Why there will never be a reality show about academia

Four years ago (?!!), I blogged the following: [T]he caricature of academia in popular culture is a collection of lecherous white male who inevitably bed one or more of their students. In The American Scholar, William Deresiewicz uses many more paragraphs to make a similar point: Look at recent movies about academics, and a remarkably consistent pattern emerges. In The Squid and the Whale (2005), Jeff Daniels plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In One True Thing (1998), William Hurt plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In Wonder Boys (2000), Michael Douglas plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, has just been left by his third wife, and can?t commit to the child he?s conceived in an adulterous affair with his chancellor. Daniels?s character is vain, selfish, resentful, and immature. Hurt?s is vain, selfish, pompous, and self-pitying. Douglas?s is vain, selfish, resentful, and self-pitying. Hurt?s character drinks. Douglas?s drinks, smokes pot, and takes pills. All three men measure themselves against successful writers (two of them, in Douglas?s case; his own wife, in Daniels?s) whose presence diminishes them further. In We Don?t Live Here Anymore (2004), Mark Ruffalo and Peter Krause divide the central role: both are English professors, and both neglect and cheat on their wives, but Krause plays the arrogant, priapic writer who seduces his students, Ruffalo the passive, self-pitying failure. A Love Song For Bobby Long (2004) divides the stereotype a different way, with John Travolta as the washed-up, alcoholic English professor, Gabriel Macht as the blocked, alcoholic writer. Not that these figures always teach English. Kevin Spacey plays a philosophy professor ? broken, bitter, dissolute ? in The Life of David Gale (2003). Steve Carell plays a self-loathing, suicidal Proust scholar in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Both characters fall for graduate students, with disastrous results. And while the stereotype has gained a new prominence of late, its roots go back at least a few decades. Many of its elements are in place in Oleanna (1994), in Surviving Desire (1991), and, with John Mahoney?s burnt-out communications professor, in Moonstruck (1987). In fact, all of its elements are in place in Terms of Endearment (1983), where Jeff Daniels took his first turn playing a feckless, philandering English professor. And of course, almost two decades before that, there was Who?s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? What?s going on here? If the image of the absent-minded professor stood for benevolent unworldliness, what is the meaning of the new academic stereotype? Why are so many of these failed professors also failed writers? Why is professional futility so often connected with sexual impropriety? (In both Terms of Endearment and We Don?t Live Here Anymore, ?going to the library? becomes a euphemism for ?going to sleep with a student.?) Why are these professors all men, and why are all the ones who are married such miserable husbands? Deresiewicz answers his own question with a Jungian flourish ( "they are a way of articulating the superiority of female values to male ones: of love, community, and self-sacrifice to ambition, success, and fame"). Actually, there are several Jungian flourishes, to match the many answers he provides. Rather than tangle with Deresiewicz, let me offer up an explanation, provided my the Official Blogwife, that Deresiewicz leaves unexplored: "The reason professors sleep with their students in fiction is because any realistic portrayal of your jobs would bore readers out of their skulls within ten minutes." Alas, this is true. I'd like to think I've carved out an interesting career, but a diary of a typical working day for me would probably run as follows: 9:00 A.M.: Dan turns on computer. 9:01 A.M.: Dan checks e-mail. 9:10 A.M.: Dan surfs news sites. 9:30 A.M.: Dan considers writing referee report that was due ten days ago; decides it's better tackled after lunch. 9:31 A.M.: Dan opens up Word document containing manuscript du jour and stares blankly at it for a while. 9:41 A.M.: Dan decides that he's really itching to work on the other manuscript du jour, because this is where his mind is wandering. He opens up that document and stares blankly at it for a while. 9:51 A.M.: On a good day, Dan gets a small piece of inspiration that he quickly converts into a paragraph of prose that will buttress his thesis. 9:56 A.M.: Dan scratches his ass.And so on. UPDATE: Jeez, even the librarians have more fun. At least, however, professors retain their mighty fun advantage over either economic journalists or graduate students.