In Chapter 4 of his book, Hollywood Goes to High School, Robert Bulman (2005) states, “The urban and suburban high school films are consistently told from different points of view, have different moods, have different heroes and villains, tell different stories, and teach different lessons” (p. 80). Please choose a character from a film that’s discussed in this chapter and describe how realistic the events that he/she experiences are. In addition, does this character and his/her experiences reflect something that happened to you or your peers in your high school? Or more generally, are there any parallels from what we read about in Chapter 4 of Bulman to what happens in an actual high school setting?
After reading Bulman’s analysis on the differences between urban and suburban high school films, and after your experience in the class, Youth, Schools, and Race in Film, has your interpretation of films of the high school genre changed since your high school or middle school years?
Furthermore, imagine this scenario. A young, new producer wants to produce a film based on actual experiences of students in a suburban high school. How could he go about this? What does he need to change from current suburban high school films? How about if he wants to paint a “realistic” depiction of urban high school students? What does he need to change? Or is there anything to change?
- by Alison/Edwin/Esther/Ikira/Sera
I might as well be the first one to talk about Steve Clark and Disturbing Behavior. The film is about high school students being brainwashed into “Blue Ribbon” students, the dream of any parent. Unless someone is very detached from reality, extraordinarily paranoid, or both, the events are unrealistic and the only high school experience I’ve had with this is in a dream. To be fair, I cannot say it is devoid of any reality. Expressive individualism may be blown out of proportions in suburban high school films, but many youth do go through this stage in identity development in which they examine their own goals and intentions against a larger context, although the amount of control one has over individual decisions varies. In a sense it does depict the normal questioning of identity although with brainwashing and violence. However, the school just serves as the backdrop to a thriller without much importance as with most suburban high school films.
Considering my experience of rewatching High School High, a film that I haven’t watched since I was 11 or 12, my interpretations of high school films have changed. While I can still enjoy them as a form of entertainment, a part of me can’t help but look at it with a critical lens, picking out some of the points made by Bulman and other authors. A lot of things that I would have missed in the past, I can pick out and critique as form of media that represents popular conceptions.
As for the producer and the depiction of a “real” high school experience, I don’t think it’s possible. The experiences of students at urban and suburban high schools are diverse and fall on a broad spectrum. No film can truly capture this without making generalizations that can create new stereotypes. Only two things can come out, a story that looks at one person’s or group’s experience or muddled mess in which no one’s story is heard.
When I was reading Bulman the one discussion that stuck out to me was “The Breakfast Club.” In this he is talking about how the characters in the film are able to overcome their differences and backgrounds to become friends who understand each other. This is all done without the help of adults and ultimately the students are able to put themselves on a higher ground above their parents.
I saw great parallels with this and my high school. My high school served one low income area, one lower middle class area, two middle class areas, and one affluent area. In this way the school was diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and in the type of neighborhoods the students came from. Though adults tried to facilitate our differences through things like peer groups and elective classes where there was no leveling, all the real mixing and learning was done by the students themselves.
My high school had no sense of a popular group and it was also not separated by race or socioeconomic status in the hallways or outside the school. Though students of the same race usually sat together in the lunchroom, since they were most likely from the same neighborhood, overall the students were able to mingle like the characters in the movie during their detention. This was greatly helped by the fact that there were many poor whites who could relate to both blacks and whites, as well as rich blacks who could relate to both groups as well. This became most evident when we had our high school graduation and one of my teachers noted how he could not name any set groups in our high school since there was such a sense of cohesiveness between us.
Being an athlete in high school, my teammates and I were forced to learn from one another and where we came from because we were around each other so much. This was not facilitated but it allowed us each to appreciate each other and where we came from. Everything from divorced parents to having family in jail was a constant topic in our time together and it allowed us to relate to one another so much more. These experiences in my school allow me to relate to movies like “The Breakfast Club” because I believe it is possible for students to figure out how to connect with one another without an adult present.
Though I come from unique circumstances where my school serves such a wide range yet equally proportionate number of students, I believe it shows how students can come together to learn and grow from each other without conforming to what society says we should feel about each other. Our diversity was our strength and everywhere from the wrestling mat to after-school clubs allowed us to build upon that.
When I saw 10 Things I Hate About You I saw the girl I wished I was. Kat is the girl that was everything I wasn’t and yet her and seemed so similar within. She didn’t date boys, she was angry, she was anti social and sets herself apart this way. While I was social and loud and dated boys, I was just as deep, introspective and critical of the masses as she was. As and adult I learned to reconcile the two and found my individuality that way. However, there is something to be said about the girl who gets noticed because she’s trying to be invisible. I know a few girls like that even now in college. They found their individuality by actively not participating, which leads me to think that they are actually participating, just protesting. It is a way to stand out and get attention, as you differ themselves from the masses. In this depiction there is a realistic depiction of a particular type of girl. Yet, I believe that there is an exaggeration of these elements in order to make the plots of these films work.
I think this chapter is very insightful and Bulman does a great job of breaking down high school films and finding the typical characters played by these movies and the differences in the problems tackled in suburban and urban films.
If a producer wanted to make an accurate depiction of high school he would need to abandon the formula. The pigeonholed characters used in the formula movies don’t exist. Humans, especially teenagers are more complex than that.
My view on high school films has evolved greatly as the years have passed and even more so after all our discussions in this class. On one hand I do not identify with the characters anymore because I am not at that stage in my life where I need to not only find my identity but share it with the world.
College, including this class, has given me the tools to break down deeper social messages depicted in these films and has made me question their contribution to society. It is a question that I have been grappling with all quarter and I am sure you all are tired of me asking it: do these movies promote further racism and separatist attitudes?
The character Cher and her friends in the movie Clueless are a great example of what Bulman describes as the pursuit for individuality in suburban public schools. Cher is a privileged girl living in Beverly Hills whose largest worries are boys, clothes, and finding a ride from a party. While some of her friends have drug and family issues, the majority of their concerns are trivial. At my suburban high school, I knew many people like Cher who would stress about the issues of high school life, and never realized that in the grand scheme of things, so much more was important. Many of them were of middle class families who really just went through the motion of high school. They did their school work, got good grades, but were more concerned with the social aspect of school. Where I believe this hindered them, and many of the characters portrayed in suburban high school films, is the distorted image of their life being difficult. This is not to discredit some of my friends who actually had family problems and issues, because just because one has a comfortable life economically, it doesn’t mean they are exempt from having personal issues. But what vexed me the most, as Bulman states, is the “teen angst of the suburban school students appears to be nothing but the cries of spoiled children who live comfortable lives, have bright futures, but chafe under vaguely defined ‘oppression’ of their parents and teachers. They are rebels without much of a cause.
My interpretation of high school films has become clarified as a result of this class. I have always enjoyed high school movies, but at the same time felt a certain unease with the chronic “token black girl” or trivial problems of suburban students. This class has helped me understand what my concerns are, how they affect the audience, and what I can do as a future movie producer to make changes. The greatest change that needs to be made is the diversity of school experiences. Not all urban high school experiences, suburban and other are the same, and those variety of experiences need to be put on screen.
I don’t think the young, new producer will have a problem making an honest movie about the current state of urban (or) suburban high schools, whichever he or she chooses. As we talked about in class last week, these kinds of films already exist. I guess the question is whether the producer wants to make money, or wants a lot of people to see it. To get his or her “realistic portrayal” off the ground, the producer would need to spend a lot of money and locate a superstar (or two). Essentially, the producer would be banking on the fact that the teenage masses would want to watch a movie about a high school that was probably too specific too match their own high school, and that also did not match the “All American Suburban HS” and “Prototypical Urban HS” models that were developed for them by years of conditioning from television and Hollywood.
With that said, I place a lot of the blame for how things are in Hollywood today on ourselves as media consumers. Every time we watch a show that plays towards these HS stereotypes, we participate in a market that continues to demand – or at least accept – the typical tropes. Why would producers go against a model that already works? It sounds stupid, but when I watch Gossip Girl (a show about a preppy private school in NY), I’m in constant conflict over how I’m supporting a show that represents minorities poorly, if at all. (For the first half of the season, an Asian-American girl and African-American girl are the minions of one of the main white characters. Though they’re in almost 7 episodes each, they don’t have more than a few lines, one of which (for the Asian girl) was “Oh no, I have to study for a calculus test!”). What stung (or confused me) the most, was that when I brought it up with three different friends on separate occasions, each friend said I should just “give in.” All three of those friends were Asian American.
If we are serious about changing the media, we need to begin by producing the content we want to see ourselves, and stop subscribing to the content we’re sick of. We should pay money to see the movies that are trying to break the mold and show other producers out there that we might support them too. Maybe if we start now, high schoolers will see that they don’t need to accept it either.
I’m going with She’s All That. After giving it a bit of thought, this movie has quite a few parallels to my high school. The popular athletes have the money, get good grades, are involved in many of the clubs etc. The huge difference is that in order for this to actually work at my high school, Zach would have to be Asian. See, my high school served low, working, and middle class students. It lead to quite a bit of ethnic diversity, but we did not have very many rich white students. This was mostly due to the fact that there were three affluent areas in a five mile radius that had their own high schools that were predominantly rich white students. In my school, many of the white students were working class. Ten of our top twelve students were Asian, most of them were athletes, and all of them were in various clubs on campus.
Our star athletes played basketball, football or ran track. Here is where the racial segregation came in. Football had a diverse group of students because the coach did not cut people from his team. All were constantly forced to train harder to earn their right to play. Basketball and track were predominately black. Although they were star athletes, they black students were not at the top of the class and only occasionally were they considered popular. If you were to replace the white students with Asian students, in this movie, then you’d have my school.
My interpretation of high school films has not changed as a result of taking this class, rather it puts a fire in my belly to find some way to change the status quo. Maybe I’ll find some way to raise money for Ryann to create better movies. I say this because I can remember watching movies as a child and getting a great laugh, but always noticing the the Black girl always died first in the horror movies; the black guy always made the inappropriate and offensive comment; the black father was always on drugs or out of the picture, etc.
I agree that most students have unique experiences, but I think there is something to be said about setting. If you set a movie in EPA, show the EPA experience, give the students something real to relate to. The same goes for East LA, NYC, Chicago, etc. I think that a good place to start is to show the REAL experiences of individual schools in these areas…let the students be heard and shed light on the situations. As Rachel pointed out, it’s going to be difficult to make money when you are not following the norm, but it’s going to take more people like us (and those who read this blog) to support movies that tell real stories, we can find ways to make them entertaining, but we have to create a following and turn it into a legacy.
I think one of the most interesting surburban school scene characters that Bulman touche on is the wise High School janitor. I didn’t realize before reading this chapeter, but this character is everywhere in surburban school media in both film and television. Although I’m not very familiar with the films he talks about, I’ve seen other things where the janitor has a very see all/know all attitude, and the more I think about the more I recognize how absolutely unrealistic that is. In many of the suburban schools that I’m familiar with people wouldn’t even give the janitors the time of day. In fact, I hightly doubt you could find 20 people at my own high school who even knew the janitors’s names. They hardly respect them, pay them enough, or treat them well, let alone listen to them as the wise old sage who knows everything about the school. I think the janitor is just a conveniant character to use in these films because as Bulman points out the kids are against adult/teacher type figures and are trying to forge ahead as independant members of society. The janitor is an outlet for this because, we, as the audience, don’t have to see him as an significant member of adult society. Harsh, I know, but that seems to be the message these films are relaying when they continually use these type of characters in them.
I think my interpretation of high school films has changed a bit after being in this class, in that I am even more uneasy about what we are allowing to go out into the world. I am even more uneasy about the fact that young black people are continually getting the message that they are not pretty enough to win the guy, not smart enough to get the grades, not successful enough to make a living. I agree with Rachel. It is time to start producing the content we want to see ourselves. As playwrite Djanet Sears says, I got tired of not seeing roles for people like me on stage, so I decided to make them myself. I think we should support films that are getting it right and keep going from there, so that in the future all people can see themeselves in the media.
Ferris Bueller in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has some striking similarities to the middle and upper class students in my high school. Ferris tricks the administration, feels entitled to special privileges, and thinks high school is a waste of time. His day off activities reveal what he would rather be doing: driving ferraris, eating nice food, watching the stock exchange, etc. All of these activities are done by middle to upper class adults, namely his parents (he almost runs into his father at the restaurant). The way Ferris narrates and analyzes high school is smug; he believes that he has all the answers and there is nothing left to learn.
Middle to upper class students at my high school felt much the same way. They felt they possessed a special knowledge that entitled them to do things that other students were not allowed to do: drink alcohol in class, roam the hallways at inappropriate times, leave school when they wanted to get food, etc. These students were constantly criticizing the stupidity of the adults at the school and would routinely dupe them. My inner city public high school had several “security guards” who were easily deceived. These individuals were middle age high school drop outs who were not given any instruction as to how to handle students. They would tell someone to “go to class” and a student would respond with “I have a medical condition, I don’t want to talk about it.” Bewildered, the “security guards” would let the student break the rules and watch as they got in their cars and drove away. The advanced placement teachers would also let their students break the rules because they feared retribution from the parents of these students who tended to be powerful figures in the community. While these antics never reached the extreme that Ferris reached, the shared sense of expressive individualism granted a sense of entitlement and an all-knowing attitude which stressed non-conformity.
This class has given me the tools and the background to be more critical of films and media. I ask more questions and draw more comparisons then I did before. I used to take Ferris at face value and now I ask myself how realistic it is. I pay a lot more attention to the portrayal of young people because I understand why it is important.
If I was a young producer it would be very hard to create a realistic school/teen movie. “Real” school tends to be boring and movies need to be exciting to generate a large audience. The most realistic portrayals of school and teens are documentaries which allow individual students to tell their own story. We find the extraordinary in the everyday if we allow students a voice. While these stories may not directly apply to everyone, they may serve as inspiration for students struggling with their own problems. Whether it is a depiction of students overcoming adversity to go to college, grappling with peer pressure, or dealing with the sheer frustration of being a teenager, real students have important experiences to share.
Like others have expressed, learning to interpret, react, and critique film and media through the readings and the class, I have developed a more nuanced way of thinking about what I see. I’ve become more critical and aware of subtleties that otherwise might slip past me. It’ll be harder to enjoy the same films that I liked when I was younger. At the very least, I know I can no longer be a passive recipient of the images projected onto the screen.
I think this producer can push the envelope and break from the formulaic story telling methods we often see. One thing he could do is to put the camera in the hands of the students. I’ve once watched a documentary titled AKA Don Bonus, in which an under-privileged Cambodian American high school student carries a video camera with him. The film was moving and had an edgy, raw, and honest feel to it. Although the student’s experience was ultimately edited by producers of the film, it was still a striking contrast to other “urban” films I usually see in the mainstream. Of course, the producer’s goals will probably determine her goals. If making money and having a (more likely to be) successful movie under her belt is the goal, then formulaic stories that have proven to make money is probably the way to go.
Like Stany’s high school, mine served a pretty socioeconomically and racially diverse set of students. Unlike “The Breakfast Club,” however, I didn’t observe much mixing at all. Our high school lunch hour allowed students to sit anywhere on campus: in the hallways, in classrooms, on the basketball court, or go off campus to buy lunch. As a result, not only are the black kids sitting together, they are sitting together outside and away from the rest of the school population. The tracking system, dominated by whites and Asian Americans, further exacerbates the divide. Electives didn’t help because they counted as a 4.0 instead of a 5.0 like honors/AP classes, so electives became de facto lower track. Sports team did not help all that much either. For example, the baseball team is all white, with students who come from the rich suburb nearby. P.E. became one of the only places where students interacted substantially across racial and socioeconomic lines, because it was a required class that all students had to take, regardless of tracking. However, because the coaches often allowed students to sit and do homework after a few laps in the gym, the interactions are ultimately still limited.
I was particularly interested in Bulman’s assessment of Coach Bud Kilmer in the movie, Varsity Blues. Bulman argues Coach Kilmer was portrayed as the typical suburban coach who was “cruel and heartless”. While I agree the coach was cruel, heartless, and obsessed with winning I feel as though a lot of his actions do not fall far from the truth. As a member of numerous high school athletic teams (track, volleyball, basketball, lacrosse, and soccer) I found many of my coaches to be completely concerned with winning and preserving their ‘legacy’. While, my high school never went the extreme of recommending a cortisone injection to force an athlete to play, this is the case in college. In college athletes are ALWAYS competing injured. In fact, on a few occasions I can remember coaches and trainers advising athletes against receiving an MRI or XRAY to determine the root of an injury. The coaches often know, once an athlete goes in for an MRI something will be wrong and the athlete will have to sit out a portion of the season.
In addition to having athletes play injured there is a great deal of ‘humiliation’ and ‘mental abuse’ on teams. Coaches are constantly breaking their athletes down to build them back up stronger. I have yet to come across a coach who does not play so called mind games. Also, Varsity Blues was not completely crazy for having a member of the team defy the coach and get the coach top leave. We can look at our Women’s Varsity Lacrosse team. This year there were some internal problems and the coach left the school. The team played a tournament without a coach and preformed better than ever. In that sense Varsity Blues is sadly realistic.
That said, after reading Bulman I was made very aware of the differences in the portrayal of suburban and urban schools. I take this all with a grain of salt because these are Hollywood movies and are not meant to be accurate portrayals of high school. The movies are meant for entertainment. If a producer wanted to create a film indicative of the actual lives of high school students, there would have to be a documentary. For example, the show “High School Confidential” follows a group of 12 girls through high school. The shows are entertaining and accurate since they follow actual students during their everyday lives. The show illustrated high school through the experiences of 23 very different young girls.
Bulman spent a lot of time discussing the role of adults in suburban school films, that they were either vilified, made to look foolish, or hardly present. And while I agree that this is a trope we see throughout these films, there are a few exceptions that I think pose interesting challenges to the cliches of the genre. The first example that comes to by mind is Alexander Payne’s Election . Unlike others from the suburban school genre, the film’s protagonist is a high school Social Studies teacher. The film highlights the antagonistic relationship between Social Studies teacher and ambitious would-be school president Tracy Flick as student election season sweeps the entire school into chaos. Flick in some ways is the antagonist, her ambition and drive eventually bring the teacher down. But also, his own personal hostility to this student triggers his own downward spiral. It’s a quirky film that breaks a lot of the conventions, but in some ways it affirms many of the values Bulman suggests mainstream films contain. It essentially vilifies a desires to succeed and a competitive determination. But what’s interesting, is that the person who hates Tracy Flick’s determination is her teacher.
Bulman’s discussion of students being depicted as “heroes” in breaking down the walls of race and class and the “culture of popularity” reminded me of a particularly poignant moment the last semester of my senior year in high school. The seniors had gathered in the auditorium for some sort of farewell/reflective piece that our school was trying to put on, and we had a few seniors come out to perform, speak, etc. One senior girl, who held a student body position like VP or secretary or something like that, came out on the stage and talked about a number of things, but what struck out most to me was her statement, something along the lines, of how happy she was that are senior class was so united and could all be friends with each other, and other things common in the argument that “we’re over race.” And if I remember correctly, she was booed for this statement and many other people I talked to afterwards expressed how false that was – and I agreed. I would consider that girl as part of the “popular” group of athlete-student council representations, many of which were well intentioned, but in looking back, really had no grasp of the community of our senior class outside their social circle. Though I was also in student council all for years and also served an officer position, I would say I was one of the very few not of this social group. In thinking back now, it struck me how little we as youth, and especially people in these so-called leadership positions, really understood the racial dynamics of our school. When I think back of the social “cliques” and the cafeteria and morning where people would sit and with whom – often very telling of these dynamics – I realize just how divide our school ways along nearly every single possible way — race/ethnicity, social class, interest (the art people, the theatre people, etc), athleticism, even gender — it was as if the “co-ed” groups were cooler cause guys and girls hung out with each other. Though I understand people who are similar/interested in the same things may arguable naturally gravitate towards each other, it is problematic when suburban high school films perpetuate the idea that we are all “over race” — as others pointed out before, this is drastically different and often not the case for many schools, but because of these media messages, students can easily believe these things and thus serve as an impediment for the actions that do need to be made.
I, like many others, now always have this critical eye of watching films and their messages, representation, etc — in fact, it seems that I have developed “high standards” on which films I consider “good,” many of which previous mainstream ones no longer meet. Now, I am most struck and drawn to grippingly raw films, like independent and documentary films that are bold in their social commentary. I agree with both Rachel and Henry’s suggestions about how to make for a more realistic depiction of schools and students – definitely changing the mindset of audiences so that they ARE more critically aware of these issues and media literacy, as well as do a “aka Don Bonus” style-esque approach, where the students tell the stories for themselves without too much editing or skewing.
I guess I’ll start off by simply saying that Ferris Bueller has been a film that has annoyed me since I was a teenager. Bueller, to me, had always represented someone with the upper middle class mobility and spoiled-rich-kid attitude to do all the kinds of audacious things that he does, driving around in the fancy convertible and partaking in all opulent activities throughout the city. Particularly disturbing to me also is one of the film’s climactic moments that is supposed to be emotionally moving– when his friend decides to beat his dad’s convertible up as an act of adolescent defiance; while I don’t doubt that the father is emotionally unsupportive, the kid does the deed in a way that is completely sure of his and his family’s class privilege. Here are some teens who really take their education and their money for granted. And I’d feel a little awkward when my friends would laugh so much at the humor of the movie. I’m glad to see that Bulman isn’t laughing, either.
I don’t know if it’s useful, however, to discuss which films are “realistic,” and which aren’t. I don’t think naturalism is the primary means by which we should judge these films; that is much in the same way old-school cultural studies have sought after the notion of “authenticity.” What the “real” or “authentic” urban or suburban high school experience is doesn’t actually exist, since it is unique from school to school. Therefore, it is impossible for any film to accurately capture that sense of “realness” unless it aligns with our particular perception of what “real” is. Even AKA Don Bonus, a film I think is fantastic in its candor and honesty, cannot be the be-all, end-all representation of documentary “realism” since not all urban high school experiences are quite the same. AKA Don Bonus instead is strong because of its rhetorical message and its narrative vulnerability. Similarly, all of these objects of cultural production should be judged less on their realism, more on their messages, and on who has control of the narrative.
I’m going to also discuss Clueless. When I first watched Clueless (a long time ago), it instantly became a favorite of mine because most of the problems that revolved around Cher, the main character, included fashion issues, partying issues, and finding love for herself, for her friends and even teachers. After watching it again, I had a different view of the movie. I wasn’t necessarily angered by the issues that seemed so crucial to the main character, but I was finding it very hard to believe. Schooling is treated as a joke in this movie. For example, Cher does not take her classes seriously, giving speeches about fashion for her debate class. When she receives her report card full of C’s, she immediately begins taunting teachers so that she may get her grades changed (not because she is concerned about her grades but because she feels like she can). Clearly this movie epitomizes what Bulman describes as the pursuit of individuality that’s so common in suburban high schools. Living in a city, I cannot really say that there is truth to this film or not. I just know that there is something to this formula that works and will continue to rake in large audiences to the theaters to see these type of high schools films.
Like many of my classmates, I must agree that this class has really changed my views of urban high schools and suburban high schools. And like one of my classmates, I strongly agree that there are differences in all the suburban high schools and in all the urban high schools that must eventually be brought to screen if producers are trying to achieve a real depiction of high schooling in films.