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This paper examines the motion picture, Art school confidential, to analyze the college environment and student behaviors depicted in the presentation. It reviews the setting, characters, behaviors and conflicts of the story and compares them to actual life conditions as reflected in the surveys and statistics discussed in class and researched in literature. I begin by outlining the conditions leading up to the movie production and then summarizing the story, then I discuss how this feature is relevant to our course, review the central themes of the movie in relationship to our course content, examine the context of the movie in regard to the literature on college students, analyze the movie subplot with typical college findings in mind, outline how this motion picture presents a picture similar to the statistics that we have reviewed in class, and finally, I offer concluding remarks.
The feature film, Art school confidential had its origin in the early 1990’s in the ‘underground’ comic book genre (See Figure 1). Daniel Clowes, an art student at the Pratt Institute, penned a 4-page, black and white comic to satirize his collegiate experiences. He later authored the screenplay, which was made into the feature film. The movie is about Jerome Platz, a naïve incoming freshmen to art school at Strathmore University in the early years of this century. It chronicles his introduction to campus life, highlighting his expectations, his exposure to the reality of art school life and the ensuing angst. His cohorts are varied and his teachers are quirky. He comes to grips with the reality of college art training and the art world community. He strives to be recognized as a good portraiturist and win the favor of the daughter of a local artist. Amid the backdrop of his learning experience is a subplot about and a strangler on campus. The movie was co-produced by John Malkovitch, who also stars in the movie as one of Jerome’s professors. Anjelica Huston also appears as another professor of Jerome. This film was presented at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
There are several character types depicted in the movie and the original comic presentation (See Figure 1). Persons include the rich guy with no talent, the self-involved artist-professor, neurotic art-girls, the drug-addicted failed artist, the worldly upperclassman and the famous egotistical alumni artist.
The purpose of the comic and the subsequent movie is to confront the bogus art establishment and expose its nature to the world. This movie looks at the notion of fame as and element of the ‘successful’ artist as encountered by freshman through their indoctrination into the art school. That angst and struggle is reflected in the college data that we examine in class. Thus, this movie is relevant to our course because it depicts the conventional wisdom and reality of art school students in their first year experience.
Specifically, this movie explores several topics that we discussed in class or discovered in literature including, grade expectations, grade inflation, a lessening of student’s fears of victimization, drug use and increased enrollments.
Jerome Platz, the protagonist in the movie, came from a high school experience where he was renowned for his artistic sketches. Schilling & Schilling (1999) explain how grades in high school have been rising. This might explain why Jerome has such high hopes coming to Strathmore University, where he exclaims that “he wants to be the greatest artist of the 21st Century (Mudd et al., 2006)”. He soon discovers that in art school every student receives an ‘A’ on their class project, and the favored pupil is awarded with a larger ‘A’ inscribed in red ink. Sax ( 2003) lists grade inflation as a key trend in their study.
Although the art college community is threatened with a serial murderer that has struck several times late night on campus, students react to the threat with a laid-back attitude. Goldberg & Connelly ( 1999) report that for teenagers “the percentage who said they feared being victimized dropped to 24 percent, from 40 percent in 1994.” This movie shows a culture of illicit drug activity , which is in alignment with our readings on the prevalence of drug use in college society (Newton, 2000). The movie depicts several types of art student from the traditional coed to middle-aged housewives with time to fulfill a lifelong desire, to the student who has tried other professions and nothing has seemed to work. Statistics from the College Arts Association confirms increased enrollments in arts curriculums (See Appendix B), although the total number of students majoring in art is only about 5.5% of the total population.
The central themes of the movie concern elitism versus the idolization of integrity and being able to find a job and make a living. These issues are found in our readings as well. Teenage angst permeates the ‘underground’ comic, Art school confidential, and the subsequent movie. Jerome strives to expose and strip away the bogus elements of his academic environment and the greater art community. He detests the class critiques of artwork and famous artist that are self-centered braggarts. Likewise, Coomes & DeBard (2004) describes a millennial student as most admiring integrity (See Appendix B). Orr (2010) discuses the place of connoisseurship in post-secondary arts instruction, describing it as sometimes confused with elitism, but having a place in arts school education inasmuch as it may expose students to the expertise of the profession.
Another important theme in the movie concerns the ability to become steadily employed as an artist upon graduation (See Figure 2). In the movie, the art studio
professor begins his first class by saying:
“Now I don't have any particular wisdom to impart to you people, except to say this, these four words - don't have unrealistic expectations. If you want to make money, better drop out right now, go to banking school, or website school - anywhere but art school. And remember, only 1 out of 100 of you will ever make a living as an artist (Mudd et al., 2006)”.
The College Art Association survey, “Advancing the history, interpretation, and practice of the visual arts for over a century indicates a decline in the job market for arts professions (See Appendix A).
In regard to context, this movie is greatly affected by the era it portrays, which is contemporary, and the urban college setting. The choice of a city art school highlights the lack toward integrity in a way that a laid-back rural college might not. Overall, the mood of the story and characters are cohesive with the learning environment and atmosphere that we studied in class.
The edition of the subplot involving the ‘Strathmore Strangler’ was a useful tool to heighten the internal conflict of characters and in providing the source of resolution. This movie is a good insight into the lives of arts students, which are different in some ways to ordinary undergraduate students, but overall very congruous with our readings.
This movie captures the atmosphere and environment of a first year arts college student. The writer actually lived the experiences and some actions in the feature actually occurred at the Pratt Institute in New York. Because of the satiric nature of the production, the heightened experiences illuminate subtle issues. Even so, the movie seems genuine, and unafraid to express the genre of an offbeat ‘underground’ film. There were some areas that were unrealistic. The final resolution that finds our protagonist both falsely imprisoned as a serial murderer and resigned to the fact that his new notoriety has made is artwork acclaimed, is a rather cynical end to a noble yearning for integrity. Overall, however, it is a good movie for our course.
References:
Goldberg, C. & Connelly, M. ( October 20, 1999). Polls find decline in teen-age fear and violence. New York Times. Retrieved from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2D91239F933A15753C1A96F958260&pagewanted=all
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