"A person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes."
I have no problem with this definition but it does raise a question.
Primarily, how important is it that the person believes themselves to be an expert vs actually being an expert in film?
From the little definitions of "snob" that I looked up, a common element is the superficiality of differences that the snob sees and looks downward at the person just because of the superficial difference that isn’t an indicator of any intelligence.
The term "film snob" sounds like it could fall under the same rank as "hipster." Both terms change in meaning so often with whatever material is designated as pretentious for the moment. It's more of an attempt to simply classify someone's arrogance (towards film in this case) when arrogance can happen anywhere without need for its own terminology. – dsoumilas9 years ago
If you look up "Cinema Snob" his entire show is a parody on this very subject and quite intelligent on the ridiculous notion of snobs. – smartstooge9 years ago
To add an interesting angle, I would tackle the question of whether someone can be a justified film snob. I mean, we all know That Guy who is a obnoxiously snobbish about their subject (film or otherwise), and we can all agree that these people need to get off their high horses and admit that they are not the pinnacle of good taste. But then, there's other snobs whose opinions we respect so much that we call them "critics" instead. These are the interesting snobs, because their opinions are often taken seriously and are, to some extent, justified. A film critic has seen far more movies than I'm ever likely to watch, and has watched them with a critical eye that I don't often use. Is there, then, some justification to his pretensions of good taste above that of us plebeians? To what extent can objective quality be measured anyway? – OddballGentleman9 years ago