Ball of Fire (1941)

Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper shine in the 1941 classic, Ball of Fire. Co-written by Billy Wilder, of the Some Like It Hot-fame, Cooper plays college professor Bertram Potts, who lives with seven other professors, conducting research for the Totten Foundation. The professors are charged with a 12-year project of writing an encyclopedia. Miss Bragg, their housekeeper, is the only woman they allow in, so as not to be distracted from their scholarly pursuits.

One of their regular contacts from the outside is the garbage man. By talking to him, Potts realizes that as a professor of language, he is out of touch with the latest slang. He decides to venture outside of the house- much to the objection of his peers- to gather data from everyday people in order to improve the quality of his research.

His efforts eventually lead him to a nightclub, where he meets Sugarpuss O'Shea, played by Stanwyck. Engaged to a gangster who is wanted for murder, she is trying to keep a low profile and avoid the police. When Potts recruits her to be an informant for his slang study, she invites herself to stay at the Totten Foundation House. She feigns illness to convince Potts and his fellow colleagues to make an exception of their no-girls-allowed rule, and becomes their house guest.

She charms the professors so much that Potts falls in love with her, even though she is really trying to schedule a rendezvous with her fiance. Potts eventually wins her over after a wild goose chase and the gangster is carted off to jail while the nightclub singer and professor live happily ever after ...

From the perspective of someone inside the ivory tower, the degree to which the professors are out of touch, and their strict no-girls rule for producing the best scholarship possible for the encyclopedia make for a good laugh. Being distracted by women, particularly of the likes of Sugarpuss O'Shea, would be most detrimental to the encyclopedia...but Potts is able to make a few sacrifices, all in the name of scholarship, of course.

Here's a clip from the movie:

The Freshman (1990)

The Freshman (1990), starring Matthew Broderick as Clark Kellogg, portrays the extremes that college students may go to in an effort to ease the financial burden of going to college.

The trailer can be viewed here.

Originally from Vermont, Clark catches a train to New York City by himself, with only a few pieces of luggage and $600 given to him by his parents--a notable difference when compared to today's level of consumption and doting parents of some college students. Being slightly gullible and unfamiliar with the New York City, Clark agrees to a ride to campus, only to have all of his luggage stolen by the driver, played by Bruno Kirby.

Unsure where to turn for help, Clark solicits advise from his professor. The professor, who comes off as self-centered, arrogant, and pompous, insists that despite his unfortunate situation, Clark must purchase the required readings for the semester, including a textbook authored by the professor. The books are expected to cost him $700, which is expensive even by today's standards. After hearing Clark express his concerns about being able to pay for his textbooks, his professor says, "I'm your faculty advisor, not your case worker," showing complete disregard for Clark's financial struggles.

Ironically, Clark finds the man who stole his luggage from him, who in turn offers Clark a job that pays well ($1,000 a week) and has flexible hours. As he puts it, the job is "perfect for a college student," and Clark's money woes soon disappear. Not long after he begins his new job, Clark realizes he is working for the mob boss, Carmine Sabatini, played by Marlon Brando.

Between the odd-jobs Clark is asked to complete, he befriends Sabatini's daughter, Tina, played by Penelope Ann Miller. Tina explains to Clark that she will be attending Harvard next year, all due to a phone call her father made to the university. Her admission was in exchange for Sabatini helping to present the union workers from striking. Tina, by association with her father, also carries quite a bit of clout amongst New Yorkers. She exercises her own influence by telling Clark's professor that Clark is an "A" student, making it clear what grade he will receive for the course.

Although Clark attends classes at NYU, much of his education is delivered to him "on the streets" as opposed to in the classroom. Sabatini becomes a father figure and teacher to Clark, providing him with an education that he would never receive from a formal educational setting. Ironically, the main outcome of his freshman year comes in the form of street smarts, not book smarts, even though paying for college was his main motivation for accepting the job offer.

In the end, everything works out for Clark and the Sabatini Family. Clark is able to survive his freshman year and has enough money to pay for college. His job certainly distracted him from his studies, but with friends like Sabatini, Clark needed worry about a poor academic performance.

Acceptance (2009)

Acceptance is a movie based on Susan Coll's novel of the same name. The movie, which closely follows the book, focuses on three high school students who are applying for college.

Set in a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C., the quest for being accepted to college is seen through the eyes of three students- the pressure of AP courses and exams, living up to others' expectations, finding the "right fit," and being comfortable with who they are. The book also incorporates other factors that are known to impact college-going: parents' expectations and aspirations, advice from counselors and teachers, performance on AP exams, admissions policies, campus visits, peer influences, and so on.

While Acceptance depicts many aspects of the college-going process, it focuses on the lives of privileged families who reside in an upper-class neighborhood. However, despite their background, upbringing, and what is expected of them, the students struggle to find the right college for them. Their parents, not the students, are the ones who debate which Ivy League is the best college, and are convinced that without an Ivy League education, their children will amount to nothing. In Taylor Rockefeller's case, her mother won't even hear of her daughter thinking of going to the lesser-known Yates College, where Taylor truly believes she will be happiest. For Maya Kaluantharana, her father tells her she has a learning disability because her GPA is 'only a 3.75.'

Although the experiences of the students and their families are not the norm for most high school students in the United States, the movie does incorporate small but important criticisms of college and the college admissions process. For instance, a meeting of the admissions officers at Yates College is used to question the legitimacy of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings. Although the admissions officers acknowledge the rankings are a farce, the instant they find out they are (erroneously) ranked, they are thrilled. Not only do they embrace their ranking, they are excited about the prospect of having an increased applicant pool, from which to reject more students, thereby increasing the college's (perceived) selectivity.

As researchers, the movie also gives us a friendly reality check in terms of the reasons students select their colleges. We can run regression models day and night, but sometimes it is things that don't appear in datasets that explain why a student attended one college over another. And in the end, we find that Acceptance, isn't just about getting accepted to college, but also about being accepted for who you truly are- with your peers and your family.

For an easy and entertaining read, or for a light movie, check it out. As a bonus, Joan Cusak plays the eccentric Mrs. Nina Rockefeller, and gives a humorous performance, as usual. To see her take on the movie: see this short video.

The Visitor

The Visitor (2007) is a movie about a recently widowed economics professor, Dr. Walter Vale (played by Richard Jenkins) who's life is changed when he meets a strange couple.Walter is a college professor who lives and works in Connecticut. He is sent to a conference at New York University to present a paper on global economics.

He keeps an apartment in the city but has not been there in quite awhile. When he arrives, he finds a Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and Zainab (Danai Gurira) living there. Tarek is from Syria and is a musician, while girlfriend Zainab is from Senegal and sells handmade jewelry as a street vendor. Although Walter does not call the cops to have them arrested, he asks them to leave. Later that same night, he finds them on the street outside with no where to go, and invites them to stay with him just for a few days.

Overtime, Walter and Tarek become friends, and share their love of music with one another. Walter shows interest in Tarek's drums, and he agrees to teach Walter how to play. One afternoon, after Tarek and Walter have been playing drums together in the park, they take the subway home. Tarek offers to pay Walter's fare, and having difficulty with the drums that they are carrying, Tarek is unable to get through the turnstile even after he has swiped his fare card for each of them. Police officers see him, think that him jumped the turnstile, and arrest him.

Walter learns from Zainab that they are both undocumented immigrants. Tarek is transferred from a police station to a detention center in Queens. Walter, feeling responsible for Tarek's arrest, hires a lawyer to help release Tarek. Tarek's mother travels from Detroit to New York to see if she can help release him from the detention center.

Walter's life as a college professor is portrayed as dull, boring, and very isolating, which seems to be a favorite interpretation of faculty life as portrayed in film. He goes about his life in a depressed manner, attends the conference without enthusiasm, and does not seem to have any joy in his life until he meets Tarek and Zainab. His academic work focuses on the economics of developing countries. When he tells Tarek what the conference that he is attending is about, Tarek says that Walter is studying places like where he and Zainab are from. Those at the conference seem far removed from the experiences of people like Tarek and Zainab, even though what they are researching and presenting on is purportedly related to places such as Syria and Senegal.

During the movie, Walter gives the impression that he is very busy with his work, even though we don't see him doing much in terms of academic work. He tells people that he is busy working on multiple books and they seem impressed. It is not until he meets Tarek's mother that he confesses:

I haven't done any real work in a very long time. I pretend. Pretend that I'm busy; that I'm working. I'm not doing anything.

This made me think about how some academics seem to enjoy bragging to one another about how busy they are, as if it is a competition to see who can be the busiest. And yet, perhaps because he was lacking a personal-professional balance in his life, his professional work was unproductive. Until he begins to play the drums and 'lives a little,' his character doesn't really come alive.

You can watch the preview of The Visitor here.

In the Heights

This blog is dedicated to education in film and TV, but the first post is actually about a musical.

The American Educational Research Association (AERA) met in Denver for its annual conference recently. While in Denver, I had the opportunity to see the Broadway musical In the Heights, which won 4 Tony Awards in 2008. The musical is about a group of people who live on a block in Washington Heights. Aside from the simply outstanding music, singing, and dancing, one of the sub-stories of the musical relates to higher education.

Nina, one of the main characters, is a high-achieving Latina who received a scholarship to attend Stanford. She returns to Washington Heights after her first year away at college. Her parents, friends, and others in the neighborhood had and continue to have high expectations for her- they expected her to go far and accomplish much. Through the songs, we learn that they are excited her return- to hear about her first year at Stanford was and to hear just how successful she was in college.

However, Nina returns to Washington Heights as a college dropout. Her scholarship did not cover all of her costs to attend college, and she took on two jobs to help pay for books and other expenses that she encountered. Her jobs left little time to study, and she dropped out of college four months before returning home for the summer. She has yet to tell her parents, and is anxious about letting them (and others in her community) down.

Her story is woven throughout the rest of the musical, with her parents learning that she dropped out and expressing their disappointment in her after all they sacrificed for her, to her father selling his business to help her return to college, and finally to her realizing that she can and should return to Stanford. Within this story, are the struggles that many families experience when their children go off to college as first-generation students, as well as students of color. Nina experiences push-pull factors that impact her college-related decisions- a scholarship that doesn't cover all expenses, expectations of others, her own disappointment in herself, the sacrifices her parents make...just to name a few.

The song Breathe tells of Nina's story and the struggles she experiences coming home after dropping out of college. Here is a sample of the lyrics:

I got every scholarship,
Saved every dollar,
The first to go to college,
How do I tell them why
I'm coming back home,
With my eyes on the horizon
Just me and the GWB, asking,
Gee Nina, What'll you be?

Straighten the spine.
Smile for the neighbors.
Everything's fine.
Everything's cool.
The standard reply,
"Lots of tests, lots of papers."
Smile, wave goodbye,
And pray to the sky, oh God...
And what will my parents say?

You can listen to Breathe in its entirety here.