Pop culture inversions
Bookworm on Dec 10 2009 at 9:42 pm | Filed under: Hollywood
I’m not a Woody Allen fan, but occasional scenes in his movies stick in my memory. There’s one scene I remember, although I don’t know if I really saw it or if my fertile imagination invented it. It was from one of his late 60s/early 70s movies. As I recall, it shows him riding on a subway, reading what looks like Commentary Magazine. In fact, the camera reveals that he’s actually reading either Playboy or a comic book or something else lowbrow. He just has Commentary as camo to impress subway bystanders with his intellectualism. I keep thinking of that scene, because it strikes me that, if the same scene were filmed today, the character would secretly be reading Commentary Magazine, and would have Playboy or a comic book or something else lowbrow displayed ostentatiously to impress people with his pop culture cool.
Strange world.
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[...] Bookworm Room – Pop culture inversions [...]
The teacher paused at the blackboard, stopped speaking, set her eraser down quietly on the corner of her desk, and walked down the middle aisle to stand where Billy sat at his desk, engrossed in what he was reading. The class murmured as one. She’d noticed he was paying her no attention!
“Conserving Nature”, the teacher said suddenly and loudly. Billy almost jumped in his seat, looking up. The teacher reached down and pulled the prior month’s magazine from his hands. ”Excellent reading material for our threatened world,” she said, “But what have we here?” For behind the pages of the magazine, now exposed was a greyed book. The teacher picked it up from Billy’s hands.
“The Modern Young Scientist”, she read the title and then the subtitle: “Progress And The Young Entrepreneur”. She smiled and laughed lightly. The class, taking its cue, laughed loudly. ”Billy, Billy, Billy,” she said, walking to the front of the room to the table beneath the sign “Reading Rewards!”
“What’s wrong with THESE?” she asked, “The classroom rewards for the END of the day, once all work is done?” She began picking up these magazines one by one. ”Teen Beat!” ”Rock Star”. ”Growing Up Green”. ”US Pop” – with Tiger Woods declaring, “I Am A Sex Addict” on the cover. ”People” and “Us”.
Billy, you are to stick to my recommended Rewards Material, or we’ll have no more reading at the end of the day. Is that clear to you… and to ALL of you, class?” she said, and, tossing the grey book into the wastebasket, she picked up her eraser again, strode to the blackboard. She turned, smiling, and said, “Now. Where were we?”