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
EDITORIAL: Honor lives on — with room for improvement
By Editorial Board | YesterdayHonor is still a staple of the student vocabulary — just more often as a facetious justification for leaving one’s backpack unattended than as a true rationale for remaining academically honest.
CASTAGNO: U.Va. paved paradise, but we still need more parking lots
By Conall Castagno | 4 days agoFor better or worse, a substantial number of students bring their cars to school every year. The University can either choose to ignore this fact, or they can accommodate their students.
A statement of no confidence in the Board of Visitors by the U.Va. Chapter of the AAUP
By U.Va. Chapter of AAUP | 5 days agoThe Board’s actions and inactions as summarized above have generated a great deal of mistrust, widespread concern and indeed fear among our faculty
