DVD Connections: the 'professor movie'
The 'professor movie' as such is perhaps not as common a generic label as the private eye, cop, gangster, spy, cowboy, ancient warrior or space movie. To be frank, it's statistically negligible; but that's not to say that the cinematic archetype of the academic is without its attractions – probably because the role of professor provokes a far-reaching ambivalence about the importance of education, knowledge and intelligence. The very name of 'professor' seems to involve an element of pretension, of 'professing' or pretending to a superior wisdom that may not be well-founded (whereas 'Reader', which is the next rank down in Britain, sounds like the real thing). It didn't take Richard Hofstadter's brilliant book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963) to tell us that social and political distrust of intellectuals and academics – not all of it misplaced, of course – has driven the Anglo-American world for centuries. So Biros at the ready: here's a 22 image lesson in big screen dons