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December 13, 2003
Prescient Student Analysis
This week's Guardian has an article, which asserts that "we are all nerds now," and notes the shift from Revenge of the Nerds encouraging viewers to embrace their inner nerd to the current celebration of "nerdiness" in American Splendor and the concluding film in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
One of my student groups here at Georgia Tech in their group blog on "college movies" made a similar point several weeks ago, especially in Ayyad's discussion of Nerds being very much a film of the 1980s. Of course, as my students point out, at a university like Georgia Tech, almost everyone has learned to embrace his or her "inner nerd."
Posted by chuck at December 13, 2003 4:40 PM
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Comments
I'm surprised that something like Dead Poets Society isn't in there.
At any rate, I'm reminded of how during my grad work I used to have to give a little speech that began with the following sentence: "Animal House was not a documentary."
Good luck grading. I feel your pain.
Posted by: Scott at December 14, 2003 4:21 AM
They only included "college movies," which excludes "Dead Poets." I tried to encourage them to watch "Real Genius," since it focuses on MIT students (a topic I thought they could relate to), but it may not have been available.
If tey had more time with the project, I would have pushed some of my favorites, such as "Educating Rita" and "Surviving Desire."
I'm actually in the home stretch as far as grading, which is certainly a nice feeling.
Posted by: chuck at December 14, 2003 12:05 PM