disciplinary dangers

[charloween]

Yesterday at a PG recruitment event, one of the other current students lured to the event on the promise of free cake* asked me who's my favourite director. The person asking is from the sciences; he probably had no way of knowing the because of my discipline, I get this question a lot. Some days I have ready answers, but other days I've been sitting in my office trying to sort out what my chapter is supposed to be about and the walk across campus didn't wake up the social brain that's spent the morning slumbering underneath the academic brain.

*NONE OF WHICH I HAD because it was all gone by the time I finished answering questions from prospective students the cake was a lie

Reaction 1: Sorry, I'm here for cake and a few quid, social brain still booting up.

Reaction 2: Auteur theory can be a useful way of categorizing and marketing films, but really the collaborative nature of industrial cultural production undermines such a reductive and Romantic view of most feature-length narrative fiction (experimental and documentary pieces may have, of course, different authorship claims). Besides, expressing a preference is just so modernist amirite?

Reaction 3: Social brain coming online. Social brain attempting to figure out what to say that doesn't imply either of us is an idiot, elitist, smartass or condescending prick. Social brain slowly returning result: No, there is no way to answer this question.

So I said, "There's no way to answer that question."

But it was okay, because it turns out he just wanted to tell me about male directors working in contemporary non-English cinemas.

Today on tumblr, copperbadge mentioned "Anyone who has a favourite book hasn’t read enough books" (which was new to me), and that kind of sums it up? I've seen lots of films, but probably not the films that would facilitate easy light conversation, and navigating quick social signals to guess where to focus whatever cultural capital I've accrued can sometimes be too much work for banter.

I know I should have a ready response. And that it sounds like whining. But, while my job looks cool (and can be pretty cool), some days it's still my job.

Comments

[emef]

I was in a band, briefly, and one day one of the band dudes asked me who was my favourite composer. I failed so hard at social skills, Char. Basically I: 1) made him think I was incredibly lame because I didn't name some obscure composer and 2) really offended him by implying that he was asking an incredibly stupid question.

[charloween]

Ugh, classical nerds. It's like, ultimate hipster time: "Oh, my favourite composer's work was only performed once in the 20th century, on Italian radio in 1965, from a reconstruction score found under floorboards in an attic and BTW you can only get recordings on eBay that were bootlegged from off-air recordings srsly the best." (Or whatever. In retrospect, I'm okay not to be dating him any more.)

Fuck off! I'll be over here rocking out with Wendy Carlos. Or, you know, one hundred years of popular music.

Um. Right. Whiny overthink about my work being everyone else's recreation, guilt about resenting well-intended small talk, and having feels about The Mummy when people expect encylopedic knowledge of contemporary world cinema. :D

[firstgold]

I try to have a ready response for whenever anyone asks me about education, but it usually gets thrown out the window depending on how I'm feeling.

Right now, how I'm feeling is to just give the pure unadultered truth of what I think, and let the question-asker walk away quickly, wishing they had never asked.

*good vibes*

[charloween]

Honestly? Do it. Especially with something as important as education.

[firstgold]

Yeah, that's pretty much where I am now. Although I haven't had much occasion lately to talk about education.