-en-scene with their pipes and their corduroy sportsjackets and their ill-tended beards. Their main narrative function is to provide a momentary obstacle for younger, obviously more talented, and better looking characters. Think Donald Sutherland in Animal House, or Jeff Daniels (pictured above) in The Squid and the Whale, or Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys. The main message about these characters seems to be: "Get out of the way, old man. You didn't write The Great American Novel and now you chase skirts, and/or drink yourself to death, and/or bust the backs of promising students who exacerbate your own self-loathing."
Sheesh.
I mean, those characters do make me laugh uproariously, until I remember:
I am a college literature professor. My favorite sportsjacket is corduroy (sans elbow patches, thankfully, but I do wear it with jeans, like Jeff Daniels). I smoke a pipe (well, it started as a joke, but I like the taste, and I only smoke it in private, I swear!). I write fiction but haven't published much of it. And, God save me, since classes ended for the semester, I stopped shaving and find myself sporting a beard.
Uh oh.
So, what do you say, Hollywood producers? Could you give me a flattering representation of a literature professor so I don't have to feel so anxious about progressively embodying (hell, I'll admit candidly I even court the image to some degree) your oh-so-unflattering celluloid cliches?
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