No; more often than not the smartest guy in the room is the villain. And the problem is solved by some guy with guns and big biceps.
I’ve got to agree with this. There are a lot of smart people too, that’s true, but in most examples they’ll be smart in a very practical way, and they won’t come anywhere near nerd territory. In general, there is often the message that some vague feel-good virtue like unwavering belief trumps intelligence. The one that particularly irritates me is the message that intuition should be trusted over facts. That’s often quite explicit. These trends seem to apply the most to more simple stories, which unfortunately seems to mean kids are especially exposed to them.
It would seem to me that you are conflating intellectual elitism with financial elitism. If you look at the forbes richest 500 people, how many have PHD’s? If you look at PHD’s how many of them are really wealthy and not just middle class? I don’t see intellectual elites as having any particularly unusual ability to wield power.
Clearly, 2001 is one of the definitive anti-intellectualist screeds: only a lobotomy, of sorts, is enough to save the day.
The roots of anti-intellectualism appear to be religious in nature: if’n you go a learning too much, it might ruin your faith and cause you to become irritating or even downright nasty. Hence, the establishment of this false dichotomy that implies that if you escape the dirt, you will become trapped in books and probably never truly be able to reconnect with those you left behind who are still trapped in the dirt.
I lay some of the blame for this divisive bullshit at the feet of western religion, which thrives on factionalism. Since the smart people often tend to turn against the faith, they represent a potential threat and should be duly shamed, as needed. Once under assault from the one-eyebrowed-mouth-breathers, academia closes ranks in self defense, the lines are drawn, the metaphorical war commences.
The reality is that a great many highly educated people are not so very divorced from dirt. As in most contentious issues, most of both sides would be happy to get along with each other. There are just a few influential problem-children trying to make an issue of it.
Examples please.
Im calling out cultural bias here. That people with big biceps and guns are assumed to be anti intellectual.
Another example that annoys me. Movies about High School or University. Invariably they are anti Jock and pro nerd/geek/goth. I assume some dweeb is fighting his demons by writing this stuff a decade or two after having sand kicked in his face at the beach.
Movie: The Smartest Guys in the Room
for one
Well, yeah. Of course it is about cultural bias, this whole thread is about cultural bias. And what would be more indicative of cultural bias than cinema?
Given that, AFAICT, box office take appears to be skewing toward biceps and guns in favor of strategy and cunning, it looks to me like the general cultural bias is anti-intellectual. Even Star Trek, you might hope something like that would try to diddle your forebrain, alas, no such luck, it is so visceral as to be almost atavism incarnate.
That is a documentary about how several businessmen fleeced millions of dollars from an unsuspecting public. What does that have to do with anti-intellectualism in fictional films?
Agreed, anti-intellectualism is a awful, but frankly the most horrible ideas have come from intellectuals.
Most of the big blunders in American foreign policy have been pushed for and brought about by intellectual elites. David Halberstam demonstrated in his book, The Best and the Brightest, that the it was America’s “Best and Brightest” who led the US into Vietnam.
Also, while Bush is properly blamed for the Iraq War, it was the various Straussian intellectuals who pushed him into it. People like Wolflowitz, Condoleeza Rice and the various other “Vulcans”(as they were called).
Similarly Eugenics and scientific racism was thought up, promoted and almost universally accepted by various “intellectuals”.
Similarly, the Bolsheviks were certainly not workers and founders of Islamic radicalism and the Iranian revolution were all intellectuals and members of “the best and the brightest”.
Nor is this anything new. The leaders of the Inquisition were certainly not illiterate peasants.
I would say rather that in rural India, they conflate intellectual elitism and financial elitism.
In the real world, the smartest guy (by IQ) in the room is probably lower-mid-tier on the totem pole. He has a full grasp on how all the fancy stuff works and is in charge of a team who oversees it. His reports go up the ladder to influence the choices of others. Though on the day when the nuclear core is about to explode, he’ll be the most powerful man in the company for however many hours it takes to resolve the issue.
I’m not sure either of these are fair. Idi Amin and Josef Stalin are both good examples of people who were so brutal in part because they weren’t terribly bright or educated. And Hitler really wasn’t part of the best and brightest, or what you would call an intellectual. I will grant you that the nastiest coherent doctrines generally come from intellectuals — but I’m not sure that’s very surprising or interesting, in that most coherent doctrines are written by intellectuals.
Both Lenin and Trotsky were not far behind Stalin in the brutality department. At least for the period both had political control and influence. George Bernard Shaw and other intellectuals while not directly involved in Soviet policies did vigorously applaud them from the sidelines.
Yeah, there is quite an anti-jock message, and it always seems unnecessarily nasty. But I don’t think anti-jock stories are pro-education, they’re pro-differences.
I think this is partly explained by the fact that more intelligent people are more likely to express ideas, and more likely to be in positions of power to make such ideas known to you and put them into practice. For any horrible idea that comes from an intellectual, I suspect there are hundreds or thousands of less educated people who have expressed a very similar idea in private. Another explanation might be that a lot of these people are/were educated, but not sufficiently educated in the field their horrible ideas belong to. Were these “intellectuals” coming to their ideas truly through use of their intellects, or through emotions? Sometimes people are educated, but stupid.
Too many Jews, women, or lefties. 
Pretty much. And the way it’s organized is that the lefties run all our educational institutions to brainwash our kids into anti-business Socialist Thinking, and the liberal Jews run all the media. God-fearing patriots are forced to rely on home schooling and late-night talk radio. 
Jurassic Park - There are many “smart” people in this film. The protagonists are a pair of scientists plus a mathematician and a couple of precocious children. However, one of the cleverest characters is Nedry, a villain. (His name is even an obvious anagram of “nerdy”.) And although Dr. Grant is a scientist, the movie makes it clear early on that he’s not some kind of poindexter - no, he’s a good ol-fashioned digger. The overall message of the film is straight out of Frankenstein: “You were so worried about whether you could that you forgot to ask whether you should.” It is a cautionary tale about the pursuit and limits of knowledge. (It’s not particularly surprising that the author of the original book, Micheal Crichton, was a global warming denier. His arguments were essentially the same as Ian Malcom’s pseudo-mathematical gibberish: We can’t possibly predict stuff perfectly, so why bother trying?) Plus, there’s no actual problem (world-ending or otherwise) that is solved by a smart person in this film. Everyone just runs and jumps their way to a helicopter and escapes.
Independence Day - This movie does have a world-ending problem, and that problem is eventually solved, in part, by a smart person. But then there’s the other 99% of the movie. A porno doesn’t become educational just because the actors discuss plumbing in the first 20 seconds, and “Independence Day” does not become intellectual by adding a token scientist and a computer virus. They exist only as props to support the vast bulk of the film that includes explosions, a drunken pilot, explosions, "Welcome to ERF! smack, explosions, and explosions. And even the solution isn’t just a computer virus created by reverse-engineering alien tech - it also includes a huge action scene with multiple explosions. Will Smith certainly got much higher billing than Brent Spiner or Jeff Goldblum.
The Avengers - This film comes closest (of the four mentioned) to fitting the form of “smart guy saves the day”. Robert Downy Jr.'s Ironman is given a lot of screen time and takes on a leadership role. In other words, he’s not just a token character or deus ex machina thrown in just to solve a problem. Moreover, his intellect is one of his most notable characteristics. Unlike with Dr. Grant in “Jurassic Park”, no attempt is made to emphasize how he’s down-to-earth or non-Ivory Tower. Indeed, the film seems to revel in his witty banter and intellectual power. Of course, it’s also an action movie so there’s lots of smashing and such, but in contrast to “Independence Day” the intelligent characters don’t feel secondary or tacked on. However, even though Ironman is a key character he is only one hero among many. Also, the world-ending problem isn’t actually solved through intelligence - mainly it’s solved through smashing, shooting, kicking, punching, and blowing things up. I certainly wouldn’t call the film “anti-intellectual”, but it’s a stretch to describe it as a movie where the smartest guy in the room saves the day.
Batman - Although Batman is ostensibly a detective, we almost never see him actually detecting. The vast majority of the time we see him solve problems by beating them up. He’s also generally not the smartest man in the room in the most recent films. That role goes to Dr. Fox, an unobjectionable but clearly secondary character. Or perhaps to Ras Al Ghul, who is depicted as at least as intelligent as Batman. Even the Joker is smarter in many ways, albeit also completely insane. In the latest Batman film (the third of the Nolan trilogy), Batman returns to a besieged Gotham that is facing a nuclear threat. His big plan to defeat the bad guys involves charging right at them and punching them in the face. Seriously - he frees the trapped cops and they all go charging directly at the bad guys and punch them in the face. World’s greatest detective that he is, he doesn’t even know the true relationship between Bane and his lady friend. The cleverest thing he does in the entire film is off-screen and essentially a deus-ex machina to let him survive: he rewrites the computer code that runs the autopilot on the batcopter thingy. But that doesn’t defeat the enemies - he does that by punching them in the face and inspiring others to punch them in the face. At best, Batman is typically depicted in film as a clever guy who uses cleverness to design gadgets that allow him to more easily punch enemies in the face.
I enjoyed three out of the four movies. Even “Independence Day” had a few good moments. But none of them support the idea that the average big-budget blockbuster ends with the problem solved by the smartest guy around. I might grant “The Avengers” on a technicality, but the others, in my opinion, simply don’t fit. And the list of big-budget blockbuster films that clearly violate the rule would be a long one.
Huh? HAL’s lobotomy is not due to him being too smart, it is due to him going psychotic and killing lots of people, not to mention almost killing Bowman. Bowman is not a dumb space jock - the publicity for the film says that he has two PhDs. He is called Dr. Bowman in the interview. (Poole also.)
Bowman didn’t get back into the ship by hitting someone in the face. He did it through understanding the physics and physiology of his situation.
Clarke’s book explains why HAL went mad, which had everything to do with the situation he was put in and nothing to do with him being too smart.
Nice work, BlackKnight.
How so? He mislabeled nearly every movie.
In Jurassic Park, the dino scientists are the ones that are able to outsmart the dinos and live. In Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum’s virus is the only thing that stops the aliens. Also, for the record, Jeff Goldblum is credited as an above-the-title actor in the film. And in Batman, Batman, Michael Caine, and Lucius Fox are shown always winning the day due to their smarts. And Gordon isn’t bad either.
I’m not sure that those films are a particularly representative sample. The Avengers and Batman are both films made for nerds, so I wouldn’t expect them to be very anti-intellectual. I’ll look, later, for a more representative sample of films.
I would agree with BlackKnight, however, that Jeff Goldblum’s character is pretty ancillary to the film. To a large extent, he’s just a basketball for Will Smith to slam in the hoop. And, I suspect that if you look, it will have been someone else to have first suggested “viruses”.