-Full Site -Film Catalog -Filmmakers -Study Guides

Discussion & Study Guide

An Acquired Taste

A film about finding one's way in a world obsessed with success

 

Synopsis

An Acquired Taste is a filmmaker's personal odyssey from the world of spelling tests, cheerleading tryouts, and frisbee to the dilemmas of middle-class angst and mid-life reflection.

The "taste" referred to is the taste for success--that obsession with "making it" which is built so deeply into our culture that we can scarcely distinguish it from breathing. The film, however, is no sociological documentary. There are no interviews with psychiatrists or other experts, no analyses of life's modern stresses or how to lead a fuller life. The film takes us on a journey which winds through slogans, murmurings, high school, advertisements, competitive sports, admonitions, dreams, awards, and home movies. It is a whimsical peek just behind the smile of self-congratulation at the genuine fears that the smile masks.

Themes

An Acquired Taste particularly reflects on the contrasts between the life experience of people who are striving for success in large institutional frameworks and those who are trying to follow their own direction and personal choices. Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck is concerned with whether his work is having any impact, and with whether anyone--even his own children--understands what he is trying to do. At the same time, he also places a lot of importance on being able to set his own schedule and enjoy everyday experiences, and he is aware that striving more aggressively for wealth, success, and fame would probably undermine all of this.

Audiences

This film will have different primary messages according to the age group and the shared interests of the audience. Most of the suggestions for discussion are aimed at adults and focus on the past and the present, but they can be geared to a younger audience by putting discussion about pressures during youth into the present tense and focusing on how one makes choices for the future.

Viewers may wish to draw on their own personal experiences. Young adults may feel that the views expressed by the teenagers in the film are similar to their own recollections or that they constrast sharply with their own high school days.

Topics

Four general topics might be suggested as starting points for discussion of the film. They are:

• values formation
• peer pressure
• success
• setting goals

Since these topics are interrelated, it might be wise to pick one as the starting point and dominant concern, and then interweave the other themes as they become relevant.

Values Formation:

When visiting the grade school that he had attended, Arlyck recollects, "Parents were interested in marks, but girls and sports were where it was at."

1. Are the pressures of athletics--team competition, the image of "the jock"--as important in your experience as Arlyck would suggest? Are there other arenas ( musical performance, personal popularity, academic excellence, etc.) which you felt were obsessive concerns while you were growing up?
   
   
2. Where did these pressures come from? Were they encouraged by parents and teachers, by peers, by the media? What kinds of support and reinforcement were there for the person who did not strive for these goals?
   
   
3. Were the pressures on girls different from those on boys? Have those differences affected your views of yourself and of what choices you should make?
   
   
4. When traveling on the train, Arlyck reflects about his sense of insecurity about the values that he is pursuing. As we become older, are the pressures and support system which hold us to a set of values mainly internal, or are there social pressures that can help or constrain us as well?

Peer Pressure:

Arlyck's scenes of the cheerleaders' tryouts and the anxious girls waiting for the results convey clearly that there are times when we participate in routines or rituals that we do not fully understand.

1. How can peers be a positive support for an individual?
   
   
2. Peers are devastatingly important to adolescents. On the other hand, many adults feel sorely the absence of close peer relationships. What are the ways of maintaining social contracts and friendships that can reinforce the individual in following his or her personal goals?

Success:

Ralph Arlyck speaks almost wistfully of the images of success and wonders if he matches up to the image of the "independent filmmaker."

1. How do we build ("or buy into") an image of what will make us successful?
   
   
2. Should we try to get rid of the concept of success altogether, or just redefine it for ourselves?
   
   
3. Are we more critical of ourselves in defining success than we are of other people?
   
   
4. Failure can be devastating; it can also be a growth experience. How can we maintain a positive sense of self when we feel that we have failed?

Goal Setting:

Arlyck refers often to his lifestyle, independent work pattern, and family life as some of the positive results of his vocational choice. At the end of the film, he mentions again the constant pressure to let financial success become the dominant goal.

1. Where does economic success fit into the goals that one sets? Are there strategies that can be used to balance economic pressures?
   
   
2. There are always cost, or trade-offs, to choosing any one goal over another. How does one go about choosing goals? How does one deal with the trade-offs once a decision has been made?
   
   
3. One's family can be either a source of moral support or another source of pressure to conform to the choices prescribed by the larger society. How can a family become a positive element in helping an individual to achieve the independent role that he or she sets?