“Arrested development: Buster Bluth at UChicago as a sleep deprivation subject, one of my favorites.”
When Hollywood actually tries to set a movie on campus or at least devise a plot about someone trying to get in, THAT’s when UChicago has arrived on the scene. Right now it’s still presented fleetingly as a semi-dorky school LOL. And that’s OK with me.
I don’t know if the movie coming out featuring usc Stanford and Yale is going to help their brands very much. lol. Maybe it will oddly. They don’t really need the help.
I think big time sports makes schools very recognizable to the general person out there in the world. Probably more know Clemson Alabama and Kentucky than Wash u Chicago and rice. Etc.
Going back to “Where fun comes to die”… Tired as we all are of hearing that roaring old cliche, I’m beginning to think of it as a useful marketing slogan in that (a) to be tagged as being the best of anything makes you famous, and (b) this is a fame that brings in the academically serious, original and talented (and of course all those with the brains to look beyond the slogan) and leaves the fatuous, superficial and pleasure-obsessed on the outside either laughing at us or fearing for us, where we are content for them to remain. Keeping that slogan alive (and keeping pleasure dead[joke]) insures that Chicago grads won’t succumb to the moral and psychological hazards of “Where did you go to school”?
“Crescat scientia, etc” is good, but how’s about updating it to: “Mortis ad voluptas venis hic”? Correct my latin, please, but keep the sentiment pure.
The new motto will help screen applicants for the indispensable but difficult to measure quality of self-deprecation that all Chicago grads must possess.
“Mortis ad voluptas venis hic” - Pleased to death that you have come here? How creepy LOL.
Ignorance of Latin long preceded the internet so none of us knew what the motto meant. It seemed long and complicated. Even the translation now seems complicated: Let knowledge grow from more to more and so be human life enriched. What’s wrong with a shortened form: Let Knowledge Increase so that Life is enriched. That kind of sums up what the university is all about. A secondary translation, one that worked for my crowd at the time, can be something like: If you believe that Economics is a science, you will live well, indeed.
When Harry Met Sally, obviously.
Proof, the quintessential UChicago movie
Adventures In Babysitting (frat party at UChicago, and UChicago medical center)
Scenes in all of the Indiana Jones movies.
And of course Divergent, where Mansueto Library is headquarters for the Erudite faction.
^ So, yes, WHMS is quintessentially UChicago. However, I’m referring to something a bit less “nuanced.” Risky Business, Beautiful Mind, Goodwill Hunting (maybe Social Network? Not sure - haven’t seen it), Silicon Valley, even Gilligan’s Island routinely and repeatedly referenced schools that everyone knows are “status symbols” and graduate “smart people who have made it - or will soon.” UChicago isn’t quite there yet. No one outside of the school even remembers where Indiana Jones taught LOL. All they remember is the girl with the eyelids, the snakes, and the cool melting wax faces. And that big boulder, of course.
Also the sci fi movie A Sound of Thunder with Ed Burns mentioned University of Chicago. It was about particle accelerators, so of course one has to mention the University of Chicago, lol. The movie was ok, but the awesome short story it was based on by Ray Bradbury blew me away when I read it as a kid.
UChicago is hopefully relaxing it’s ‘decisions’ on the media letting them use their name more often. I mean, it’s helps in getting a brand name out to the public. I read somewhere that the writers of the movie ‘Legally Blonde’ had wanted to use University of Chicago instead of Harvard in their movie, but Chicago didn’t like one of the lines in the script that main character said. But c’mon, once in a while, you just have to laugh at yourself.
Really? The Martian! Indiana Jones! Harry AND Sally!
Of course Mark Watley(sp?) in the Martian was a Double Major from UChicago. Botany and Mechanical Engineering. I don’t know about Botany, but we all know how strong UChicago’s Mechanical Engineering program is.
@uocparent - yeah, it was scene where the prof hits on Elle. Both Stanford and Chicago took a pass on the movie as a result.
I’m voting for Mark Watney and Indy be included in all the alumni materials, lol.
That was close, @JHS , but “venis” is, I believe, the past tense of the verb - “came”. Thus there is an ambiguity buried in the expression: death once came and killed off pleasure at this institution, to be sure, but does it still come? (Of course pleasure may have been so decisively killed that death cometh for it no more.)
Old latinists never die, they just make mistakes of case and person. The third person past tense of the verb “venire” (to come) is “venit”, not “venis”, and “voluptas” is a third declension noun which in its ablative case and singular number, as here, becomes “voluptate”. I also want to rearrange the word order for greater euphony and expressiveness. Thus our motto is correctly stated as “Mortis ad voluptate venit hic.” Worthy of Virgil, I would modestly suggest, and distinctly Virgilian in sentiment.
Latin will always be a minority taste, but in the sixties all the more ambitious students took it in high school, just because it was so hard, intricate and exotic, though dressing in togas from time to time was also part of the attraction.
Marlowe we’ll have to start calling you Mr. Chips!
Loosely translated as “one came here for the death of pleasure” - but, can’t it also be translated as “one came here for the pleasure of death”? What say, Virgil?
Actually nvm. I think @marlowe1’s motto reads literally reads “death to pleasure who came here.” I swear that his original said “Pleased toward death you come here” so stand by my post #84. But my Latin instruction is very informal and poor at best.
English is a descendent language of Latin so we actually do speak and write a form of it. It’s also mixed with German. This is why we have at least two nouns for that oinky farm animal.
I tweaked “Where death comes to die” into a latin tag that would be literally translated (but of course no one translates latin literally) into “Death to pleasure came here.” However, latin word order is very eccentric and unstable so that the endings of nouns and verbs do the heavy lifting. That’s the hardest part of the language. Even with my latest version there is at least one bad mistake. Death as a subjective noun is “Mors”, not “mortis”, as my son-in-law pointed out to me. He was also not at all sure that “voluptas” shouldn’t be in the dative case, not the ablative, in this particular context. I give up.
Is this an example of those engrossing and high minded conversations parents swear their children are seeking in college ? If so, I would love it there. Right up my alley. Carry on.
My favorite Ri connection to Gilligan’s Island is TH3 mentioning something had to be decided by a higher authority, the membership committee at Newport County Club. Lol.