Dismantling Anger and Righteousness

I flung my phone out of my pocket to jot this down in my notes a couple moments ago, before returning my attention to the microwave:

“There is almost nothing of interest to me in Cinema Studies. Anything that is of interest to me there has stumbled in (or been kidnapped) from the worlds of filmmaking or philosophy. It is in those worlds that I must situate myself.”

I’ll make immediately clear (for anyone who doesn’t read to the end of this piece) that this is NOT how I feel about the Cinema Studies programme at UofT.

This fiery formulation came to me on the same mental boat as the strangest intrusive thoughts. It arrived with similar urgency and fire as this kind of thought, which might visit you briefly in a liquor store or grocery aisle; “Huh. I know I shouldn’t… but what if I just toppled every single item on this shelf? Strike that – how much havoc could I wreak in the next 30 seconds, if I really wanted to?” It also initially seemed just as absolutely truthful as the thought, “The dude who just shoved past me on the sidewalk is an asshole. A complete asshole. How any human being could conceivably befriend or tolerate him is beyond me.”

Soon (milliseconds?) after, I had my parents voices in my head. Throughout high school, when I still lived with them and would vocalize some of my more radical and unpolished instincts, their reason became my inner editorial voice.

“E, are you sure…”

And with those few words, I was off.

These conversations almost always play out between two voices; an amalgam of my mother/father/an-older-and-wiser-version-of-myself VS me as a 9-year-old child. This took roughly the amount of the time for the microwave to cook my meal.

OLD E: “Are you sure you want to say that?”

LITTLE E: “YES! Fuck cinema studies.”

OLD E: “What about the courses you liked?”

LITTLE E: “Like I said – if I liked any part of them, it was everything except the Cinema Studies bits. It was considering the filmmakers intentions from a director’s point of view. It was contemplating the oddness of strangers gathered in a dark room, suspending their disbelief to escape into a fictional story, away from their lives and commitments. That’s philosophy. Or psychology. Or sociology. It’s anything except Cinema Studies.”

OLD E: “What about the professors you liked?”

LITTLE E: “Well – ok, well I don’t have a problem with them.”

OLD E: “Can you imagine the kind of value they might see in the field?”

LITTLE E: “Well, sure… but… Listen, I can say what I said without disparaging them. It’s a statement about my personal feelings.”

OLD E: “I suppose that’s true.”

LITTLE E: “And I can defend each sentence there. Watch – I said there’s ALMOST nothing of interest. that leaves space for a few good professors, a few interesting discussions here and there. You can’t catch me out there.”

OLD E: “Sure. And in your second sentence – you don’t think ‘kidnapped’ is many too strong of a word?”

LITTLE E: “It’s a metaphor. And it’s true.”

OLD E: “Surely what you’re referring to is just the concept of transdisciplinarity.”

LITTLE E: “It would be interdisciplinary. Cinema Studies isn’t advanced enough to engage transdisciplinary strategy.”

OLD E: “That’s quite a burn, for a 9-year-old.”

LITTLE E: “Damn right.”

OLD E: “And you’re comfortable confining yourself to just the two worlds of filmmaking and philosophy. I know open mindedness is a value you hold. Does that apply here?”

LITTLE E: “No you’re right. I’m open to many others. Literally any other fucking world except Cinema Studies.” (NOTE: Little E wouldn’t really be swearing at this age. Eli didn’t start swearing until he began writing the Only Bar on King Street).

OLD E: “There seems to be a bit of anger behind all of this.”

LITTLE E: “No shit.”

OLD E: “Are you sure this isn’t because you disliked that one Contemporary Film Theory class?”

LITTLE E: “Nah nah, it’s probably 90% because of that class. That class revealed the true colours of the whole discipline.”

OLD E: “Did it, now? Did you hate the professor, too?”

LITTLE E: “Nah, she was good.”

OLD E: “Ok…”

LITTLE E: “Ahh.”

Pause.

LITTLE E: “I think I’m falling back into my old ways.”

OLD E: “Your old ways?”

LITTLE E: “It used to be so satisfying, you know? So incredibly delicious to launch scathing attacks against institutions. Even better if they were poetic, snappy. I used to relish the process of channeling all that anger into pointed language, into phrases crafted in just a way so that I could technically defend any line.”

OLD E: “But…?”

LITTLE E: “But it becomes harder to deceive yourself. It becomes increasingly more obvious that what you’re doing is self-defeating, even if there was a grain of truth to where it started. Usually some kind of pain.”

OLD E: “What was the grain of truth, here?”

LITTLE E: “When I first met one of the heads of the Cinema Studies Institute, and told him I wanted to become a filmmaker, I could see the disappointment in his eyes. And he told me that I ought to reconsider that–that I should consider cinema scholarship, journalism, or criticism instead.”

OLD E: “And how did that feel?”

LITTLE E: “Like when that guy ruptured Houdini’s appendix.”

OLD E: “Ow.”

LITTLE E: “I’d seen plenty of eyebrow-raises throughout high school, anytime I admitted that my aspirations were to become an artist. To find the most overt pushback to my dreams in the Cinema Studies Institute of all places was… disconcerting. The attitude that filmmaking was the very bottom of the barrel seemed to plague many people in the department.”

OLD E: “But not all?”

LITTLE E: “No, not all.”

OLD E: “So with all this in mind, would you retract your initial statement?”

LITTLE E: “No.

OLD E: “No?"

LITTLE E: “No. I’d still say it, I’d just add all of this.”