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Think of a "High School Movie". Don't take too long to think about it, just think of what the first title that pops into your mind is. Okay, good. Now, if you didn't think of a specific movie, think of a few plot elements, and also a few characters. Don't take too long with those, but just take a few mental notes. What you were thinking about is in the spoilers, or else skip over that and I will discuss a little bit about "High School Movies" Did you think of the Breakfast Club? Depending on your age, you probably thought of a movie that was either the Breakfast Club, or something very close to it. You probably thought of a few quick plot points and characters: the movie, whether it is a comedy or a drama, probably focuses around social divisions and social positions. There are various cliques, and they are fighting for position. There is a probably a prep/jock, his pretty but mean girlfriend, and some nerds/artistic kids/goths/etc. There may be a competition or school event that provides the impetus for the groups to come into conflict. At the end of the movie, either the characters, or at least the audience, has learned to look beyond surface divisions. The interesting thing is how universal the ideas of High School, as presented through film (and television) is. High School in the United States is somewhat of a simulacrum: its a reality based on images. Like most people, very little of the "High School" experience as presented by mass media fits my life (I went to alternative schools and started community college at 16). And yet, because I have absorbed so much of the High School mythology through media, I still kind of depend on the shorthand of High School when I talk to people and learn their experience. "Were you a prep or a goth?" I've almost literally asked people, as if I was Ebony Dementia Raven Way. I think "High School" has become such a universal setting for movies for three main reasons: first, it is a universal experience that audiences can understand, which makes it accessible and commercially successful. Second, it is a self-contained environment, with a self-contained story. It involves a delineated reality where story telling can be done in terms of easily recognizable plot points: getting crowned Homecoming King and Queen is a visible way to communicate "social and romantic success". Third, and related to the second, is a high school is pretty easy to present in film. You really need only three or four sets: classroom, hallway, cafeteria, sportsfield/auditorium. And the limited amount of locations means it is easy for the plot to advance: the romantic leads can run into each other in the hallway after their big argument, something wouldn't be as easy to explain in an adult movie taking place in a city. For these reasons, the "High School Movie", that started coalescing sometime in the 1980s, quickly became a genre that influenced reality, which then influenced it back. Now, for the second question: think of a "College" movie. Think of a movie that is about the College/University experience. And think of the type of plot points and characterization that would be found in it. For me, I couldn't think of what those could be as easily. I can think of lots of movies that are set, in whole or in part, in the college or university or early adulthood years, but they are not "College Movies". Most movies that might fit the category are either really High School Movies (Revenge of the Nerds, for example, is about high school students, and made for high school students) or else college is just a backdrop. Most students in college movies act either much more immature (think Pauly Shore, Son-in-Law) or much more mature (a serious business movie like "Mona Lisa Smile") than actual college students. I can't think of a movie that really accurately displays higher education. Especially since the average experience of most American college students is about going to a big state university or a commuter community college campus---which don't really match the Greek Life Party School or the Upper Crust Ivy Covered New England School. In terms of cultural narrative, there is just not a consensus portrayal of what "College" is supposed to be. So, the point here isn't just about movies, but about how cultural images of some parts of life can be very ingrained in our mind, while others are not addressed consistently. Also, I apologize if my treatment of this matter has focused on recent, popular and United States-based films. I know that obviously there probably is a very different treatment of both high school and college if I was going to go watch Italian films of the 1950s. I would be interested to see if people agree with me about this, and also if everyone else guessed The Breakfast Club.
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Aug 18, 2018 06:26
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check this out op https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMvNc_CFDv0 (higher quality version here )
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Aug 18, 2018 06:31
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Yea, I thought of Risky Business (1983), The Breakfast Club (1985) and The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) for HS.glowing-fish posted:For me, I couldn't think of what those could be as easily. I can think of lots of movies that are set, in whole or in part, in the college or university or early adulthood years, but they are not "College Movies". Most movies that might fit the category are either really High School Movies For college movie the first one that came to mind was With Honors (1994). For foreign college movie the first one I thought of was 3 Idiots (2009). Post-college I suppose Reality Bites (1994). Less Than Zero (1987) captures some of the dysfunctional gap between HS and college.
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Aug 18, 2018 22:09
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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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I haven't seen the movie, but even as a white-rear end Canadian the Dear White People show captured so much of my university experience.
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Aug 18, 2018 23:10
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I'd like Linklater to take a stab at really capturing the college experience. While it's a very short piece of the movie, the ending of Boyhood felt very authentic to me. I think last yea'r's Everybody Wants Some captured less the experience of college and more what it means to be a dirtbag between the age of 18-23. My wife and I love trying to extrapolate what high school movie classes are actually like. So many movie teachers randomly reading some line from a classic book and asking some vague question before the bell rings. What was that class actually about?
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Aug 18, 2018 23:10
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I could literally only think of High School Musical, not like I've even actually seen it. Probably because the OP couldn't stop saying High School Movie. Oh, and Heathers, just now. Did not for even a heartbeat consider Breakfast Club
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Aug 19, 2018 03:26
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I thought of Mean Girls and Back to School, OP. Come to think of it, high school films age better than college films as a whole.
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Aug 19, 2018 08:14
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Mean Girls was the first one I thought of too, but Breakfast Club right after.
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Aug 19, 2018 16:05
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Rules of attraction is one of my favs and it holds up pretty well. The split screen wake and bake thing is pretty dead on. I have some friends that would say Flatliners was basically their college experience...mostly empty shells of med students. Maybe not the death as a hobby part. PCU is probably pretty close to a lot of people's early/mid 90's college experience. I've heard from older folks that Animal House was also pretty close to it for them. I'd argue Go is also a pretty realistic portrayal of people doing dumb poo poo in their early 20's though those characters are all college drop out styled anyway. I'd take most of these over most high school set movies honestly. zer0spunk fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Aug 19, 2018 |
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Aug 19, 2018 16:51
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3 O'Clock High and College were what came up for me, because I have a weird-rear end brain.
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Aug 19, 2018 21:00
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Scream 2 was what immediately popped into my head when I thought "college movie."
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Aug 19, 2018 21:05
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Timeless Appeal 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.
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Aug 20, 2018 00:59
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Back To School is the ultimate example of the college movie to me.glowing-fish posted:(Revenge of the Nerds, for example, is about high school students, and made for high school students) It's explicitly about college students, though? Did you watch the same movie as me? The antagonists are a fraternity for God's sake.
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Aug 20, 2018 01:04
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WampaLord posted:Back To School is the ultimate example of the college movie to me. Yes, I was speaking metaphorically. They are explicitly in college (although they are freshmen), but their maturity level is more like 16 year olds. Its a teen sex comedy where they are cast as in college because it allows a few plot points to develop. I mean, its kind of like me saying Star Wars isn't a Science Fiction movie. Of course it is, but arguably its essence isn't.
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Aug 20, 2018 05:27
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I thought of Mean Girls
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Aug 21, 2018 16:41
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3 O'clock High and Animal House for me
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Aug 21, 2018 16:45
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I thought of Superbad which doesn’t really fit this I guess
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Aug 27, 2018 03:21
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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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The first ones I thought of were Dazed & Confused, PCU, and Over The Edge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l-4MW_jbfg I didn't care much for Breakfast Club growing up, I didn't grow up in the suburbs where most of John Hughes' movies take place, so I didn't relate to most of his movies (though I do love Ferris Bueller and Planes, Trains and Automobiles).
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Aug 27, 2018 18:50
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I remember going into high school worrying that it was going be like it was on tv and movies. Reminds me of how people who are raised by wolves tend to act like wolves. People raised by tv will tend to act like people on tv. I’ve had dreams with a third person perspective, or with scenes and shots rather just looking out through my eyes like I’m supposed to. Also as an aside I love how the high school genre has plenty of story beats centered around lockers. Every school I’ve ever been to had literally thousands of the drat things, but they were never used for whatever reason. They were just decorative by the 2000s
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Aug 27, 2018 20:47
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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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High School movies are "coming of age" stories first and foremost, so yeah who'd want to focus on what's going on in English lit? There's a reason they so often focus on the *end* of High School, as well...it's a familiar benchmark for "adulthood" that transcends class, ethnic, and religious lines for a wide audience. (That is, you could make a story about a bar mitzvah or a quinceañera, etc., but those things would necessarily be tied to Jewish or Latina identity or what-have-you. HS works as an understood, secular "end of childhood" for a ton of reasons.) Definitely, though, college is not at all universal...in terms of what the setting and experience is like, or in terms of people going at all. You could definitely make a "coming of age" story about an undergrad, but you'd probably have to address those particularities. Is it Yale? Cal State? Community college, an engineering school, an arts conservatory? Is the main character wealthy, poor, are they near home or far away? Etc. I came of age amidst a huge glut of 90's teen dramedies styled after John Hughes. So, less Sixteen Candles and more Can't Hardly Wait, 10 Things I Hate About You, She's All That, American Pie. They were no less self-important or melodramatic than Hughes, but perhaps more cynical or jaded. Definitely more vulgar.
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Aug 30, 2018 00:21
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1973's The Paper Chase is one of the few movies that deals with the substance of academia instead of everything around it. It's kind of dated now, but it captures the professor-classroom relationship pretty well. It was the second film I thought of for a college movie after With Honors, which isn't good, but was trying very hard to be about college. I'd also throw out Real Genius for a college movie, as it has a few moments that ring true. The first high school movie I thought of was Lucas. Xealot posted:I came of age amidst a huge glut of 90's teen dramedies styled after John Hughes. So, less Sixteen Candles and more Can't Hardly Wait, 10 Things I Hate About You, She's All That, American Pie. They were no less self-important or melodramatic than Hughes, but perhaps more cynical or jaded. Definitely more vulgar. I hope you've seen Not Another Teen Movie, which unfortunately gets mistaken for a Friedberg and Seltzer movie. It parodies those 90's-era high school films fantastically well.
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Sep 2, 2018 16:33
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i thought of election and school daze, op. sorry.
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Sep 4, 2018 08:49
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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.
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Sep 7, 2018 16:11
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Mean Girls and Raw
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Sep 8, 2018 07:13
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Dazed and Confused and Rules of Attraction I remember being so disappointed that college didn't end up being as depraved and hedonistic as Rules of Attraction led me to believe it would be.
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Sep 8, 2018 23:18
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I thought of Suspiria. What does that mean. Am I a ballerina now?
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Sep 9, 2018 02:56
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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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I love Can't Hardly Wait
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Sep 11, 2018 01:50
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Oh man, I really need to check this out.
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Sep 11, 2018 05:30
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It definitely hits that "vile administration" element you were talking about. The ending to High School is one of the most cynical things I've ever seen.
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Sep 11, 2018 13:04
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Some flick recommendations for y'all who want an idea of how British film makers viewed their school experiences: If... (do watch this), Gregory's Girl, Kes, and The Belles of St Trinians.
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Sep 11, 2018 15:27
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quote:Think of a High School Movie quote:Think of a College movie glowing-fish posted:And yet, because I have absorbed so much of the High School mythology through media, I still kind of depend on the shorthand of High School when I talk to people and learn their experience. "Were you a prep or a goth?" I've almost literally asked people, as if I was Ebony Dementia Raven Way. the Goth/Prep division is mired in a specific time period that most of us here probably fall into (late 80s through early 2000s). There just aren't any goths at High School anymore, and Ye Olde Gothe Temple (Hot Topic) is a mainstream mishmash of geek culture/band fandom and "counter-culture" knick-knacks. There's this weird homogeneity to teens now that makes picking out the archetypes harder. Part of that is because (at least in L.A.) pressure to make schools leaner, better, and more responsive has pushed High Schools out of the model of One Giant Campus and into smaller learning communities. So the schools themselves are smaller and less anonymous, and the kids themselves are more alike. I admit, I found a coworker attended the same high school as I did, during the same timespan, and a lot of the conversation was "oh what teachers did you have/did you hang out with [Group]/did you know [person]". We even talked about how weird it was that Leadership was this thing people joined when they had barely heard about it their senior year. A lot of that was shorthand to see what commonalities our two experiences shared, but we had two very different stories about High School. quote:For these reasons, the "High School Movie", that started coalescing sometime in the 1980s, quickly became a genre that influenced reality, which then influenced it back. quote:I can think of lots of movies that are set, in whole or in part, in the college or university or early adulthood years, but they are not "College Movies". Most movies that might fit the category are either really High School Movies (Revenge of the Nerds, for example, is about high school students, and made for high school students) or else college is just a backdrop. . . In terms of cultural narrative, there is just not a consensus portrayal of what "College" is supposed to be. I think it's hard to write for college because everything gets more atomized as you progress -- less common classes with random dorm-mates, more intense study into the field you want, presumably less random socialization and scary exploration. It's not terribly exciting to write about finishing your second to last term paper while holding down your part-time job. But it is easy to write about the first Big Adult Party a kid attends and gets washed away in. Or how the Big Man on the HS Campus is actually kind of mediocre or average in the College World. Those are really, like you say, just extensions of the HS themes. Mandrel posted:I thought of Superbad which doesn’t really fit this I guess skooma512 posted:Also as an aside I love how the high school genre has plenty of story beats centered around lockers. Every school I’ve ever been to had literally thousands of the drat things, but they were never used for whatever reason. They were just decorative by the 2000s
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Sep 11, 2018 17:08
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I thought of this OP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g-WTpdsqGg
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Sep 11, 2018 19:36
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i thought of superbad and old school, OP. your thesis is poo poo
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Sep 12, 2018 23:35
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FilthyImp posted:Superbad's a really great transition piece movie, though. Even though the characters are still in High School, it's just perfunctory setting to move along all the transitional elements. At the end, they explicitly talk about Senior Portraits or Grad Pictures while shopping for Dorm poo poo, but by then we understand that HS is done and that they're much different people. It does a great job of capturing that last week or two when kids are just kind of in Limbo and waiting for the graduation event to be formally done with all this poo poo. its terribly subjective. because the op cited breakfast club whereas i would say thats so far from a high school movie for me cause wtf. i went to high school here in nz. there is too much temporal and cultural distance for me to relate to breakfast club at all. only the iconic song that kicks in at the end. i would have to point to linklaters boyhood and, my favourite movie ever, dazed and confused as high school movies that constitute what i relate to as a high school movie. ladybird too duh. sentimental, bittersweet, sad, missing, 1979 stuff. an empty quad after friday afternoon, you know. honestly, the closest thing to a high school movie for me would have to be a tv show. summer height's high. because the pretty realistic raw australian setting is v close to nz in high school culture. american high school movies are just in the uncanny valley of 13 reasons why and high school musical and like, endless cafeteria and lockers hall set pieces. university films? i agree with filthyimp. the experience of 'firsts' and change quickly dissipates and everybody has such varied experiences. films that focus on just-a-bit-after-uni seem to weirdly sum up the uni experience better than any movie that directly focuses on them could. saint elmo's fire, reality bites.
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Oct 2, 2018 14:42
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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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I thought of high school musical
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Oct 2, 2018 17:16
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