CULTURAL LITERACY—MOVIES.

CULTURAL LITERACY—MOVIES. Rob Gallo had a long interesting comment here about movies and movie acting. He concludes the comment with “Food for thought.” It’s made for some interesting discussion in our house. Let me begin by saying that one of the gaps in my liberal education is the great movies of the thirties and forties. Rob is roughly a generation younger than I am, yet he mentions seven movies, and I’ve only seen two of them. Back in the eighties Allen Bloom wrote THE CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND, which deplored the declining role of the Great Books in American universities, and E.D. Hirsch, Jr. wrote books about cultural which broadened the scope of what Americans should know beyond what the wikipedia article on cultural literacy refers to as “[k]nowledge of a canonical set of literature.” Mary Jane used to exclaim indignantly: “Cultural literacy! Why doesn’t my baby sitter know who Gary Cooper is!”