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Reasons Why High School Plots Are Played Out

Having not been a horror movie junkie in all my preadolescent days of living, I’ve always opted for teen romance comedies often centred around school and the social life of teenagers throughout the years. I don’t know what made the ninety minute mucus so appealing apart from me wishing that I fell in love with a someone who bumped me in the halls and caused my 12 page Macbeth essay that I bullshitted the night before to scatter across the marble floors. It was just seeing the divided groups, how they interacted, and relating to the characters’ feelings that put the lime in my tea.

Now having managed to survive for 17 years, I’ve come to realize that it is a load of cinematic crap, and I cringe at the thought of me believing that that was what high school was like as a young pre-teen. Face it, we’ve all been fooled, but I personally wished that I hadn’t been in the first place.

There is just so much wrong with films like Mean Girls, High School Musical, the D.U.F.F., The Clique, and classics like Can’t Buy Me Love, and The Breakfast Club. You’ve got more high school hierarchy and stigmas shown in films like these than you can count with your left toe. Now, I am not saying that these movies did not attempt to show that these social barriers can and must be broken, but they did a pretty good job of convincing my 12 year old self that they still exist. Here are my thoughts.

LABELS: Not everyone labels themselves and it’s mad how everyone was put into one social group in teen films and left to die there with nothing but the smell of cherry lip balm and fries. These films portray that one must be confined to one construct, therefore behavior, and any mere thought of breaching out of the societal norm would be a social disruption. If I told you that I could define my whole self in one word, I’d be lying. Life is about trying new things, shedding your cocoon, and persistently metamorphosing. So to sell the view that you’re only supposed to be goth and like heavy metal, or jock and not like musical theatre, or brainy and have no friends, is cheap. We are all entitled to like what we like, because we were not born with a step by step manual. We came to wing it.

HOMEWORK: Why is it that students in movies don’t have as much homework as me? Every time I even begin to breathe, I’ve got an assignment due.

RELATIONSHIPS: The relationships in movies always start too fast, and you can almost predict how it will end. Someone takes someone’s parking space, they hate each other, and do the horizontal tango by scene 3. I’m over it. In real life, someone’s eye would’ve gotten ripped out.

STIGMAS: Every blonde is not dumb, I’m friends with some pretty happy jocks, and everyone who wears rubber boots and red flannels are not juvenile delinquents who light their cigarettes. The world is not like that, and I don’t think it ever was. Just because someone identifies as an athlete does not necessarily impose that they are more brawn than brain. We can’t stigmatize the notions, and stereotypes implied by these ways of living.

WHY IS IT THAT THE NOT SO POPULAR GIRL HAS TO FALL FOR THE JOCK: It drives me insane how many movies depict this unattractive nerd (who is secretly hot) who falls in love with a jock (who by the way does not notice her until A. they magically get paired for a science report or B. she plucks her eyebrows, wears a corset and darkens her tear line with charcoal.) It’s unfair that it’s always the girl who has to conform to the jock’s standard just so that he doesn’t taint the image he built. Not everyone wants nor has to conform to the jock’s standard of beauty and why do they have to fall in love with the jock anyway? I’m sure my girl Gabriella could’ve found a just as good looking smarty on the scholastics decathlon team instead of dealing with Troy treating her like crud, because she wasn’t Troy’s socially accepted definition of a girl worthy to be called his (I LOVE YOU ZAC EFRON).

Yes, I am an advocate of theatre and film being means of expressing what reality fails to, but I’m tired of the cliche mean girl-geek-jock-cafeteria food-high school plots. It’s time for something fresh, exciting, new and relatable. I want to see a gay quarterback who loves writing and listens to tame impala. I want to see a table of athletic ballerinas who enjoy hair and makeup. Make movies that reflect society now. Not everyone has to fall in love. Show us.

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