It’s one of those aspirational moments. Poor and downtrodden
with a secret gift for brains versus the best that monied education can buy.
Poor cleaner and regular at the local county courthouse Will Hunting goes into
Harvard to play pool and pick up university girls with his friends. The local
students take umbrage and one tries to embarrass a cocky wise guy (Chuckie) played by ben
Affleck. Matt Damon, playing Hunting, swoops in and rips him to shreds taking
his dignity away in his pocket along with the girl’s phone number.
We love it because it’s the best of education versus the
worst, or so wethink. The local student, Clark, tries to quote a few lines from
a social historian to flummox the interloper. His attitude is certainly poor
and given the floppy hair and preppy look I’m assuming we’re not meant to like
him. Will blows him away with a sheer weight of knowledge. Taking the
pretentiousness and smarm and flushing it away with a barrage of insults and a
monologue that reveals he knows far more and knows how to use it.
We love this scene because the bad guy gets beaten up
(educationally) by the good guy. However I am sure if a student were on the receiving
end of such a tongue lashing by a teacher or lecturer they would be calling
home and complaining to the Principal or dean of faculty. It is in essence a
bar fight between two opponents (one seriously outmatching the other).
We all want to be that smart – well I know I do. To have the
command of facts and figures in that way would be amazing. But the question is:
what would it do to a person’s outlook? Will uses his learning like a
sledgehammer to crack a nut and it takes in the film the skills of a very good
psychologist top bring him out of his shell and start to see the world for the
beauty that is in it. I suppose despite being a brilliant verbal ass kicking –
it also shows us that learning without can mean we don’t use what we know for
the important things in life.
In the end Will learns that and fulfils his final line below
– ‘at least he won’t be unoriginal’
Here’s the ass kicking in full – check it out on youtube
too.
Chuckie:
Are we gonna have a problem here?
Clark:
No, no, no, no!
There's no problem here. I was just hoping you might give me some insight into
the evolution of the market economy in the southern colonies. My contention is
that prior to the Revolutionary War, the economic modalities, especially in the
southern colonies, could be most aptly described as agrarian pre-capitalist.
Will:
Of course that's your contention. You're a first-year grad
student; you just got finished reading some Marxian historian, Pete Garrison
probably. You're gonna be convinced of that 'till next month when you get to
James Lemon. Then you're going to be talking about how the economies of
Virginia and Pennsylvania were entrepreneurial and capitalist way back in 1740.
That's gonna last until next year; you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon
Wood, talkin' about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming
effects of military mobilization.
Clark:
Well, as a matter of fact, I won't, because Wood drastically
underestimates the impact of social...
Will:
"Wood drastically underestimates the impact of social
distinctions predicated upon wealth, especially inherited wealth"? You got
that from Vickers' "Work in Essex County," page 98, right? Yeah, I
read that too. Were you gonna plagiarize the whole thing for us? Do you have
any thoughts of your own on this matter? Or do you, is that your thing, you
come into a bar, read some obscure passage and then pretend - you pawn it off
as your own, as your own idea just to impress some girls, embarrass my friend?
Will:
See, the sad thing about a guy like you is, in 50 years
you're gonna start doin' some thinkin' on your own and you're going to come up
with the fact that there are two certainties in life: one, don't do that, and
two, you dropped 150 grand on a fuckin' education you could have got for a
dollar fifty in late charges at the public library!
Clark:
Yeah, but I will have
a degree. And you'll be servin' my kids fries at a drive-thru on our way to a
skiing trip.
Will:
That may be, but at least I won't be unoriginal.
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