What do you think it's like to go back to school with Glen Powell?
Higher Education in the movies
Helloooooooooo! After a brief summer hiatus, this subby is officially back!1
I took a break first and foremost to rest and second, because nothing was really happening in the culture that I wanted to write about. Ironically, when I stopped, the culture started happening. Sleepy Joe dropped out of the presidential race and Kamala Harris took his place. Chappell Roan became the biggest new pop star we’ve had in quite some time. JLo and Ben were being very divorced in public, and then Jen formally filed to end her marriage. THE OLYMPICS!!! It was all great and, in some cases, sad because I did not have this community to share it with. This week, I’m doubling back to the hit movie of the summer, Twisters, starring Daisy Edgar Jones, Anthony Ramos, and Glen Powell (full name: Glen “the antiracist astronaut in Hidden Figures” Powell).
In case you did not make it out to see this film, Twisters is a sequel (kind of) to the 1996 blockbuster Twister. Like the original, Twisters follows two groups of weather scientists/enthusiasts who approach tornadoes differently. Kate (Daisy Edgar Jones) and Javi (Anthony Ramos) are *allegedly* trying to use cutting-edge technology to understand tornadoes to prevent the damage they cause. Meanwhile, Tyler Owens (Glen Power) and his camp are more interested in riding the waves of chaos, which they broadcast live on their YouTube channel before helping folks pick up the pieces left behind. A kind of enemies-to-lovers romance sparks between Jones and Powell’s characters, and together, they find a way to stop a very big scary tornado and save a small Oklahoma town.
I loved it. In fact, I loved it so much that I made my friend and her whole family watch it when I visited them a few weeks after I watched it myself. I still loved it, and my friend did, too. I think her family thought it was dumb, but oh well! Point is, it’s really good. You should watch it if you haven’t already.
Aside from the hotties, the yeehaw aesthetics, and the scary-but-I-liked-it tornado sequences, I appreciated this movie's passing reference to the graduate student experience. Famously, I’m in a Ph.D. program. And much like with any other identity I hold, I am constantly looking for representation of myself and my life within the media I consume. It may shock you to learn that when it comes to grad school representation – there’s not much out there! We have a fair amount of movies about kids in college (and more about kids trying to get into college) but so few about people trying to get a master's or a Ph.D. 2
Technically speaking, we have a lot of “Great Man Movies” where the great men in question are very highly educated. The most recent example is Oppenheimer, where we see Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer go through his schooling, teaching, and research within a university setting. Seeing him in school helps us as the audience understand how his mind works and functions to show how his intellect reaches beyond the comprehension of other certified smarties. He’s smarter, more creative, more of a visionary, and thus is worthy of both the intellectual freedom he demands and the social consideration the film seeks to offer him. Oppenheimer also has a grad-student character in Jean, played by Florence Pugh. She’s an incredibly tragic figure who is very depressed and very in love with a married Oppenheimer, who ultimately takes her own life. Unlike Oppenheimer, Jean is not figured as a genius, although certainly she is smart enough to be in a Ph.D. program. Rather, she’s a platform for Oppenheimer’s genius and magnetism and arguably a catalyst for his introspection. Overall, she’s a very minor figure – bordering on insignificant – in a movie that could not be less interested in women, let alone their intellectual abilities.
Twisters, however, is centered around a woman in a Ph.D. program who is not only a genius but seems to have an almost divine sensibility when it comes to extreme weather. When the film opens, Kate is leading a group of other students in an experiment, hoping that she will gather impressive enough data to earn herself and her team a grant. (Spoiler for folks who care! – skip to the next paragraph) Unfortunately, the storm they chased was more powerful than anticipated, and most of their team got swept by the twister, leaving Kate and Javi as the sole survivors of the group. The tragedy, understandably, drives Kate away from home and school and leads her to a position at the National Weather Service in New York City.
While not ever in a traditional school setting, multiple scenes work to tell the audience that Jones is incredibly smart. She’s asked for her opinions at work and reads her computer screen of weather charts with a distant gaze as if she’s receiving info directly from the heavens. When Javie asks her to join him in Oklahoma for a week of experiments, he directly says that only she has the knowledge and instincts he needs. And when she does make her way back to Oklahoma, she catches the attention of Tyler Owens when she correctly assesses which is the better storm to chase by looking at the sky and feeling the direction of the wind. Her genius is not certified by degrees (although she could easily have multiple of them) but rather by intuition and a deep connection to the sky and earth. In a way, that almost makes her genius impenetrable. There is an undeniably special thing about her that other people simply don’t have and can’t work at developing. Some people just have a gift.
While Kate might be a genius without a degree, it’s clear that educational credentials matter in the social world of weather scientists and tornado chasers. When introducing his team, Javi names every university represented in the group – Harvard, MIT, Yale, etc. We get small hints throughout the film that suggest some of these men are skeptical of Kate because she relies on instincts and readings of weather that go against what most meteorological theories would suggest. This skepticism toward Kate echoes a real history of women, especially in STEM fields, being dismissed as intellectual equals or superiors to their male counterparts. Notably, Kate is the only woman on Javi’s team, and as the only one without an advanced degree, it’s easier to critique and judge her. By contrast, Owens’s team is both gender diverse and made up of folks who are self-taught or trained by their experiences chasing storms. Their more rowdy approach to their work is demonstrative of their lower class status, which in this setting translates to a lack of education and the social refinement that occurs at prestigious institutions. However, the women on Owens’s team are valued and equal members, and there seems to be a lack of egos at play amongst the group. In a way, their team is a kind of identity utopia where all types of folks are represented and seen as invaluable to the work they do as a group. When it’s revealed that Tyler Owens does have a Ph.D., it becomes a moment to demonstrate how one can be highly educated and still be a man of the people.
It’s easy to slot Tyler as a hero in this story. He’s charming, charismatic, and, for what it’s worth, very hot. But as we get to spend more time with him, we see that he is also sensitive and caring, especially toward Kate. When visiting her at her childhood home, he finds her notebooks from her time in graduate school, and we see that what might have been an attraction based on looks and allure is now also laced with intellectual stimulation. He knew she was a genius before, but now he can see it clearly in her notes, theories, and model experiments. He pushes her to reconsider the experiment that went wrong at the beginning of the film, and after some adjustments, she’s proven right and manages to save a town from absolute destruction. Although it’s definitely her win and her movie, it’s also clear that Tyler is a crucial aspect of her growth and character development – which honestly, is a novel thing to me.
A common feature in most “great man movies” is a female character whose sole function is to support the great man at the center of the story. Often, in movies about women geniuses, we are shown how they live either without the support of men at all, or we see how the men in their lives set them back by asking for too much, being jealous, or intentionally sabotaging their work. Twisters, is a surprising outlier. Yes, technically, it is, first and foremost, a disaster movie, and our attention is 100% funneled toward the many twisters in this film. But the narrative beats of the story revolve around a woman who is very smart, who was on a certain professional track, and then got taken off that path and finds her way back to it. And a surprising recurring theme in this story is that there are men who love Kate and want to show up for her emotionally and intellectually. These men are deferential to her opinions and leadership. They do the intellectual and physical labor she needs help with. They bring her food and water. It’s quite inspiring to see.
Although the story ends with a few untied threads, it feels safe to say that after successfully collapsing a tornado, Kate would return to either graduate school or work for a private lab to continue researching and developing the technology she’s invented. It’s also likely that she would do that with Glen Powell as her boyfriend. Perhaps he’s her lab assistant. Perhaps he gets his own lab. Perhaps he’s just a stay-at-home husband who keeps the home for her. It’s a nice thought experiment to imagine what it must be like to be a genius and have a man who isn’t threatened by that but rather more in love with you for it.
You should go watch Twisters. It’s kind of a feminist text.
In the spirit of wanting to support the genius of a woman — I have decided that for the fall this will be a biweekly newsletter unless something super important happens (like when Jlo and Ben get back together). This is a busy school semester, and I cannot slip! I will resume weekly posts in 2025. Thanks for your love and continuous support!!!
And back with a rebrand! The substack is now also called “AGONY HOUR” to match it’s older zine sibling. If you’ve never read the zine before, check it out here.
The most popular second degree movie I would guess is Legally Blonde but a law degree/any professional degree is structured so differently than other advanced degrees.