The myth of Columbia on screen

Upper West Side NY

21 January, 2022

3:37 PM

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Columbia Daily Spectator BY MILES STEPHENSON • JANUARY 19, 2022, 8:53 AM Movies always deal in imitation, relief, and myth; filmmakers cannot hope to capture the whole reality of their subjects so they create a patchwork quilt stitched together by a team of location scouts, set designers, and wardrobe stylists. Filmmakers frequently apply this cinematic reimagining to universities. Movies like "Good Will Hunting," "Legally Blonde," and "The Social Network" combine footage shot at multiple schools with the visual conventions of Boston's Ivy League university to build a composite Harvard as a setting. This synthesized Harvard does not have to be true to form; it just has to feel right for the viewer with characters who convey an aura of academic self-importance set to a background of New England red brick. Columbia is no different. But to what end do filmmakers use Columbia in their storyworlds? What cinematic niche does Columbia have, and what might it reveal about how popular media conceptualizes the school? The cinematic decisions made by the cast and crew of movies representing 60 canonical years of Columbia's people, places, and ideas, spanning from the 1940s writers of 2013's "Kill Your Darlings" to Peter Parker's field trip turned origin story in 2002's "Spider-Man," reveal the myth of the University and its role in society. Why Columbia? Dozens of movies are either shot at Columbia or make reference to its history. Columbia professor Rob King, a veritable reservoir of film history who teaches classes on comedy, new media art, virtual reality, and cult and exploitation film, points out that Columbia has a number of elements that make the University a significant draw for filmmakers. King notes that Columbia is rare because it is a physical campus in New York City. Nearly all of New York City's colleges are integrated into the city grid, and as such, they lack centralized shooting locations that can register as a "generic college campus" to viewers. Characterized by statues of founding fathers and McKim, Mead, and White's neoclassical architecture, the campus aestheticizes America's intellectual history with the Hudson River on one side and a sea of skyscrapers on the other. All of these dimensions make Columbia an ideal shooting location and setting for productions that involve urban universities. In Columbia Magazine, Mussaad Al-Razouki, Dental '07, Business '08, compiled a helpful list of many fictional alumni in film. From "Mad Men's" Ken Cosgrove to "The Sopranos'" Meadow Soprano, Columbia finds its way into countless television shows as well. Most recently, the "Sex and the City" reboot, "And Just Like That…," followed Miranda pursuing her master's degree at Columbia. Furthermore, biopics and historical dramas that feature famous Columbia alumni often show their figures' stages of development at the school. "Barry" shows Barack Obama's first year at the school in the 1980s as he struggles with issues of identity and racial discrimination. Set during World War II, "Kill Your Darlings" follows the mischievous antics of some of Columbia's most famous literary icons, including novelist Jack Kerouac and psychedelic Buddhist poet Allen Ginsberg, as they pioneer the Beat Generation. Throughout these portrayals, one will notice certain visual characteristics of Columbia on the screen. Statues such as Alma Mater and The Thinker are often used to conjure up ideas of university prestige and self-reflection from characters in movies. Filmmakers use these cornerstones of campus to draw their characters into deep thought, recalling a lineage of great thinkers that have come before them. The first shot of campus in "Kill Your Darlings" shows Ginsberg, played by Daniel Radcliffe, marching across South Lawn while he looks at Alma Mater, still beaming from pride after opening his acceptance letter. In "Hannah and Her Sisters," a midshot of The Thinker, Rodin's bronze cast outside Philosophy Hall, visually invites a crisis of faith monologue from Mickey, played by Woody Allen. Mickey saunters south toward Butler Library with the camera panning to follow him as he begins to wonder about the meaninglessness of life. "Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds, and in the end none of them know anything more about the big questions of life than I do," Mickey said. "I read Socrates. This guy used to knock off little Greek boys. What the hell's he got to teach me? And Nietzsche with his theory of eternal recurrence, he said that the life we live, we're going to live over and over again the exact same way for eternity … And Freud, another great pessimist, I was in analysis for years, nothing happened." Also utilizing physical aspects of campus to guide her story, in "The Mirror Has Two Faces," director Barbra Streisand uses the University's landmarks to characterize a love affair between two Columbia professors. Rose and Gregory, played by Streisand and Jeff Bridges respectively, have a flirtatious snowball fight in front of Butler and its imposing row of Ionic columns. When they attend a concert at St. Paul's Chapel with the facade's entablature "Pro Ecclesia Dei" (For the Church of God) over their shoulders, they discuss the illusion of romantic love in media and movies. These sites on campus, charged with intellectual symbolism, serve the filmmaker's vision of two professors falling in love over the mutual appreciation of knowledge as opposed to physical intimacy. Beyond monumental libraries and statues, filmmakers have used Columbia's physicality to devise a specific academic aesthetic. The Intellectual Aesthetic King explains that out of all the spots on campus, Room 309 in Havemeyer Hall gets specific cinematic attention. Not only does the lecture hall often appear in movies about the University, filmmakers also favor 309 Havemeyer for creating a universal scholastic aesthetic in many movie storyworlds. "Havemeyer 309 has that iconic sense of being what a lecture hall should be like. Even if you've never been there, you know it already," King said. With a wall of ten sliding blackboards, an audience of 330 tiered seats flanked by two mezzanines, and a brass-railed gallery, this room appears to be the embodiment of academia set to the tune of clacking chalk. These characteristics point to why 309 Havemeyer has been used in dozens of movies including "Awakenings," "Malcolm X," "The Mirror Has Two Faces," "Mona Lisa Smile," "Kinsey," both "Ghostbusters," and all three of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man films. In director Spike Lee's biopic "Malcolm X," X, played by Denzel Washington, addresses a full house of students and suited professionals about the teachings of Elijah Muhammad in a lecture hall that an establishing shot suggests lies inside Hamilton Hall but is actually 309 Havemeyer. Like the filmmakers of "The Social Network" did for Harvard, Lee builds a sort of cinematically ideal university in Boston, using Hamilton's grand facade with Havemeyer's classical interior. In "Kinsey," professor Alfred Kinsey, played by Liam Neeson, conducts one of his controversial lectures about human sexuality in the 1940s and 1950s in what is supposed to be a lecture hall at Indiana University, shot in—yes, to be predicted—309 Havemeyer. The same switch out is used to shoot a scene in "Mona Lisa Smile", as Kathrine Ann Watson, played by Julia Roberts, teaches a history of art course at Wellesley in 1953. With its dark wood features and high, domed ceiling, 309 Havemeyer suggests a romantic antiquity and defines the university aesthetic in the cinematic space: a place where serious ideas are discussed and historical discoveries are made. The Cinematic Science of Columbia King believes there is a specific theme to the fictional research filmmakers ascribe to Columbia, and it centers around science. "To the extent to which one could tease out any running theme that binds together any of these films, it would be this idea of weird science or path breaking science," he said. "It's gonna be where there's a radioactive spider that's gonna bite Peter Parker. It's gonna be the setting of Altered States … Ghostbusters is the exact same kind of connection." Perhaps filmmakers have been inspired by the likes of physics professor Brian Greene's groundbreaking contributions to string theory or biomedical engineering professor Helen Lu's work in growing soft tissues to build functional organ systems. Whatever their source, it seems that Columbia is often chosen by filmmakers as the ground zero for far out or even supernatural science. In Raimi's "Spider-Man," Peter Parker, played by Tobey Maguire, visits the arachnid research department of Columbia. Parker remarks to his friend Harry that they have the most advanced electron microscope on the Eastern Seaboard. The viewer soon learns that Columbia is creating 15 genetically-engineered super spiders, one of which escapes and bites Peter in the movie's inciting incident. Then in "Ghostbusters," parapsychologists Raymond Stantz and Peter Venkman, played respectively by Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray, conduct their ghost research out of the fictional Weaver Hall—shot at Avery Hall—where the actors used terms like "etheric plane" and the ionization rates for ectoplasmic entities. When the dean informs them that the Board of Regents has terminated their grant, the camera shows Stantz and Venkman discussing their options in front of Low Steps. Stantz said, "Personally, I like the University. They gave us money and facilities. We didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college, you don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector. They expect results." In "Altered States," a psychopathologist named Eddie Jessup, played by William Hurt, conducts experiments with hallucinogens and sensory deprivation tanks. In front of Alma Mater, he explains his theory on genetic memories and their role in human consciousness. Even Marvel sent many of its brainiac superheroes to Columbia, including Doctor Strange, Daredevil, and Spiderman in "Spider-Man 2". Columbia, it seems, inspires a flair for the mad scientist and the cinematic supernatural. The Evolution of Columbia's Portrayal In over 60 years of story canon at Columbia, the cinematic portrayal of the University has evolved alongside real changes to the institution and American culture more broadly. In the earliest depictions of Columbia on screen, a student's life at the University was portrayed as the nexus of preppy collegiate aesthetics, soft bigotry, and a Western intellectual tradition that censored divergent thought. This has certainly helped form the modern visualization of the mid-century Ivy League and has many historical accounts to back it up. In "Kill Your Darlings," Columbia students write their poetic manifestos on typewriters and jaunt up to Harlem if they want to hear live jazz. Columbia students in the film usually sport tweed coats over vests and colorful neckties, while the occasional visitor from Barnard College wears pink blouses. Blue-clad sailors from the Navy walk down Low Steps before they are shipped out to the Pacific. In these instances, film imitates reality; Columbia served as one of the Navy's central training sites during World War II, and it was not until 1982 that Columbia College became fully co-ed. Another scene from "Kill Your Darlings" shows a University admissions tour of South Hall Library, later renamed Butler Library in 1946, as the guide shows off Columbia's original parchments of the "most important texts in history," including "Beowulf," "Hamlet," and "The Gutenberg Bible." Many of these European texts remain on the Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization syllabi to this day and will induce a flashback to first-year and sophomore year for any student viewer. But when student Lucien Carr, played by Dane DeHaan, another rascal of the Beat Generation, recites a sexually explicit passage from Bohemian author Henry Miller, a library attendant tells him, "That book is restricted," before a troop of security guards chases him through the halls. Director John Krokidas portrays 1940s Columbia as an institution averse to change and conservative in expression. While borrowing from a 309 Havemeyer aesthetic—dark wood, giant blackboards, old books—in an undisclosed classroom, the movie shows viewers one of Ginsberg's days in class after suffering some anti-Semitic remarks from his roommate. He suggests a more free-verse Whitmanian approach to poetry to his professor who is fixated on Victorian sonnets, and the professor replies, "This university exists because of tradition and form!" In the 1958 edition of "Teacher's Pet," director George Seaton's story reveals how the perception of women at Columbia, and universities more broadly, has evolved. "Teacher's Pet" shows the real Columbia of the 1950s with wide shots of Low Library and Hamilton on VistaVision 35mm in black and white. When old-fashioned journalist James Gannon, played by Clark Gable, sits in on a Columbia journalism course taught by professor Erica Stone, played by Doris Day, the prejudices of the era are revealed. Immediately, Gannon is taken aback that the class is taught by Stone, saying "Do you mean to tell me that now they've got dames teaching unsuspecting suckers?" As the movies featuring Columbia approach the present, the aesthetic and experience of the student body begins to take on a more familiar form. In "Marathon Man," which came out in 1976, the viewer follows a Columbia graduate student named Thomas Levy, played by Dustin Hoffman, as he writes his doctoral dissertation on the use of tyranny in American political life. People hang around the fountains on Low Plaza and throw a football on the lawn in front of Kent Hall, showing the more relaxed aspects of Columbia's campus culture. Fashion is beginning to trend toward the "yuppie" styles of the '80s, with students wearing polo shirts, jeans, bomber jackets and flannels. In Levy's seminar, portrayed as an exclusive class where four students were picked from 200 applicants, Levy sits beside a Black student and a female student. The demographics and intellectual diversity of the University have changed since the canon of "Kill Your Darlings" and "Teacher's Pet." In "Barry," from 2016 and set in 1981, Barack Obama, CC '83, played by Devon Terrell, attends a Literature Humanities class where the viewer hears a debate between supporters of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson about the role of violence in political rule while reading Plato's "Republic." The professor is amenable to both perspectives and the censorship of the '40s Columbia is notably absent. The next three settings—a Sigma Omega Delta fraternity party, a late night at bar 1020, and a lecture—show a wide variety of white, Asian, and Black students in collegiate '80s fashion of button-downs, sweaters, and tweed jackets. But later, as Obama comes back to campus after a night out, he is told off by campus police for not having his student ID in an incident that is portrayed as racial profiling. And in a discussion with a white student, Obama says, "Some people can't leave who they are at the door. I'm the only Black person in four of my five classes." It appears that although director Vikram Gandhi wants to show some progress towards demographic accessibility and intellectual diversity since the Columbia of WWII, the University is still connected to America's history of racism. No movie will ever be able to capture the whole reality of Columbia as an institution. Since its founding in 1754 as King's College, the school has withstood the Revolutionary War, the Moon Landing, and the global COVID-19 pandemic. An ocean of experiences have flowed through its halls. But by looking at certain aesthetic conventions like elements of the 309 Havemeyer lecture hall, narrative conventions like avant-garde or supernatural science, and the general evolution of Columbia's culture through historical fiction movies, one can see Columbia's niche in the worlds of film. Founded in 1877, the Columbia Daily Spectator is the independent undergraduate newspaper of Columbia University, serving thousands of readers in Morningside Heights, West Harlem, and beyond. Read more at columbiaspectator.com and donate here.