A small soft drink costs $4.75 at the downtown Regal Cinema; concessions are so overpriced you would think you were at a good theater. But thin wallets fit into tight jeans better and the audience's economic regret has fizzled into sympathy for a certain young billionaire.
Director David Fincher has been wanted since 2008 for murdering an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story. And the filmmaker has just maimed the curious case of Mark Zuckerberg, reprogramming the Harvard University hacker into the formulaic anti-hero of Fincherian melodrama. Yet The Social Network is refreshingly ambitious, patting down nearly all the issues of our day - albeit lacking a gentle touch, but with the rough hands of Fincher, who directed Fight Club. Of the many themes already tagged, this movie and its subject update the status of modern exclusivity - the lines that separate class, power and identity.
The Ivy League, of course, has long been a paragon of the elite. Writer David Brooks is a piercing sociologist of the Ivy League; his articles connect Fitzgerald's Princeton to Fincher's Harvard, noting that changes in university strata correlate with larger social trends. Although aristocratic remnants, or legacies, linger, today's top schools pride themselves on promoting opportunity and equality. The good ol' traditions of our University reflect such: the bow-tied elitism has become a colored farfalle; a pasta rich in diversity, though still altogether cheesy. But as the tectonic plates (now mainly China) of society shift, the path to being exclusive has also adjusted.
Brooks prophesied an emerging upper class in 2001: "the meritocratic elite," an elite based not on hereditary background but on achievement. This once novel idea has gained the familiarity of the clich
Read More
PARTING SHOT: No man is an island
By Ava MacBlane | 9 hours agoRetirement, as you can tell, has been treating me well. When people ask me now if I miss it, I laugh and tell them some things I definitely don't miss. But I don't always get to tell them about the things I really do miss.
PARTING SHOT: You never know unless you try
By Lexi Baker | YesterdayMy time at the University was shaped by the people who showed me grace and kindness and by those who had confidence in me, even when I struggled to have it in myself.
PARTING SHOT: A love letter to Cav Daily and Connection
By Ava Proehl | YesterdayMy time here taught me to look for the genuine, human connection in every moment.
