BERKELEY, Calif. – After avoiding in-person classes for weeks, student River Smith finally discovered a way to make his ECON 150 lectures more interesting: logging them on the popular social film review site “Letterboxd.”
“I wasn’t expecting to be able to log Professor Clowdus’s lectures, but after watching a mind-numbing five lectures at 2x speed, I was ready to try anything to cure my boredom,” River said, sitting in his room on navy blue bed sheets in front of a wall of French existential film posters. “To my surprise, when I tried to create ‘Clowdus Lecture 2/15,’ and add it to my list, it worked! After that, I started paying real attention to the lecture itself to find the perfect bite-sized moment to make a joke about in my Letterboxd review. Like that one time that Clowdus accidentally wrote “Ass Turnover Ratio” instead of “Asset.” I got fifty upvotes on that one!”
After River started logging his lectures, word spread. Students started coming to class with popcorn and other snacks to prepare for an hour and twenty minutes of “extended monologue.” Second-year film major Veronica Myers commented on the phenomena.
“You know, what Clowdus is doing is really groundbreaking. He films all in one take, playing with the composition when he walks around the podium,” Myers said, while live tweeting her reactions to the Academy Awards. “The lighting in Dwinelle creates an avante-garde, meta-noir atmosphere. Plus, the cinematography by CourseCapture is incredible.”
Reporters caught Professor Clowdus exiting Dwinelle in a frazzled state, hiding his face and refusing to comment. He later obliged, pulling a reporter aside to offer insight on the phenomena in a notably whispered tone.
“You’ve got to help me. I have no idea what’s going on. If I sneeze, they ask what I’m saying about the virality of society,” Clowdus lamented. “If I stand too far to one side, I’m demonstrating the rule of thirds. At least they’re finally coming to class.”
Shortly after this interview, Professor Clowdus left Berkeley on an indefinite psychiatric leave of absence. The elusive new Professor Tarantino has intermittently taken over the class, appearing to know little about economics. Class rates have been dropping, however, as students on Letterboxd find his lectures “uninspired” and “derivative.”