Filmies (and all their inherent, cliched pretentions)

I'd like to return for a moment to the overwhelmingly popular genre of vent-a-blog that appears so often in my online discourse. It may be tired, but it can be entertaining, and it helps me deal with my general intolerance for people (I make no lightness, I am an intolerant git sometimes, and isn't it better I should try to deal with it myself on a page with an overall patronage of 6 people, than let the rest of the unfortunate world deal with the wrath I am inclined to spew?).
As most of you know, I am a film student. How I came by this inclination, ask me not, but somehow I envisioned it helping me with my writing career. In any case, it's less boring than English (don't mistake, English class is NOT the same as Writing class). Anyhow, I, Writey McWrites alot, have snuck and subterfuged my way into a program ("Sure, I know TONS about movies. Love'em, watch'em all the time. Hell, I've even got the Movie Network!" yeah, regular shoe-in me) filled to bursting with an overwhelming majority of pretentious, foppish (is that redundant?) Filmie McFilms alots-But don't actually, all of whom are convinced that they know more than everyone else in the class about our subject of study in all areas, including: History, Genres, Camerawork, Editing, Production, Storyboarding... ah, you name it, they all know it "the best." In the midst of this circus of veritable paradigms of affectation, a handful of meek filmie wall-flowers try hard to dig their roots into the rock-face of and grow steadily, slowly upwards, doing their best not to be noticed by the gaggle of gangly goats galloping up the mountain, and tripping over eachother in the process. (Like that alliteration there? whew, I may have broken a sweat).
Let me explain the distinction. In any given film class of the week (I have 6) it is possible to identify the filmie flowers in any number of ways. A) They are ready to admit that, indeed, they have not infact seen that particular Russian film from 1923, nor have they seen all of Quentin Tarrantino's work, nor Apocalypse Now Redux (yeah, I've actually seen all of these, just covering my ass in case a filmie goat happens to come across this page and I'm found out for the flower that I am). B) They only raise their hands to attract attention to themselves if they have something that is i) worthwile to share with the class ii) (they're sure) not repeating in different words something that someone else ALREADY SAID (see also future vent-a-blogs on Psych classes and the treacherous multi-sponse). C) They tend to congregate in groups, for support, a better root structure, if you will.
The filmie goats are also as easily identifed. A) Look for signs of any cliche that you may have ever associated with the cinematic snob. I kid you not, I didn't believe they existed in such numbers either until I came here. Could it also have something to do with the Q-factor? I'll come back to that some other time. B) Listen for the use of any unecessarily big, or innappropriate words when responding to a question, or critiquing a film. Examples (and yes, these are actually words that came out of people's mouths) "I found the use of black and white in that film a little too cynical." ; "I thought that the placing of those two shots together was a bit overly didactic." What, did you just learn what didactic means and decided to try and use it in a sentence? Yeah, I'm sure the teacher was SO impressed. C) Also, when critiquing others' work, listen for unnecessarily harsh judgements, such as (again, real) "I didn't like the repetition of images in that montage. Alot of the editing she did was just like, she was showing off that she could use the editing software. She was just trying to prove something. . . or something." And the prize for most critical comments paired with psychic mind-reading of the film's creator goes to... man, I tell ya.
After two short weeks in my production class, I have developed an overwhelming fear of sharing ANY of my work with the class. Even a brief 30-second description of my proposal for my end-of-year project was cause for me to turn furiously red and stutter, waiting for cries of "wow, that sucks!" and "that's SO didactic -- I mean, cynical!"
After that last comment, I feel I should admit... this whole diatribe is overly cynical (please see name of blog, heh) as are all my vent-a-blogs. But do not lose heart gentle readers. However these filmie goats may terrify timid Writey McWrites alot at this point in time, I am not without hope. For the facts are these, all of my film professors so far (6 in all) display no signs of the filmie-goat syndrome (with the small exception of one conceit of the prof who worked on Degrassi High... and hey, who can blame him? :) ). This leads me to believe that this goat syndrome is indeed curable and may even fade with experience. Indeed, I have every espoir that all this aggressiveness will disappear in the course of time, and one day, us flowers may look kindly upon the goats, once they stop trying to trample us or eat us alive. So here's to the maturation of filmies everywhere, may your wisdom come swiftly, and the film-fops depart.

Cheers.

silverlined83@yahoo.ca