Cult classics are not universal

Is what someone considers a cult classic for everyone?

Photo by Sony Pictures Entertainment

Brooke Gavin, Editor-in-Chief 

Although "Dead Poets Society" came out thirty years before I was born, hearing Mr. Keating call J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D “excrement” at the ripe age of fourteen meant something to me. That’s what a cult classic does. Thirty, forty, a hundred years down the line, the story will mean something to someone. That is the given. But what gives these stories their meaning?
I find that in conversations about cult classics, it’s similar to conversations about art. Both are very subjective. I believe "Dead Poets Society" is an amazing film that should mean something to every person who watches it, but there are people like my co-editor-in-chief, Ian Sands, who say it is overrated. I then began listing movies I believe are cult classics: "Good Will Hunting" and "Pitch Perfect",  but he disagreed on almost every count. So I urge whoever is reading this to think of a movie that you believe is a cult classic. 

I think of the big movies like those I’ve previously listed, but then I move to newer movies. A newly released movie on Netflix, "Don’t Say Good Luck", left me in pieces. It was one of the most beautiful films I have watched in terms of storytelling, directing, and filmmaking. I brought it up to my family, recommending the movie countless times, before my brother finally told me he had read poor reviews. This shocked me, considering I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. It had meant so much to me, but then I realized why. The movie is about a teenage girl auditioning for her high school musical while dealing with the heaviness of her home life and her relationship with her parents. People who don’t connect with this story may not see the beauty in it that I did. It’s subjective. 

I wanted to come up with criteria a cult classic movie would meet. If it passes x, y, and z, then it’s a cult classic. But that’s almost impossible. Similar to Pritchard's "excrement" scale used to "score" poetry, the value of a movie is not measured on a scale. The only criteria I have is that it’s more than someone's favorite movie; it’s a movie they want to share with others so they can experience it too. I love "27 Dresses", but I don’t think everyone in the world needs to watch it to see what I see in the movie.  "Don’t Say Good Luck", I will shout from the rooftops. 

What I’ve learned in writing this piece is that what someone deems a cult classic says a lot about them, neither negatively nor positively, but it just tells a lot about their story. Sands really likes "Interstellar", while I do not. He believes it is an amazing movie everyone should appreciate, and that says to me he is more impressed with the technicalities of film and finds the big plot twist and storytelling to be what makes it worthwhile. So I guess the next ice-breaker in class shouldn’t be your favorite color, but rather what movie you believe is a cult classic that everyone should see in their lifetime. I think you would learn a lot about the people around you.