Professor Movies

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I was watching /Smart People/ recently, I thought about how many films lately have dealt with professors (usually English professors). There's /The Squid and The Whale/ (excellent), /The Savages/ (very good), /The Visitor/ (very good), /Elegy/ (not playing in Larryville anytime soon but supposedly very good), and /Smart People/ (fair). None of these films seem to exist primarily to explore or satirize the academic environment in a way similar to what's often called "the campus novel," (although I suppose /Wonder Boys/, not as recent, sort of fits that particular mold). Rather, they either deal with the idea of a professor who's become disaffected and disengaged and must learn to "re-connect" (/Visitor/; /Smart People/) or they show how the mindset of academia can impacts one's relationships (/Squid/; /Savages/). With the exception of /Smart People/, which played to empty multiplexes, these films largely reside in the arthouses, which I suppose are frequented by a large number of academics (who perhaps see themselves reflected in the films, not usually in pleasant ways: none of them follow the formula of "inspirational teacher" flicks). At best, they capture a certain hollowness that can exist in academia. Watch Jeff Daniels in /Squid/ expounding on the 'canon' at the dinner table, probably reciting the same lines he's used hundreds of times before, which are then picked up by his teenage son and recycled in his own classes (without his having read the works at all). Even /Smart People/, the weakest link of the ones I've seen, is occasionally pretty perceptive: there's a great bit where Dennis Quaid meets with his editors, who have imposed a very combative tone on Quaid's new book as a way of getting it to sell—if you can't please them, piss them off. His book is titled: "You Can't Read." And judging from the number of books one sees on shelves right now with names like "How To Read Like a Professor," people enjoy being told they don't know how to read and instructed in how /to/ read! English professors, our time has come: we're movie stars!