Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Urban Haute Bourgeoisie (Metropolitan)
“UHB” is a delightful coinage. One thing I liked about this movie is how in the frequent discussions of the failure of the UHB, it was always assumed by everyone that the UHB were going to fail as if it was so obvious that you wouldn’t bother to question. Now the old WASP ascendancy had been losing its position for decades, but does that translate into almost certain failure for each and every young UHB? Does this peculiar conceit play an important role in the movie? Does one of the reasons that the movie has such a charmingly light tone come from the acceptance without gloom of these youth that they are doomed?
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4 comments:
I should have this in the mail tomorrow!
More apologies. Apparently, it has to come from Netflix in Denver, and they're saying Monday now.
OK. Finally received the movie from Netflix.
I thought the conceit was just another way of poking fun at how seriously the kids, especially the young intellectual men, took themselves. Didn't the older guy, a UHB himself, in the bar kind of burst their bubble by pointing out that not all UHBs are failures? But I guess this says nothing about the class as a whole. And what would failure look like. What would success look like? Does failure mean no more deb balls, no stand-alone collars and elbow gloves?
The conversation in the bar was good. First, the older guy immediately adopted “UHB” as if it was a natural term that he should have already been using. Secondly, I don’t think he so much bust their bubble as offered the alternate “sure the UHB are doomed to failure—I’m a failure—but there are, you know, exceptions.” This sent the kids away mulling over the thought, “hmm, this is more complicated than we thought.” Such is the life of the young intellectual.
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