When Rickey and his friends put a snake in the desk of the new substitute teacher, to their surprise, she lovingly picks it up and puts it around her neck. Soon her strange stories of the wonders and beauty of the world around them helps them to see there is more to life than ever imagined.

Privilege is an intelligently conceived, boldly anarchic, and wickedly insightful exposition on the culturally ingrained and socially divisive malaise of isms that artificially define and characterize empowerment in contemporary society: ageism, sexism, economic elitism, and racism. Yvonne Rainer conveys texture through the intercutting of archival footage, video, and film - as well as compositional layering through the film-within-a-film structure, elliptical (and self-referential) fusion of past and present, and the filmmaker's idiosyncratic penchant for superimposed typed text.