Others than Ferris bueller's Day off, which I guess isn't really about high school as much as it is about Chicago, best high school movie is mean girls, closely followed by bring it on
I learned to fight in eighth grade. Didn't have much trouble with bullies after that. Not a one-size-fits-all solution, of course, but it goes to your point about vulnerability.
I also experienced high school as being somewhat more fluid than the movies suggest.
I've recently heard folks cite the show American Vandal on Netflix as doing a good job capturing some of the deeper nuances of what high school is like for zoomers right now. I can't personally say how accurate it is, though I can say it is extremely funny so long as you're willing to go along with the (somewhat juvenile) premise.
Freddie, I don't think this will be an unpopular take. I've heard from recent students that the trend towards more organic social networks with popular students being kind, smart, and well-liked has accelerated through Gen Z, though I am not Gen Z myself, and that the extreme clique-ish behavior seen in movies like The Breakfast Club doesn't happen nearly as much anymore (if it ever really did).
It would be interesting to hear from any school employees what they've seen change over time.
I have *always* felt this way, from high school to today. Rather than reflecting the experiences of the producers though, I think genre tropes tend to take on a life of their own. People know how to write for them and audiences expect them and it becomes a kind of unbreakable feedback loop. Whatever the reason though, I have basically never seen high school portrayed in a way that actually reflected my personal experience of it.
My high school experience sounds much more like yours than any movie. The permeability of cliques was maybe, to me, one of the defining aspects of high school. The most popular kids in my class, anyway, were not mean people. Mean people were generally shunned, for what seems obvious reasons.
An example: a mean girl nominated a very overweight lesbian for homecoming queen my senior year. And while this could have led into a Carrie situation, I suppose, many people just leaned into it. She won! And it wasn't, like, a cruel joke or anything. People just saw the intended cruelty but liked her well enough (and generally didn't care about popularity contests, which is maybe particularly unusual about my class in high school). She went on to win the One Act Play competition that year as well (do other schools have this?).
Schools in the Twin Cities have a bit of an interesting dynamic, I think, since there are so many private schools. I think these private schools are generally much crueler, but it also leaves schools like mine free from a lot of assholes. The wealthy kids and those extremely talented athletes get filtered out of the general public school population. Also, my class in particular was a bit of an anomaly, I think. We set records in academics for our district but set exactly zero records in athletics.
Of course, none of this means I was happy in high school. I definitely wasn't! But no one was ever mean to me and I never experienced any real exclusionary social dynamics.
My wife's high school experience, though, sounds so much like a terrible teen drama that I thought she was making it up when she first told me about it. Head cheerleader dating the quarterback and ruling over the class with an iron fist - it still sounds made up to me.
Very interesting piece. By virtue (though it probably wasn't virtuous) of my asociality, I missed a big chunk of the high school experience, which I generally don't care about and occasionally regret.
However, a related media/cultural phenomenon which I think is quite unfair is the 'peaked in high school, what a loser' notion. Which, just seems like classism/elitism wrapped up in a veneer of rebelliousness. To avoid an obvious counterargument, this wasn't me. High School wasn't hell, or heaven for me.
The guy who's the captain of the football team, but isn't good enough for state, let alone the pros and is going to go on to have a reasonable blue collar job...yeah, the only time in his life he's going to be widely respected and in charge of anything serious is in high school. I mean, maybe he'll be in charge of his family later on, but the same folks who would disdain him (there's probably an analogous caricature about a woman, but I usually see this in a 'revenge of the nerds' type way about jocks) for this would, rightly, decry that as misogynistic.
People like being respected and (often) like having control over things. Why wouldn't the time they were respected and admired by their peers (and usually adults as well) and were leaders amongst their peers be some of the best times of their lives?
First, perhaps it depends on when you attended high school? So many of the movies you highlight were made in about a 20 year span or so. Could it be that this is how Gen X and the later Boomers perceived the whole high school experience because of our cynical worldview? Not being sure how old you are (I'm in my mid-50s, so a very early Gen Xer) I can't speak to where in the generational timeline you fall by my perception is that you may be late Gen X or early Millenial.
Second, isn't exaggerating the real world what most of Hollywood is about (when making non-fantasy or science fiction movies)? Even most of the "based on real events" movies change and manipulate the actual story in order to make it more compelling. The fact is that real life is just too boring. Movies and stories like these are meant to take a relatable reality of life and utilize that to evoke an emotional response. Who is going to respond emotionally to the boring reality that there were cliques in HS but that the membership in those was fluid and overlapped. Sure, there was the occasional fight after school ("meet me behind the gym at 3:30") but we know they were not a daily occurrence (one of my favorite movies exploring the after-school fight theme is "Three O'Clock High" with Casey Siemaszko).
Anyway, just a couple of initial thoughts to your piece, which I don't entirely disagree with. Just looking for reasons.
I think there tends to be a 20 or 30 year delay in portraying this sort of thing, since, with the exception of wunderkinds, the people at the peak of their careers who are in control of making movies and TV at any given moment are reflecting their experiences from a couple of decades prior. So if we see this mainly in ‘80s-‘90s movies, maybe high school was like this in the ‘60s and ‘70s? And the more egalitarian ‘90s dynamic is only starting to appear in things like Never Have I Ever or Booksmart (though with an overlay of contemporary trends and politics to make it feel up to date).
I did consider that and had to edit my comment because I initially pointed to Gen X only. Case in point is John Hughes, probably one of the most prolific filmmakers in the genre. He was born in 1950. But it doesn't seem to explain why his material rang so true to Gen X. His initial foray into the theme was "Sixteen Candles". Once it hit he and others knew he was onto something with the generation these films were geared towards and simply responded in kind.
I have no idea if my experience is more typical than yours, or if neither is very typical, but the popular people in my high school were not in general kind or warm-hearted. They were "cool," and were deemed so largely by each other and because of their participation in sports, especially but not exclusively football. They were cool in middle school, and thus they stayed cool on high school. They didn't go out of their way to be cruel, usually, although they often did in middle school, but they certainly didn't shy away from it, either. I got bullied a fair bit in middle school, but that faded away by high school, I don't know why. So my experience is closer to the movies than it is to yours, but neither is particularly close.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the whole thing in movies is just because it generates drama, though, and has nothing (or anyway not much) to do with the dynamics of the lives of those writing them. A high school slice of life movie where the popular person is just a good and kind person might work once, but not as an entire genre.
What I notice (myself in the 80s, my kids now) is the kids who are super comfortable with or just oblivious to risks (drinking, sex, driving fast) of all kinds are more popular. They have less anxiety. 100% agree with what FdB pointed out that the nerds and weirdos can be just as mean and clicque-ish and you never see that in these movies. The artsy or goth kids are always the ones who are supposedly the most empathetic and accepting. Total bullshit. Today I think the kids who hyper focus on looking and being different (to broadcast it on social media, of course) are actually the most self-involved, and the most anxious and insecure. I could not believe how mean and awful the marching band and art club type kids were to my own kid. Just complete and utter shallow ass holes.
I agree with your post. My high school experience was pretty different from yours, but it is exactly this difference--the range of high school social experiences--that media often fails to capture. (That said, I think teen dramas--any show where 28-year-olds portray 17-year-olds having incredible sex with each other--do focus consistently and positively on the popular kids. They may not be defined as "the popular kids" per se, just unusually beautiful teenagers who party a lot and don't think that much about their social inferiors, but this is consistent with the lived experience of popular kids.)
I think a huge part of the felt variation on this topic is related to your point about popular people being friendly and kind. The popular people at many schools *are* friendly and kind. But I think this varies a lot by school and by individual grade within the school. I remember a school counselor at my high school opining that in my grade specifically, "the leaders are not positive leaders," by which they meant that many of the popular kids were assholes. I was never a victim of bullying myself, but it sucked that the people at my school with the most social power were also the most pointlessly cruel. (Contra the movies you cite, these were primarily the popular boys; the popular girls were mostly nice, although there were plenty of kids who were friendlier and nicer.) It also was not at all true in my high school that it was socially advantageous to be interesting--I remember getting to college and being astonished by how interesting the cool people were, as that had not been true in my prior experience.
Yes, I think different high schools have different cultures. I pulled my teenager out of one High School which was more Mean Girls and now she is in a different public school where the culture is more live and let live and my daughter doesn't notice any obvious popularity status. The two communities are very different - one is more sports focused with purple politics and status quo values and the newer community has a more open-minded vibe. The values of our communities are strongly reflected in our kids.
I’d like to put forth Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever as a great representation that doesn’t lean too heavily on tropes.
Also when I was a sophomore, the most popular guy in school was a football player who was prom king and also performed Brick by Ben Folds in the talent show (including singing) and he spoke to me every single day even though I was an extremely introverted kid at that point.
I agree! It’s a terrific series, and Kaling rightly shows that kids who aren’t in the most popular group don’t spend all their time obsessing about becoming popular. They have plenty of their own concerns, in their own lives. Or, Kaling once said (paraphrasing here), those of us who the media portrays as sidekicks don’t feel like we’re sidekicks. We feel like we’re the main characters in our own stories.
Off the top of my head, Booksmart is not a perfect movie but it is very funny and largely avoids the trope of a rigid social hierarchy.
Mean Girls sucks, the love for that movie is pure millennial nostalgia and nothing more. Clueless, on the other hand, holds up incredibly well, in part due to the genre subversion you point out.
I might have missed your essay on bullying (please link?) but I think the hypothesis is sound. I had a boyfriend in college who talked about how he, and especially his younger sister, were relentlessly bullied for being a vegetarian in middle & high school during the late 80s/ early 90s. It made me laugh because I had high school classmates who were not only vegetarian, but were Jain, which meant they didn't eat any parts of a plant that could cause its death (that at least was my understanding). No one gave a shit. Everyone had enough on their plates that the last thing they had room for was to police what others ate. There might be some mild interest and/or teasing about 'unusual' foods, but it was more curiosity than malice. NB: I went to *very* diverse high schools in NYC. But, so did they.
I didn't use the term "vulnerable," but I did tell my bf that the reason he and his sister were bullied was not because of their food choices - that was just a pretext. Instead, it was because they were putting out some kind of signal that other kids couldn't stand. Most people, especially children, lack the self awareness to understand how they're being perceived by others. This combined with the animal instinct to cull the weak from the group can lead to very ugly acts of bullying.
As for high school portrayals, I also agree with you. None of them are anything like my experiences. Prime example, the most "popular" girl at my high school and the one "all" the guys wanted to date was the valedictorian and was headed to Harvard. I didn't know her, but my impression was that she seemed like a nice person. I also noticed that the kids everyone liked were the nicest, most mature ones. This should be completely obvious, right? But somehow in US media, it's been completely reversed and we're told to believe that the most asshole kids are the most popular. While it's true, that some kids got points for being extra "cool" or "super hot" or "rich" none of those things translated directly to popularity.
Social science backs up your thoughts on peer popularity. Kathryn Wentzel’s work out of University of Maryland has shown a strong relationship among social competence, academic success, and popularity. For a seminal read see James Coleman’s “The Adolescent Society”.
I feel like there’s something slippery going on when you say popular people are usually popular because they’re kind. I look back and can absolutely identify people who were popular because they were kind and inclusive, but the popular *group* was a different idea all together. That group was defined by its exclusion, and the relatively ruthless way they executed that exclusion, including bullying to keep the battle lines clear.
Also, while not a movie, Friday Night Lights the series portrayed almost every single character as nuanced and floating between cliques and interests.
Completely agree. My experiences and my teenager's experiences show me that many popular kids are popular due to being funny. And being funny often meant being ruthless to some and making many others laugh at their expense. Popular people are as varied as anyone else. Some are popular because they are nice, attractive, talented, intelligent, fit, strong, funny, cruel, manipulative, excellent social engineers, wealthy, etc.
As with any social microcosm, some people are going to be cruel and damaged/damaging and they sometimes capture the group dynamic. Association with them may provide a reprieve from being a target for their barbs for awhile, or allow otherwise typical kids a taste of the dark side. One hopes a leader emerges with a strong sense of self and that their "self" is rooted in kindness or at least not-meanness.
Others than Ferris bueller's Day off, which I guess isn't really about high school as much as it is about Chicago, best high school movie is mean girls, closely followed by bring it on
I learned to fight in eighth grade. Didn't have much trouble with bullies after that. Not a one-size-fits-all solution, of course, but it goes to your point about vulnerability.
I also experienced high school as being somewhat more fluid than the movies suggest.
I've recently heard folks cite the show American Vandal on Netflix as doing a good job capturing some of the deeper nuances of what high school is like for zoomers right now. I can't personally say how accurate it is, though I can say it is extremely funny so long as you're willing to go along with the (somewhat juvenile) premise.
Freddie, I don't think this will be an unpopular take. I've heard from recent students that the trend towards more organic social networks with popular students being kind, smart, and well-liked has accelerated through Gen Z, though I am not Gen Z myself, and that the extreme clique-ish behavior seen in movies like The Breakfast Club doesn't happen nearly as much anymore (if it ever really did).
It would be interesting to hear from any school employees what they've seen change over time.
I have *always* felt this way, from high school to today. Rather than reflecting the experiences of the producers though, I think genre tropes tend to take on a life of their own. People know how to write for them and audiences expect them and it becomes a kind of unbreakable feedback loop. Whatever the reason though, I have basically never seen high school portrayed in a way that actually reflected my personal experience of it.
My high school experience sounds much more like yours than any movie. The permeability of cliques was maybe, to me, one of the defining aspects of high school. The most popular kids in my class, anyway, were not mean people. Mean people were generally shunned, for what seems obvious reasons.
An example: a mean girl nominated a very overweight lesbian for homecoming queen my senior year. And while this could have led into a Carrie situation, I suppose, many people just leaned into it. She won! And it wasn't, like, a cruel joke or anything. People just saw the intended cruelty but liked her well enough (and generally didn't care about popularity contests, which is maybe particularly unusual about my class in high school). She went on to win the One Act Play competition that year as well (do other schools have this?).
Schools in the Twin Cities have a bit of an interesting dynamic, I think, since there are so many private schools. I think these private schools are generally much crueler, but it also leaves schools like mine free from a lot of assholes. The wealthy kids and those extremely talented athletes get filtered out of the general public school population. Also, my class in particular was a bit of an anomaly, I think. We set records in academics for our district but set exactly zero records in athletics.
Of course, none of this means I was happy in high school. I definitely wasn't! But no one was ever mean to me and I never experienced any real exclusionary social dynamics.
My wife's high school experience, though, sounds so much like a terrible teen drama that I thought she was making it up when she first told me about it. Head cheerleader dating the quarterback and ruling over the class with an iron fist - it still sounds made up to me.
Very interesting piece. By virtue (though it probably wasn't virtuous) of my asociality, I missed a big chunk of the high school experience, which I generally don't care about and occasionally regret.
However, a related media/cultural phenomenon which I think is quite unfair is the 'peaked in high school, what a loser' notion. Which, just seems like classism/elitism wrapped up in a veneer of rebelliousness. To avoid an obvious counterargument, this wasn't me. High School wasn't hell, or heaven for me.
The guy who's the captain of the football team, but isn't good enough for state, let alone the pros and is going to go on to have a reasonable blue collar job...yeah, the only time in his life he's going to be widely respected and in charge of anything serious is in high school. I mean, maybe he'll be in charge of his family later on, but the same folks who would disdain him (there's probably an analogous caricature about a woman, but I usually see this in a 'revenge of the nerds' type way about jocks) for this would, rightly, decry that as misogynistic.
People like being respected and (often) like having control over things. Why wouldn't the time they were respected and admired by their peers (and usually adults as well) and were leaders amongst their peers be some of the best times of their lives?
A couple of observations:
First, perhaps it depends on when you attended high school? So many of the movies you highlight were made in about a 20 year span or so. Could it be that this is how Gen X and the later Boomers perceived the whole high school experience because of our cynical worldview? Not being sure how old you are (I'm in my mid-50s, so a very early Gen Xer) I can't speak to where in the generational timeline you fall by my perception is that you may be late Gen X or early Millenial.
Second, isn't exaggerating the real world what most of Hollywood is about (when making non-fantasy or science fiction movies)? Even most of the "based on real events" movies change and manipulate the actual story in order to make it more compelling. The fact is that real life is just too boring. Movies and stories like these are meant to take a relatable reality of life and utilize that to evoke an emotional response. Who is going to respond emotionally to the boring reality that there were cliques in HS but that the membership in those was fluid and overlapped. Sure, there was the occasional fight after school ("meet me behind the gym at 3:30") but we know they were not a daily occurrence (one of my favorite movies exploring the after-school fight theme is "Three O'Clock High" with Casey Siemaszko).
Anyway, just a couple of initial thoughts to your piece, which I don't entirely disagree with. Just looking for reasons.
I think there tends to be a 20 or 30 year delay in portraying this sort of thing, since, with the exception of wunderkinds, the people at the peak of their careers who are in control of making movies and TV at any given moment are reflecting their experiences from a couple of decades prior. So if we see this mainly in ‘80s-‘90s movies, maybe high school was like this in the ‘60s and ‘70s? And the more egalitarian ‘90s dynamic is only starting to appear in things like Never Have I Ever or Booksmart (though with an overlay of contemporary trends and politics to make it feel up to date).
I did consider that and had to edit my comment because I initially pointed to Gen X only. Case in point is John Hughes, probably one of the most prolific filmmakers in the genre. He was born in 1950. But it doesn't seem to explain why his material rang so true to Gen X. His initial foray into the theme was "Sixteen Candles". Once it hit he and others knew he was onto something with the generation these films were geared towards and simply responded in kind.
I have no idea if my experience is more typical than yours, or if neither is very typical, but the popular people in my high school were not in general kind or warm-hearted. They were "cool," and were deemed so largely by each other and because of their participation in sports, especially but not exclusively football. They were cool in middle school, and thus they stayed cool on high school. They didn't go out of their way to be cruel, usually, although they often did in middle school, but they certainly didn't shy away from it, either. I got bullied a fair bit in middle school, but that faded away by high school, I don't know why. So my experience is closer to the movies than it is to yours, but neither is particularly close.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if the whole thing in movies is just because it generates drama, though, and has nothing (or anyway not much) to do with the dynamics of the lives of those writing them. A high school slice of life movie where the popular person is just a good and kind person might work once, but not as an entire genre.
What I notice (myself in the 80s, my kids now) is the kids who are super comfortable with or just oblivious to risks (drinking, sex, driving fast) of all kinds are more popular. They have less anxiety. 100% agree with what FdB pointed out that the nerds and weirdos can be just as mean and clicque-ish and you never see that in these movies. The artsy or goth kids are always the ones who are supposedly the most empathetic and accepting. Total bullshit. Today I think the kids who hyper focus on looking and being different (to broadcast it on social media, of course) are actually the most self-involved, and the most anxious and insecure. I could not believe how mean and awful the marching band and art club type kids were to my own kid. Just complete and utter shallow ass holes.
Nowadays I think Twitter is more like high school, at least in terms of constant petty drama, than actual high school is.
I agree with your post. My high school experience was pretty different from yours, but it is exactly this difference--the range of high school social experiences--that media often fails to capture. (That said, I think teen dramas--any show where 28-year-olds portray 17-year-olds having incredible sex with each other--do focus consistently and positively on the popular kids. They may not be defined as "the popular kids" per se, just unusually beautiful teenagers who party a lot and don't think that much about their social inferiors, but this is consistent with the lived experience of popular kids.)
I think a huge part of the felt variation on this topic is related to your point about popular people being friendly and kind. The popular people at many schools *are* friendly and kind. But I think this varies a lot by school and by individual grade within the school. I remember a school counselor at my high school opining that in my grade specifically, "the leaders are not positive leaders," by which they meant that many of the popular kids were assholes. I was never a victim of bullying myself, but it sucked that the people at my school with the most social power were also the most pointlessly cruel. (Contra the movies you cite, these were primarily the popular boys; the popular girls were mostly nice, although there were plenty of kids who were friendlier and nicer.) It also was not at all true in my high school that it was socially advantageous to be interesting--I remember getting to college and being astonished by how interesting the cool people were, as that had not been true in my prior experience.
Yes, I think different high schools have different cultures. I pulled my teenager out of one High School which was more Mean Girls and now she is in a different public school where the culture is more live and let live and my daughter doesn't notice any obvious popularity status. The two communities are very different - one is more sports focused with purple politics and status quo values and the newer community has a more open-minded vibe. The values of our communities are strongly reflected in our kids.
I’d like to put forth Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever as a great representation that doesn’t lean too heavily on tropes.
Also when I was a sophomore, the most popular guy in school was a football player who was prom king and also performed Brick by Ben Folds in the talent show (including singing) and he spoke to me every single day even though I was an extremely introverted kid at that point.
I agree! It’s a terrific series, and Kaling rightly shows that kids who aren’t in the most popular group don’t spend all their time obsessing about becoming popular. They have plenty of their own concerns, in their own lives. Or, Kaling once said (paraphrasing here), those of us who the media portrays as sidekicks don’t feel like we’re sidekicks. We feel like we’re the main characters in our own stories.
Off the top of my head, Booksmart is not a perfect movie but it is very funny and largely avoids the trope of a rigid social hierarchy.
Mean Girls sucks, the love for that movie is pure millennial nostalgia and nothing more. Clueless, on the other hand, holds up incredibly well, in part due to the genre subversion you point out.
I might have missed your essay on bullying (please link?) but I think the hypothesis is sound. I had a boyfriend in college who talked about how he, and especially his younger sister, were relentlessly bullied for being a vegetarian in middle & high school during the late 80s/ early 90s. It made me laugh because I had high school classmates who were not only vegetarian, but were Jain, which meant they didn't eat any parts of a plant that could cause its death (that at least was my understanding). No one gave a shit. Everyone had enough on their plates that the last thing they had room for was to police what others ate. There might be some mild interest and/or teasing about 'unusual' foods, but it was more curiosity than malice. NB: I went to *very* diverse high schools in NYC. But, so did they.
I didn't use the term "vulnerable," but I did tell my bf that the reason he and his sister were bullied was not because of their food choices - that was just a pretext. Instead, it was because they were putting out some kind of signal that other kids couldn't stand. Most people, especially children, lack the self awareness to understand how they're being perceived by others. This combined with the animal instinct to cull the weak from the group can lead to very ugly acts of bullying.
As for high school portrayals, I also agree with you. None of them are anything like my experiences. Prime example, the most "popular" girl at my high school and the one "all" the guys wanted to date was the valedictorian and was headed to Harvard. I didn't know her, but my impression was that she seemed like a nice person. I also noticed that the kids everyone liked were the nicest, most mature ones. This should be completely obvious, right? But somehow in US media, it's been completely reversed and we're told to believe that the most asshole kids are the most popular. While it's true, that some kids got points for being extra "cool" or "super hot" or "rich" none of those things translated directly to popularity.
I think I must have missed that post as well and a search hasn't turned it up, would also appreciate a link.
Social science backs up your thoughts on peer popularity. Kathryn Wentzel’s work out of University of Maryland has shown a strong relationship among social competence, academic success, and popularity. For a seminal read see James Coleman’s “The Adolescent Society”.
I feel like there’s something slippery going on when you say popular people are usually popular because they’re kind. I look back and can absolutely identify people who were popular because they were kind and inclusive, but the popular *group* was a different idea all together. That group was defined by its exclusion, and the relatively ruthless way they executed that exclusion, including bullying to keep the battle lines clear.
Also, while not a movie, Friday Night Lights the series portrayed almost every single character as nuanced and floating between cliques and interests.
Completely agree. My experiences and my teenager's experiences show me that many popular kids are popular due to being funny. And being funny often meant being ruthless to some and making many others laugh at their expense. Popular people are as varied as anyone else. Some are popular because they are nice, attractive, talented, intelligent, fit, strong, funny, cruel, manipulative, excellent social engineers, wealthy, etc.
As with any social microcosm, some people are going to be cruel and damaged/damaging and they sometimes capture the group dynamic. Association with them may provide a reprieve from being a target for their barbs for awhile, or allow otherwise typical kids a taste of the dark side. One hopes a leader emerges with a strong sense of self and that their "self" is rooted in kindness or at least not-meanness.
Yes this is one type of “popular person” that is out there!