The word “shibboleth” refers to a story in the Bible in which the word, which is Hebrew for “ear of corn” (or “flood, stream,” according to my reference source), was used as a password during a conflict between the Gileadites and the Ephraimites. The Ephraimites couldn’t pronounce “sh,” said “sibboleth” instead, and were, you know, slaughtered. According to the Bible, we’re talking 42,000 people. Few modern shibboleths are quite that extreme. Not even close. But you know, you want your place in a social circle gone, just go ahead and fail to have seen certain movies, you know?

This is August. The first three weekends of it, I’m out in a field. It’s Renaissance faire month for me. Weirdly, this year has been the year that more of my friends than ever before have said, “Wait, what exactly is a Renaissance faire?” So yeah, basically, I dress up in vaguely Medieval clothing (our rules aren’t strict at this faire) and go sell handmade jewelry in a tent while other people perform various shows or joust or whatever. As you can imagine, we socialize with each other. This is a social circle all by itself. It’d pretty well have to be.

And that means shibboleths, and what shibboleths means in the modern world is movies. At faire, a few movies everyone just assumes you’ve seen. If you say you’ve never seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you might as well say that you were born without a clavicle. Other groups that I’ve been in have had other movies that are basically rites of passage; sadly, the Tom Hanks classic Mazes & Monsters is not a shibboleth for people who play Dungeons & Dragons, and it so should be. But I’m sure you can name the movies that matter for your social circle or field of employment or what have you as well.

It’s interesting to think about. Like, I get why there are certain movies you kind of get side-eye for not having seen if you count yourself as a film buff. You haven’t seen Citizen Kane, people are not going to quite believe that you love movies more than the average person. (Though I won’t shame you for it, because I don’t shame people for not having gotten around to things.) But how weird is it to play a musical instrument, to want to spend time with other people who play musical instruments, and to get asked if you’ve seen a movie? Not if you’ve listened to music. Not if you’ve played a specific piece of music. But if you’ve watched a movie—and when I was in junior high orchestra, it wasn’t even movies necessarily connected with music!

And that’s how much movies have invaded our culture, if you think about it. There is no greater sign of it than that. Let’s face it; this isn’t like a pronunciation glitch. We all have an opportunity to see The Princess Bride; you’ve probably seen it yourself, even if you’re one of those people who has taken this many years to figure out what the “ren” part in “Gillianren” means. Heck, you may have even seen the suite of movies that make up the Renaissance faire collection of pop culture references. And to be honest, a lot of us haven’t actually seen all of them. But we keep quiet about it, because if anyone finds out you haven’t seen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, they might not take that very well.