Just watching Dazed and Confused. Did that style of “hazing” actually exist in the US?
With high school students abusing younger kids like that?
Nearly all campuses have banned that sort of hazing for fraternities and all national fraternities have rules that prohibit it. There is hazing, but it’s never anything dangerous or humiliating (e.g., counting the spikes on the fence around the campus, painting the frat house, memorizing the chapters of the fraternity).
There are some off-campus, unaffiliated “fraternities” that do the old-fashioned hazing. A few years ago, one in Plattsburgh, NY, ended up killing one of their pledges. This is rare, though.
I went to H.S. in Texas (Dallas, not D&C’s Austin) during that exact period and while everything else about the movie seems spot on, we didn’t have any of the hazing rituals that seem so pervasive in the movie. Yes, freshmen got razzed a little but it was more good natured teasing than any formal, sanctioned abusive treatment.
The hazing in the movie was not of the college fraternity sort–it was for incoming high school freshmen.
At any rate, during my time (1989), the only hazing-type things I remember is upperclassmen throwing pennies at freshmen but I don’t even remember that being particularly prevalent. Oh, and there were always rumors of upperclassmen trying to sell you “elevator passes” or something like that, but I doubt that was actually done, since everyone knew about that rumor before their first day of high school. Also, referring to freshmen as “bennies.”
Hmm, apparently the penny thing still exists around here.
Dazed & Confused takes place in a high school. There are no fraternities in it.
I went to (regular, public) high school in the mid-90s, much later than the movie timeline. I was in the band, and there was a tradition of tossing all of the band freshmen in the (empty) dumpster on Homecoming night, but it died out while I was still in school. No one did it by the time I was a senior. That was confined to a small group, though. I’m not aware of any hazing that went on outside of that.
In general, not a lot about high school movies resemble my own high school experience.
My wife went through some of the hazing at a girls’ school in the South ('80s). The older girls did not squirt them with condiments or smear them with food, but they yelled at them and made them drop to the floor and “fry like bacon.”
I don’t have an answer to the question, but a young Renee Zellweger pops up several times in that movie, including one close-up as one of the hazers squirting mustard.
I absolutely love the fact that you had to ask this question. It is proof that societal progress is possible.
Yes, and in my school it got pretty violent. (“pink bellies” were the least of it.) It also included getting the young to do mean things to each other - especially boys being horrid to girls. (seducing with a friend/camera in the closet kinds of stuff. People were nearly destroyed by it in some cases. Rumour had it that one father went to jail for what he did to the kdis who took used/took pictures of his daughter. (Should have got a medal IMO.)
I was in high school during that time also. The only thing in the movie I found really accurate was the clothes and hair. Anything resembling “hazing” would have been unorganized and would have been freshmen picking on 7th graders. (Most high schools were 10-12, except in really small communities that had K-8 and 9-12 schools.) The music was inaccurate by omission. The music in the movie got played, but not as much as stuff like Olivia Newton-John, ELO, Bee Gees. In the summer of 76 I particularly remember The Hustle, A 5th of Beethoven, Strange Magic, and *Have You Never Been Mellow * getting played to death.
I’ve been meaning to make this topic. I love Dazed and Confused, but the whole hazing thing seems so ridiculous to me that I have a hard time enjoying it sometimes.
And it was set in the late '70s.
A good question. This was such a dominant theme it made me wonder why people think the fmovie is so good. I assumed this was some sort of Texas thing that I missed in my East coast high school.
I started high school in Texas in 1979. There was some hazing of freshman, usually by sophomores. The only thing I actually saw was a classmate who was restrained by a couple of upperclassman while another smeared lipstick on his face.
The way I remember it there was more “talk” in an urban legend type of way than any actual pervasive hazing. I do remember also that on choir or band trips the seniors would pick a freshman as their “slave” who had to carry their luggage or go get them a soda, etc.
So, yeah, at least in my school there was some hazing, just not as violent.
My HS had an “initiation” back in the 80’s for the sophomores (it was a 3-year junior high and 3-year HS), but it was pretty harmless. It involved being made to kiss the picture of the school mascot in the common area during lunch when everyone was sure to see you doing it.
Gads yes. I tell people that D&C isn’t a documentary, but it’s exactly how I remember that time, even though it takes place in Texas, and I grew up in Va. There were a few minor differences here and there, but I was the brunette kid who gets hit (and buys the beer). My best friend at the time was almost a doppelganger for the blonde kid–even my friend was blonde.
I could take you in my hometown in Va where the arcade was, and the characters in the movie fit the people I knew to a T.
Now, to the hazing: yes, it happened, but IME, it was a little later…the upperclassmen in high school hazed the incoming sophomores (in those days, the grades were 1-6 elementary school, 7-9 junior high, 10-12 high school). I personally wasn’t hazed for whatever reason, but I remember a lot of people who were. At my high school, the ritual was for the guys to get smeared with lipstick. I don’t know, or at least don’t remember, what happened to the girls.
Dazed and Confused might’ve gotten a few details wrong, like I’ve read they used a 1977 (or 1978) car when it takes place in 1976, or something like that, but so what? From what I lived, that movie had everything just about right, from the styles to the field parties, to the cruising.
I never faced any hazing like that when I was in high school (early-mid 80’s). There have been news stories about it though. This 2003 incident from Glenbrook, IL came to mind.
Dang but your posting is a flashback for me! Class of '89 St. Patrick High (Northwest Side all-boys Catholic for non-Chicagoans), elevator passes (although the old alma mater at least HAS an elevator now), and most of all “pennies for the bennies”. Some guys lightly tossed them like coins into a fountain, while others whipped them like a fastball.
Brother Rice, Southwest Side all-boys Catholic high school, Class of '93 here. Not surprising about the similar traditions. Did you call detentions “jugs,” too? (Supposedly, it was short for “Justice Under God” or something like that, but that might be some sort of backronym.)
Not hazing, but when I was in public school one year I had problems with one clique of girls. See, having a few braincells to rub together, and a dislike of football I did not actually get along with them. They figured the bestest thing in the world was to be a cheerleader and screw the football team. Anybody who didnt think like that was weird and target for abuse.
I found out from the little sister of one of them [she liked me as I used to tutor her in french and got her to actually pass in class] that this charming group, 3 of whom I was assigned to room with in the class trip to Washington DC, was planning on stashing a baggie of pot in my suitcase and narking on me.
I decided to not bother letting anybody know, and I ‘got sick’ and passed on going on the trip. Somehow a call got placed to the hotel.:dubious:
Detention for us was “The ALPs” (Alternative Learning Program.)