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five likes and i will subject you to my belated takes on the movie "booksmart" (2019) and how its worldbuilding, specifically w/ respect to college admissions, makes it into a kind of morality play for the upper class that gaslights both the protagonist and audience
okay you did this to yourselves. spoilers below, obviously, 1/x
so first thing: i *really* liked this movie. i thought it was excellent. "girl superbad" is (obviously) beggaring it; it's much more thoughtful, dynamic, and biting. it's a brilliant time-capsule of 2018/2019, especially as a portrayal of the conflict between different feminisms
however, while watching it at an @mitmuseum event last night, the world of the movie fell apart, and then rebuilt, for me at the catalyst scene where molly, the protagonist, realizes that the "slackers" are going to the same elite institutions she is:
this realization — that even the people who didn't work as hard as she did can still access elite institutions — sends molly (& amy) into a crisis, fearing she has wasted her life by working too hard, narrowly pursuing a meritocratic myth, & must have fun, not just be booksmart
and it seems the lesson we, the audience, should take away from this is some kind of "work hard, but not too hard; remember to play and have fun; just because you're good at school doesn't mean you're a good person." not a bad message as far as platitudes go.
except here is the thing: this movie is set at a 'normal' public school. and there is not a 'normal' public school in the country where most of the 'high-achieving' students, even those that are 'smart' (i.e. as Triple-A did, a 1560 on the SAT), all go to Ivy+ institutions
(putting aside, for a moment, that the slacker coder figure, who failed 7th grade twice, somehow secured a six figure software sinecure at google, one of the most notoriously academic-credential focused companies in the country)
the only schools where this pattern is true are elite private secondary schools, where a combination of legacy/donor/athlete admissions, plus the instinctual reproduction of the elite for its own sake, *does* produce a world where you can sort of halfass your way into an ivy+
time to take an enormous sip of coffee and look at where the director went to high school and what her class position is
(part of the reason this stood out to me a passing familiarity with san fernando high school, where the film was set and shot. in reality, SFHS is a title 1 school, 95% latine, where fewer than 30% of graduates go to *any* four year college, mostly state university branches)
(imagine how this movie might have read differently if the class valedictorian was figured as, say, the daughter of undocumented farmworkers, breaking her back to excel in school so she can make it into UCLA or, barring that, San Diego State? would we still snicker at her?)
however, once you realize that the director went to andover (and the scriptwriter to dartmouth, not sure where for HS) and is of the nobility, for me the film snaps into focus, because this is the kind of morality play that the upper class tells itself about itself
that the important thing is to not work too hard because success will find you anyway, and there is nothing so déclassé than to strive for something so hard (as molly does) that you miss out on these other experiences, like partying on a yacht or in a pool or whatever
but it's an insane fiction! sure, molly is a deeply damaged person, unlikeable, repressed, cutthroat, etc. but she is that way because she has bought into the meritocratic myth: that if you work hard, and *only* if you work hard, do you get ahead
and so in a way the whole movie imagines an audience that can snicker at molly as a sort of naive pleb, punching above her weight only through an amount of work that no one in their class position would ever deem to do
and if molly is damaged it is because this class conflict has indeed damaged her — because the cultural and economic conditions of contemporary capitalism damage anyone unlucky enough to not be born into the ruling class
i.e. if you are not lucky enough to be born into advantage you are damaged either by a) corrupting/alienating yourself in the pursuit of material and professional success, or b) by failing to do so and ending up poor
like the more I think about it the more tragic of a figure Molly is. Within the frame of the movie, she is tragic because she is “booksmart,” blindered, insecure, controlling jerk, until she is Redeemed by her one night of partying
but outside the frame of the movie, she is tragic because she corrupted every aspect of herself, became that damaged person, in the pursuit of success, because she bought earnestly into an idea of meritocracy that is a myth, and she was lied to
and but so the question of “what lesson are we to take from this movie about the good life and how it ought to be lived?” has to be hyperdependent on your class position, I think.
tl;dr: i just want everyone to remember that there is no one working harder, with less in their favor and a smaller chance at success, than the students who actually attend schools like this one but do not appear in the film...
and that the people who are the most sympathetic to the "hey, just fuck around and things will be fine" lesson of the movie tend to be the people with sufficient class advantage (and also blindness) where it will, in fact, be fine for them, but not for others
so we should strive toward a world where if molly doesn't exist — if we are to be free of arrogant ambitious tryhards — it is because we have made it more equitable and fair, so that no one damages themself through the false belief that self-damaging work is necessary
