Xuen Tey Week #6: America’s High School
Almost everyone knows about Hollywood.
We’ve all heard about the place where movies are filmed and famous people stay. Many dream of someday going to Hollywood and striking it big—being asked to star in a movie and becoming famous. Everyone’s seen the movies that come out of these production studios, whether it be action, horror, or romance.
But how do these seemingly harmless films affect people’s perception of the world?
Most people have seen High School Musical before. They’ve seen thousands of shows tha revolve around ‘normal’ high school students in America. However, my experience with these films has taught me about how the warped perception of American schools and their intricacies originated with these films. For example, most of these films have a group of ‘popular kids’ who are known throughout the school. Personally, this has never been a thing in any of my schools—this is more of a small town school kind of thing. Only in smaller places, like midwestern towns would every kid in the school know each other and immediately classify all the kids. At American, our school, the only people who might know everyone in the entire place would be the staff, and even they do not interact with everyone in the school.
Besides that, there is also lots of bullying and unfairness that is highlighted in these schools. There are ‘nerds’ who study all the time and take every advanced class, there are jocks who shove people into lockers and know nothing, cheerleaders that everyone knows and who make fun of everyone, loners who are always alone and do weird things, and popular kids that the whole school know about.
I’ve never known ‘nerds’ that study 24/7, only classmates that were forced into tutoring centers that loved to compete with others, and for us, taking advanced classes is a given. The only jocks I’ve known excel in academics and are all-around friendly. I don’t know a single person who does cheerleading and I’ve never heard of any truly malicious insults towards anyone at school. I’ve never known a group of super popular kids, the only well-known groups are the leadership and student council kids.
People may watch these movies and assume that every school in the U.S. is like this, but to me, these schools are and will always as foreign to me as these places would be to non-Americans.
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ReplyDeleteXuen , I want to start by saying I love this topic selection. In the kindest way possible, and with no disrespect to any of the other blogs, I enjoyed reading about something a bit more light-hearted or not politically connected. This topic was definitely one that most of us can relate to. After reading your first paragraph, I immediately reflected on all of my favorite movies or TV shows, specifically Stranger Things and Outer Banks. I thought about how after watching the show, I spend hours on hours watching the Buzzfeed interviews, learning all about the actors; it feels like the relationship I have with my favorite NFL or NBA players: extremely parasocial. Furthermore, I am especially glad that you referenced HSM, because oh my gosh idek where to start about how I adore the whole trilogy. Have you seen the Disney+ show? If not, I very heavily reccommend it. I'd also agree to the part where you wrote about " the warped perception of American schools," because in no way whatsoever are these films an accurate depiction of how life actually is; although it would be funny to watch our varsity basketball team break out during lunch into a full dance/song routine.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, you speak about a smaller or "midwestern" town, and I'm pretty intrigued by what life there actually is. In no way midwestern, but one of my friends down in Santa Cruz went to a highschool of a graduating class of around 25. To us, this doesn't even sound realistic, as our populations are skewed so far high. I would also agree to your point about stereotypes, because I do not think AHS has a concept of "nerds," nor would they be looked at through a negative lens if we did. Overall, I loved reading this extremely relatable blog! Thanks for sharing it!
P.S. I also want to say I love your picture choice; I don't think it's from the right movie but I am a relatively huge Transformers fan.
Wait I wanted to clarify when I said "right movie," I meant for it to precede my comment on Transformers.
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