Not Like the Movies

How Movies Shape Perception of High School

Kiran Joe is a freshman here at Ingraham High School. Joe has been here for 7 months now yet the difference between her and the class of 2024, senior Lauren Colquhoun is impressive. Every time someone switches schools, a change of scenery happens and there’s new expectations. At Ingraham, these expectations are set through the media: Instagram, Movies, TikTok, TV Shows, etc. Yet every expectation is brought to the big scale. By senior year, the love of high school has blossomed past the myths of movies because of the love for friends, the maturity of social hierarchy, and how everyone is viewed. 

To start, movies create a total myth of high school and even when they try to solve the myth, new ones are created. Looking at the popular Disney Channel movie, High School Musical, there is such noticeable unrealism in the movie. The most obvious is the breakouts into song. Even though Sharpay Evans, Ryan Evans, Troy Bolton, and Gabriella Montez are all in the theatre program, there are not Ingraham theatre kids break into song (even if they might want to). Look at the song Stick to the Status Quo, where it makes fun of all the stereotypes, while still putting everyone into one. People must be a baker, nerd, drunk, jock, or gamer. While the song says that changing stereotypes or being multiple is allowed, Disney is still not encouraging people to be themselves, and just be “normal.” This continues to enforce a social hierarchy. Troy and Gabriella fall in love at the greenhouse on top of their school, so take every observation with a grain of salt.

Let’s set Joe’s story up. She came from Hamilton Middle School, where from 6th grade orientation to middle school graduation, everything was wiped out after the first year, a big developmental year, was cancelled due to Covid-19. Middle School is a way to set up iltimate success in high school. Yet even for a High Schooler unaffected by Covid, no one will ever truly know what to expect in High School, especially as the culture continues to evolve. Yet for every class of Ingraham, the expectation from movies have seemed to stay the same. “Before going to High School I genuinely thought there would be more cliques and groups but at the same time social ‘levels,’” Joe stated. Younis Radoui also called out the extremity of bullying: “It made me think there was a lot more bullying than there is.” Similar to Joe, Greyson Parry mentioned his idea of a social hierarchy, “I think I expected high school to be a lot more partying or like vicious social hierarchy and like…” All these students came in fresh off Covid, where all that happened was movie and show watching. So, when Colquhoun came into Ingraham, Covid was in full effect. However, “all the drama that they portrayed and the extreme stereotypes of cliques,” this quote seems to show the same. Even as everything changed before High School, Colquhoun’s perspective never changed. This shows how everyone starts from somewhere, but it’s where they end up after that’s important. 

Per Alanna Wunsch from IC4ML, “The glorification of drugs and alcohol is another expectation that is often highlighted in teen dramas. While it is true that many teenagers do experiment with drinking and sometimes drugs in their high school years, it is also very normal for teens to abstain from that behavior.” Everything that can be taken from Colquhoun, Parry, Radoui, and Joe is all personal. So, taking Wunsch’s words can give a view from an expert. As shown, Wunsch calls out drugs and while there definitely is drug activity at Ingraham, it is nowhere near as much as shown in a show like Euphoria. Wunsch also calls out the lack of parents in High School, “The [movies] just seem to be forever absent and leaving their children at home alone for months at a time.” There is some truth to the movies. Since as kids get closer to 18, they start to feel more independent, but per NCES, “4 percent or less [students] lived in households with only nonparental guardians,” which disproves the movies claims that they don’t need parental figures. Wunsch mentions more examples including the magical aspects set up in High School movies. Leading all to the final point, movies will never align with actual High School life. Yet by senior year, the love of high school has blossomed past the myths of movies because of the love for friends, the maturity of social hierarchy, and how everyone is viewed.

Although as pointed out by Parry and Joe, there are bias in these interviews. Since not everyone in each class is interviewed, this article has a very limited point of view. Parry called out how his life is different from a senior friend, “if you asked like [redacted] he’d be like oh yeah homework is easy and then party every weekend.” Joe also pointed this out but in a broader concept, which just shows how much a freshman can pick up before third quarter, “Ingraham is just weird and it really depends on your view of High School.” Overall, this adds a sense of confusion since the full story will never be found and instead Parry and Joe called out the obvious.​

After all students start High School, the workings are learned: seniors humble freshman, the vending machines steal money, IB classes create stress, etc. However, as a class grows from 14-year-old freshmen into 18-year-old seniors, the group starts to close in as everyone realizes the limited time they have left. Colquhoun hinted at this through The Perks of Being a Wallflower, directed by Stephen Chbosky, “it shows just how huge of a difference friends can make.” Colquhoun appreciates her friends for the way they interact, and how they can all help each other. For all interviewees, this seemed to be the hardest question for them, yet for different reasons. To summarize Noah Droker, a young junior (born July 22nd, 2007): he’s never watched a teen film and doesn’t relate to any. Even trying to find an answer from Radoui was a struggle. After saying he related to The Karate Kid most, his reasoning was a little flawed, “It’s just a very cool movie.” Meanwhile, Joe couldn’t even think of a high school movie but instead a popular Nickelodeon show, “I have watched Victorious but I can’t relate to it…” All the quotes lead to the lack of interest from underclassmen in High School movies. This could be from generation or the part of the life they’re in. To look at Parry, he found a movie that he related to after a bit of processing. That movie was 10 Things I Hate About You, the hit movie from 1999. “I relate to the main character she’s like really independent but is not as good at like emotional things.” As most adults would say, junior year is the hardest for kids because of the college pressure for grades, not to mention the IB diploma at Ingraham. The interest in solo through the movies might just be from personality, but there is something to say through the correlation of junior year and interest in being the boss. To sum it up, as High School continues, not only do people start to appreciate their friends, but also the movies made for them. 

If a graph was made for the correlation between age and amount of High School movies watched, these interviews seem to prove that it would be a strong, linear relationship. Then when you compare age to High School stereotypes believed in, you’ll see the peak in junior year. This can be proven with the responses to this question: What stereotypes are true or represented in High School? Joe started off with talking about fairly normal stereotypes listing “drugs, alcohol, bad decisions, nerds, weirdos, jocks, mean people.” Radoui continues with an even vaguer response, “there are distinct separate groups, like popular, band and other stuff.” Yet once Parry answered, it was clear that he had truly thought about his response. While he didn’t call out every stereotypes, the ones that he did, he gave specific reasons why, here are a few: “theater people are a bunch of drama queens… ….IB students while playing a sport so it’s a bunch of smart jocks… …‘popular’ people (more just like widely known people)… …’creepy ultra nerds that think they know everything’… …cross country kids are like a sub genre of jock.” After all other classes responded, the expectation was for Colquhoun to expand even more. Yet instead, she gave the most interesting response, “I think almost none of the stereotypes about high school are true. I think High School is quite different from the movies in that regard.” This all shows the maturity of the class of 2024. This could be a case of senioritis, but Colquhoun seems to be willing to appreciate her peers. This adds the final point onto how seniors blossomed past movie myths, they matured past a social hierarchy and at least Colquhoun views everyone as almost equals.