Saturday 10 September 2016

Everyone Is An Expert Now


I’m starting to become more than annoyed now.

I mentioned to a family member that I was going to watch Battleship Potemkin, Serigei Eisenstein’s masterpiece; I knew we had a copy at home but I just couldn’t find it. The family member looked at me and said ‘oh, but that’s an old film’. I said yes, I know that. I’ve seen it before but not for years. They looked at me again and raised their eyebrows and then said, in a condescending way, ‘I’m surprised you’re watching that.’ I then pointed out, again, I saw it years ago when I was 17. I reminded them that I had studied film for years. They just pretended I wasn’t there and when I tried to get a reply they moaned that I was yelling.

 

I’m not sure if this happens to anyone else, but I seem to be judged continuously, usually by certain family members, for love of film and my knowledge. They seem to conveniently forget that I love genres of films (apart from horror) and that I studied it at A Levels and for my degree. But I am met with eye rolling and raised eyebrows and arrogant looks when I mention I am going to see a foreign film or an old film. I am not condescendingly about a film and what its about if it was made before the 80s, as if I didn’t know. I haven’t see all the film ever made and I definitely don’t know about all the films ever made, but if I’m not interested in seeing a film, it doesn’t automatically mean my brain fell out and I’m a moron, which is how I’m treated.

I can’t be the only one who has experienced this?

What used to happen (and still does) was that if I mentioned I studied film and TV or that I have a blog where I write about film and TV, people around me act like they know more than me, like it’s a competition. I never felt this way around my friends, ever. It was usually around those I didn’t know well or people I wasn’t going to/didn’t get along with. I don’t know it is that makes people act this way. I know some of friends who also studied/work in creative subjects had the same thing happen to them. One of my friends who studied animation and fashion used to have people she barely knew talk down to her as if she didn’t what she was talking about. Suddenly everyone was an expert in fashion. Again, I don’t know what makes people act this way, unprovoked.

I tried to explain my views about a film (I think I’ve mentioned this one before) and I was shot down, talked to like a child and told that I wouldn’t know as I was around in the 70s. The film was set in the 70s but it was not a period drama. The point was irrelevant. It boiled down to the fact they didn’t get it and didn’t want to. There was more to the conversation but it was mainly me trying to keep my cool while I was told that others can have opinions but I wasn’t allowed to have one.

 

Telling someone that they can’t have a say or undermining them about a subject that they are passionate about, let alone studied and not just at college or University but actively studies it, is NOT cool with me.

Thank goodness for friends who just ‘get it’.  My little rant is over, just needed to get that out of my system.