Time To Deconstruct "The Snob," Girls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                             When it comes to being a snob, darlings, no one can outdo the Raving Queen, let alone a group of queens, anyway.  When I realized this film was directed by future "Carnival Of Souls" maestro, Herk Harvey, no wonder the film had a haunting quality, in spite of its Fifties campiness. It was almost as if Harvey were warming up, however unconsciously, for his masterpiece.  And Vera Staugh, as Sarah Inman, looks like Sandra Harrison halfway through her "Blood Of Dracula" transformation.  Not quite pretty, not quite ugly.

                                Poor Sarah has a lot of problems.  For one, she is a girl who would rather do her algebra homework on Friday night.  This is someone who is definitely going to end up in Advanced Placement Biology.  That is, if she doesn't have a breakdown, first.

                                  To compound things, she has a mother who resembles Jo Van Fleet in "I'll Cry Tomorrow," but, unlike Jo there, is so passive she cannot do anything to help her daughter.  Her father is like a sleazy Dennis Hopper in training, and that kitchen scene between them makes me squeamish; it borders on incest.

                                    I recognized Sarah's problem right away.  She wants, really to be a part of the group, but feels held back.  So she tells herself she is better than everyone else, and the kids believe it, and dub her a snob.

                                      But she really is not a snob.  It is just that, in certain ways, Sarah is ahead of the other kids--if she could have skipped adolescence,  and gone straight to adulthood, there would  have been no problems.  And when she gets beyond this, even if she ends up in a cheap Village walk up, (which, considering this film was made in 1958, was still highly possible) reading "The Well Of Loneliness" by Radclyffe Hall, and smoking filtered cigarettes at bars, with other lesbians, she will find her own community that she can belong in.

                                        How do I know all this?  Because, in many ways, I was just like Sarah.  Though I wanted popularity (ie; the Roberta group) in high school, socially, we were in many ways incompatible, because my tastes and interests were, while precocious, so far beyond theirs, at the time.  It takes several years to catch up; by her mid twenties, Sarah will be just fine.

                                         The movie ends with the narrator asking the viewer what they think.  You have my answer, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                            But I don't think the film should have been called "The Snob." Sarah is not a snob.  I think it should have been called "The Socially Displaced!"

                                              Split that hick town, Sarah!!!!!!!!!!   And fast!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                               See for yourselves, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!