General Snobbery | Film and Philosophy

Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining is about a guy who loses his mind in a really big hotel. It's also about a woman who loses her mind in a big hotel, a child who has pretty much already lost his mind, and Scatman Crothers. Scatman plays cook Dick Halloran, a source of light amidst ever-increasing darkness, until that darkness, in the form of Jack Nicholson, swings an axe into Scatman's chest. The...

Culture is fraught with factions, unable to come together. We see today, the dismay from a fragmented society and we dream to come together, like a team, and dwell together as True Snobs. What if we could unite our Left Side to our Strong Side? Do you Remember the Titans? Sean and Matt do. A paramount film from the year 2000. A bold biographic about a team that overcomes adversity and racism, all...

Dear Mr. Roland Emmerich,  Good day to you! We send you great joy and light from General Snobbery Podcast!  As you know, we are great fans of your work. In fact, we have made it quite plain to our listeners that Independence Day: Resurgence is the definitive film of our podcast. Thus, we recorded this episode for you, Mr. Emmerich, that we might bring a shred of joy to your life in repayment for a...

General Snobbery is a big fan of Steven Spielberg's 1975 film Jaws for many reasons. Predominant among these reasons is Richard Dreyfuss. We love Dreyfuss. Maybe it's that smile. Maybe it's that sardonic wit. Whatever it is, we can't get enough of him, and boy oh boy do we enjoy talking about him. But fear not, ye Dreyfuss dissenters. In this lengthy snob, we discuss many Jaws-related items outsid...

There is the occasional movie that earns the adage, "ever ancient, ever new." The great Coen Brothers opus, The Big Lebowski, is one of these movies indeed. Few movies are as quotable as this one, with its many F words, its right-winged Walter rants, and with the wonderful voice serenades of Sam Elliot (and his mustache). In short, Lebowski is a True Snob's dream. It is a complex machine that move...

Damien Chazelle's La La Land is a good movie. It is so good, in fact, that you'll be hard-pressed to find anything negative said about it on this snob. In fact, we are finding it difficult to say anything about it in this description. Like trying to describe the "True Snob," attempting to describe this film has a way of making words disappear. That is because its images transcend words. It is an e...

In July of 2016, in the formational days of General Snobbery, cohosts Matt and Sean traveled to a St. Louis theater to see Independence Day: Resurgence. They expected to be wowed by Goldblum. They expected great things from Pullman. But never in a trillion eons could they have anticipated what soul-enriching performance would come from DeObia Oparei, the man who portrayed Dikembe Umbutu.  Instantl...

Merry Christmas ya filthy Snob. And a happy New episode! If you, sweet listener, understand this reference, then you know the endless bowl full of jelly belly laughs you are about to hear. In this Christmas edition, General Snobbery has decreed that Sean and Matt delve deep into the world of Kevin McCallister, Pesci, and Stern. Home Alone is simply a Christmas classic. It has everything: a good st...

The title just about says it all on this one. Hashtag "Not My Mummy" (#NotMyMummy) began in the wake of the trailer for the new The Mummy, starring one Thomas "Tom" Cruise of Scientology, couch-jumping fame. Needless to say, some fans were not too pleased. But in truth, their anger had much less to do with any personal qualms with Mr. Cruise, and far more to do with the tragic fact that the great...

A bartender named Troy Duffy once saw a drug dealer take money from a corpse. His response? To write a movie called “The Boondock Saints.” This film came out in 1999 and was in theaters for about five days. It then was released on DVD, where, over the course of the next few years, it found itself in the prized film collection of many bros throughout the United States. These bros spread the word, o...

Dear Mr. DeObia Oparei, Greetings on this fine day! This message comes to you from Sean and Matt, curators of General Snobbery Podcast. As you have likely discovered via our tweets and Instagram posts, we are big fans of your work. Specifically, we adulate your work as Dikembe Umbutu in Independence Day: Resurgence, and we remain grateful for the celestial degree of joy it has brought our lives. W...

We all know that Mel Gibson is quite the interesting character. From directing/starring in the hit epic Braveheart to embarking upon drunken racist/Anti-Semitic rants on public record, the man is most unpredictable, to say the least. But, as our heroes Trey Parker and Matt Stone suggest in their “Imaginationland” episode of South Park, Mel Gibson may be a loon, but the man knows plot structure. Th...

As the butterfly emerges from the cocoon -reborn, resurrected, entire - it floats on the breeze, a being somehow the same as the caterpillar it once was, a being somehow different. If only we could see this metamorphosis in a human being, that we might draw limitless inspiration and joy.  Praise be (prayer emoji) to the universe, director Peter Weir gave us this gift in The Truman Show, a film as...

There are not many good things to say about the new film Inferno. In fact, there might not be any. It's horrible. Truly excruciating to bear. Fortunately, with special guest David Spitz at our side, we find plenty to snob about re: this terrible offering from washed-up director Clint Howard. The newest film in the Dan Brown adaptation-series that began with 2006’s The Da Vinci Code, Inferno follow...

“Who’s the #Sandra in your life?” This is one of the many questions that we ask on today’s episode of General Snobbery. As much as we enjoyed critiquing the evil corporation known as "Spiritual Gangster" on last week’s episode, we realized that we’d left out a very important detail: the origin story of our despising of that evil corporation. It all began on a simple day of Instagram #wanderlust, w...

A “gangster” is defined as “a member of a gang of violent criminals.” So what is a “Spiritual Gangster?” On this episode of General Snobbery, we discuss just that. It turns out that “Spiritual Gangster” is a brand of clothing that sells spiritual values that speak to an ever-growing subsect of Western culture. They are interested in taking quotes from ancient sages, printing them in trendy fonts o...

At seven twenty-five PM, on Tuesday, the eleventh of October in the year two thousand and sixteen, Roland Emmerich "liked" one of General Snobbery's tweets.  If you have been following General Snobbery throughout these twenty episodes, you will know that we have launched a campaign to #LetUsWriteID3. Essentially, we think that, due to our heightened understanding of Roland Emmerich's intentions, a...

It's become common knowledge that it's best to avoid Indian Death Cults. This knowledge has come largely in thanks to Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the second of four IJ films, and the first in the series' chronology. The film portrays Indian Death Cults as pretty bad things, activities that probably should not be practiced on a regular basis, lest you become like the gu...

Gladiator (2000), directed by our favorite British-man, Ridley Scott, ushered in a new era of violence in the multiplexes. But, unbeknownst to Mr. Scott, Russell Crowe, or even Joaquin Phoenix, the film was destined to usher in a new era of something far more deplorable: a new era, of "bros."  We all know "bros," and we all despise "bros." So why do "bros" still exist? In the eighteenth (!) episod...

In 2013, Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) revealed that we Amurricans are being tracked by our government. Thanks to the subtle encouragement of his mentor, Nicolas Cage, Snowden utilized established journalists to broadcast the terrifying messages at a large scale. Now, Snowden's father, Oliver Stone, has taken it into his hands to make the message more known than ever before. We at General...

It's a common misconception that Snobbery is an inherently negative pursuit. Indeed, for amateur "snobs", this way it can become. Yet for those truly committed to the Art of Snobbery, the negativity acts always in service of the joy and delight it brings to be. It is but an illusory negativity, put forth in ongoing effort to open up the shimmering core of a given reality. And after traveling beyon...

Christopher Nolan is a controversial man for snobs like us. Known for his mind-bending films, Nolan is expert at many things, not limited to big explosions, wild special effects, awful dialogue, exposition-laden stories, and giving bad names to his characters. Under the watchful eye of the full moon many years ago, as the seeds of General Snobbery implanted themselves in our minds, we found oursel...

After six weeks of grand views and celestial visions, Matt hath returned from the land of Appalachia. Now, residing in the great city of Chicago, he has christened the reuniting of General Snobbery for the foreseen future. Praise be! In a conversation of much joy (re: the snobbing method), Sean inquires Matt about a particular kind of vision he received on his spirit quest through Appalachia. Inde...

Some call him the "African Warlord," some call him Michael Clarke Duncan, some have no idea who he is at all. In reality, he is Dikembe Umbutu, great machete-wielding savior of the African nations, the most resurgent component of Independence Day: Resurgence. Here's an episode that has long rested in the hidden vaults, patiently awaiting the proper moment of release, in which your hosts turn a psy...

Today, I had the great pleasure of chatting with my close friend Laura Castonguay, MFA, about some pretty interesting stuff. Unsure where the conversation would go, we sat in silent meditation before recording, allowing our minds to settle. Lo and behold, the conversation ended up developing about meditation itself and what it means for both of our lives. While Laura and I have different approache...