What is a "Rich, Cultural Gift"?

A couple days ago, Anne Rice, the vampire writer (she created the moody Lestat), asked on Facebook the following question:  Can you name your top five picks for great films -- dvds you'd give to a young person as a rich cultural gift for Christmas? One of my friends asked me for my five.  Of course I ended up giving her fifteen, but that's not really the point, and I don't intend to do a list here; it's one of my principles for this blog: resist the urge to make lists.  

I wanted to know, from my friend and from Anne Rice, how are you defining a "young person"?   There are plenty of great films I could think of for the wee ones, some of which might interest the middle-graders, too.  Where is the line being drawn?   (Rice's choices gave me some indication of what age range she was thinking of, though my friend was looking at a slightly younger age bracket.)  Taxi Driver might be a rich cultural gift, but not for a ten-year-old.  

But then, after having made some suggestions, I began to think: well, what does Anne Rice mean by a "rich cultural gift"?   Is she talking about some kind of "uplifting" or "moral" film? Given that her list includes The Godfather, I'm not sure you can say the former.   Is it about the breadth and range of human experience?   Is it about films that demonstrate the great, evocative power of the medium itself, like, say 2001? (I'm leaving aside the fact that watching a DVD at home is not like watching a film in a quality 35- or 70-mm print -- especially if you can see Kubrick's film as it was originally screened, in Cinerama.)   And that got my anti-snob sensors on full-alert.   After all, the Abbott and Costello box set was in my shopping car at Amazon at the time.

I'm very happy that I've offered my kids a decent mix of what Rice means by "rich cultural gift" and what I prefer to call "mindless entertainment."  There are plenty of films that might connect to young people's emotional experiences; none of them have anything to do with John Hughes, but Nick Ray's Rebel Without a Cause is as evocative of teen alienation as Hollywood ever made.   It's also nice to try and give them worthwhile history lessons: Gandhi and Amistad I think make great ones.   I'd also recommend pretty much every Billy Wilder film as an alternative to reading Catcher in the Rye.  (Ace in the Hole is definitive in its cynicism, but really, you can pick anything; my personal fave is Stalag 17, my favorite Christmas movie.) To understand the power of film, watch certain foreign classics like Wings of Desire or The Last Laugh -- or, if you prefer the English language, any works from the great Hollywood auteurs -- Hitchcock, Hawks, Ford -- are accessible and, at their best, brilliant.

But don't ignore the apparently silly business.   Airplane! is as much a rich cultural gift as Godfather II.   Likewise Monty Python and the Holy Grail.   Arthur Hiller's The In-Laws; the first Ghostbusters; and yes even the movies made fun of by Mystery Science Theater 3000: treasures all.   I'd put Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein right up there with many of the original horror classics from Universal.   And while Woody Allen's later films are beautiful masterpieces (Manhattan, Stardust Memories, Zelig, Hannah, Crimes and Misdemeanors), the "early funny films" are worth sharing with the adolescent crowd, flawed as they may be at times.

Nothing wrong with Fellini, Truffaut, or Ozu.   But young persons have to understand that rich cultural gifts come in very odd packages.