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glowing-fish posted:I can't think of a movie that really accurately displays higher education. Dear White People
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Aug 18, 2018 22:33
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 15:45 |
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glowing-fish posted:Great point, and something that I didn't even think of mentioning: in general, high school movies don't at all focus, or really acknowledge that there is an academic purpose to high school. The only exceptions to this will be a jocks versus nerds plot, or maybe a subplot about academic pressure or a student needing to pass a class. Even in the subgenre of "inspirational teacher teaches disadvantaged youths", its almost always about the form of the teaching, not the substance. Which I guess makes sense, you really can't make a very good movie out of geometry lessons. And its pretty realistic, I certainly don't remember much about academics in the high school I didn't go to. What kind of story would you tell there though? There's been films about academic groups, or TV shows that use things like decathalons and science fairs and the like as plot devices. But everyone knows the purpose of school, when you're making a movie you're trying to tell human stories. So what's more interesting a teen in geometry class or what's going through a teen's mind in geometry class? But even then, Dead Poet's Society focuses a lot on the classwork and teaching. I also don't get what you mean by the issue of the form of teaching versus the substance. What is the difference there? Do you want a movie that's just a classroom lesson? There's plenty of educational videos used for classroom instruction you could dig up if you want that, but it doesn't make for a good narrative feature film. I don't know man, your thesis hits on some good points but isn't fully baked and sort of overlooks the diversity of the high school genre. I think you're right about high school being a great cipher for a shared experience most Americans have had, but count me in the batch that didn't think of Breakfast Club at all until after you mentioned it. I thought first of High School Musical, then Mean Girls, then Heathers, then Rock n Roll High School. Four very different movies detailing different high school experiences (although Mean Girls and Heathers are birds of a feather).
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Aug 27, 2018 17:09
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skooma512 posted:I remember going into high school worrying that it was going be like it was on tv and movies. Oh yeah, I never once used my locker. We only had two minutes to get from class to class, we didn't have time to stop by our lockers, which could very well be in completely distant parts of the building from where we needed to be.
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Aug 29, 2018 16:52
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Something I feel like I've only seen minimally covered in high school movies is how utterly vile administration can be - they frequently demonstrate extremely direct top-down racism and sexism in their policies, and it would be neat to see a movie tackle these intense systemic issues. https://vimeo.com/176401029
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Sep 10, 2018 16:51
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Honestly, I saw The Breakfast Club when I was in high school and it did absolutely nothing for me then and I only ever think about it in terms of how unlike my high school experience it is. I'm about to turn 27, so I was in high school from 2006 to 2010 and even by that point I think the clique dynamics had changed. Preps weren't really a thing at my school, and I think don't really remember much bullying among Social Groups, more that it would happen on individual levels. The criminal kids weren't like the guy in the movie, they lived in the same neighborhoods and had to worry about gangs and heroin and there was significant racial strife but the people they were most likely to bully and fight were each other. The nerds and the emo/goth kids were largely interconnected, if anything the academic decathlon kids were more well-adjusted than most people in that school. Jocks did their own thing. I do think that the generational divides are important here. Breakfast Club just felt completely alien to me, and I think even at 15 or however old I was when I watched it on Comedy Central uncensored at midnight I saw through it as a Hollywood pastiche of what they think high school is, or at least what it was for Generation X. In contrast, a movie like Heathers, where is only a few years later and of the same generation, just feels immensely closer to what my high school experience really was about : we didn't have the ultra-popular girls at the center of the film, but we did have the rampant cynicism, the misguided political and social causes, the edgy kids with latent sociopathic tendencies, the general alienation from adults who seemed utterly buffoonish. It's one of the few Gen X high school movies that really resonates for me, whereas John Hughes and so many of the other 80's high school comedies feel totally unreal and false. Likewise, it's why so many millennials love Mean Girls (directed by Mark Waters, brother of Heathers screenwriter Daniel Waters). It's a much closer representation of our experience and it came out at a time when many of our generation had just finished, were in, or just entering high school. As is Superbad. And it's curious just how quickly the dynamics change: Easy A came out in 2010, the year I graduated, and already it felt like it was speaking to a younger set of incoming freshman. And lastly, I'm not saying that older high school films are irrelevant. I just think it's about the approach. The Breakfast Club and other Hughes movies to me feel like a guidance counselor trying to reach out and connect with the kids, like "hey, I get it! I was your age once!" At least movies like Dazed and Confused, Clueless, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and others that still hold up today feel like they're at least focused more on specific periods and the freedom and drama of being young. They don't represent my experiences, but they're not trying to sell me on the idea that "they're just like me." They're depictions of specific cultures at specific time periods in specific locations, and that's ultimately going to service a more lasting story.
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Oct 2, 2018 15:52
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 15:45 |
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It's cause it has "High School" in the name.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:30
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