Everyone has their own unique signs that summer is upon us, the signature sound that signals the academic year is winding down. For me, it’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears.
More below the fold.
“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” plays over the closing titles to Real Genius, a 1985 comedy starring Val Kilmer just on the cusp of stardom. Every year, on the night before the Advanced Placement Physics exam, I host my class for pizza and movies — Real Genius is one of them. (The other is The Princess Bride.) As the first chords sound, I feel the weight of the year lift and I know that summer is here, or nearly so.
Real Genius tells the story of Mitch Taylor, a 15-year-old supergenius admitted to Pacific Tech to work on a new laser power source. His mentor, of sorts, is Chris Knight (Kilmer), who used to be the hottest genius on campus but who, in his senior year, has suddenly gone a bit wild. Both work for Dr. Jerome “Jerry” Hathaway, played by the inimitable William Atherton. Back in the 1980s, Mr. Atherton made a virtual career of playing stuck-up, neurotic antagonists (the EPA guy in Ghostbusters, the arrogant reporter in Die Hard) and here is no exception — and he’s still the guy you love to hate. The movie weaves together Mitch’s coming-of-age tale with the simple but brutal politics of campus life and a larger-picture concern over the weaponization of outer space. (Really.)
Real Genius is actually quite a funny movie and deserves to be remembered more and better than it is. That’s only one reason why I show it, though. The larger reason I show it has to do with the population I teach and the culture we live in. Specifically, Real Genius has a message I think it’s good my kids hear, especially on the night before their big exam: It’s OK to be smart. In fact, it’s preferred.
Too often, in Hollywood, brains are to be despised or distrusted. When tolerated, it’s only because they’re useful. (Think: The Professor from Gilligan’s Island.) There’s always something suspicious, unnerving, even faintly un-American, about the intelligent characters. Movies are about “regular Joes” who demonstrate that book smarts might be useful in the short run, but it’s the aw-shucks simple spirit of the common man that will save the day.
Real Genius takes that motiff and says, Bollocks. The kids in this movie are smart. And it’s not just one lone smart kid, who has to learn to embrace his inner mediocrity and be accepted into the group. The group is smart. Beyond Mitch and Chris, there’s quirky love interest Jordan, budding mad scientist Ick, and silent guy in the steam tunnels Lazlo. They are individually intelligent and collectively, well, geniuses. Every one of them brings something to the endeavor and every one of them is appreciated by all the others for being smart, not in spite of being smart.
The other Hollywood stereotype undermined by this movie is the evil scientist. Generally, the assumption (especially in the 1970s and 1980s) was that anyone who did basic research and used his/her brain was, to be blunt, dubious. Many were in it to develop weapons and not think of the consequences. Real Genius embraces but then subverts that stereotype. The kids at PacTech certainly delve into their fields and don’t think about the applications. But they uniformly reject Hathaway’s attempt to weaponize their work — even foil and nebbish on-campus antagonist Kent, when confronted with the fact that he’s actually been working on a phase conjugate targeting system for a laser death ray, is stunned and dismayed. Heck, in backstory, we learn that Lazlo, faced with a similar discovery, actually broke and went from #1 rising star to hermit living in the steam tunnels. Mitch and Chris are outraged at Hathaway’s perversion of their work and take positive steps to correct the mistake. Even Hathaway is shown to be motivated not by crazed visions of scientific power but from a mundane desire to succeed materially.
In the end, the students best the professor and the military-industrial complex. They do it not by being purer (though they are) or by working together (though they do). They do it by being smarter than their opponents. The movie celebrates their intelligence. And yes, they are pure and they are noble. But this is shown not to be the aberration but the usual order of things. They are amplified by their intelligence, not lessened by it.
It’s a lesson I want my AP kids to see. They’re also bright and even a little noble, and they’re about to dive into university life, where there will be pressure to compromise their intelligence and their principles. Almost the entire culture is screaming at them to cover their light under a bushel and be less than they are in order to fit in. I wanted them to hear at least one voice against that cacophonous chorus, that lone whisper that says,
It’s OK to be smart. In fact, it’s preferred.
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