Is there one single damn movie or show that shows high school in a realistic way?

Cafe Society
1

Yesterday, I started watching Freaks and Geeks for the sole reason that I enjoyed reading a book by its author, Paul Feig, which was lent to me by a friend. The book gave what I found to be a pretty realistic account of someone’s childhood, albeit someone with a completely different experience and outlook from mine, though with the same kind of prescient observations about teenage life. So I thought I’d like Freaks and Geeks. Wrong-o!

The show is unbearable to me because no high school kids are like the kids on the show. And, now that I think of it, it’s almost impossible for me to name one show, or movie, set in an American high school, that is somewhat realistic. The characters are all way over the top. They’re exaggerated stereotypes of what “geeks” and “freaks” are supposed to be like.

That scene at the beginning of Superbad where this “cool” kid tells Jonah Hill that he’s not invited to his party, and then spits right on his shirt? Spits on him? Are you kidding me? I have never seen that kind of open unprovoked hostility in a high school, and I went to high school with some crazy people. I never saw anyone get shoved into a locker, I never saw anyone get a “wedgie” or anything in gym class, and I never saw anyone beat up a smaller, weaker kid. Never. I saw a few fights, real fistfights in the cafeteria between rough-neck farm kids - but never did I see hostile, pointless bullying of some little dork by big, strong jocks.

I’m not just talking about comedies here,p;’[ I’m talking about dramas too, and thrillers and horror movies and every other kind of movie. I just cannot think of a movie or a show set in a high school where the characters seem even remotely like real people. “Ponce de Leon” played by John David Carson in Pretty Maids All in a Row, 1971, is one of the only examples I can think of of a high school student in a movie that actually comes off as a real high school student (and the irony is that in every single other way, that movie is absolutely ridiculously over the top.)

It’s not just the comedies. Donnie Darko? No fucking way. Nobody was like that in high school. Not one person. American Pie? I think it’s a hilarious movie but, NO, real people do not act like that. The Basketball Diaries - no. Zero Day, Elephant, - no. I can’t even think of any others right now.

Is there any show or film which high school kids seem even halfway realistic?

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[QUOTE=Argent Towers
That scene at the beginning of Superbad where this “cool” kid tells Jonah Hill that he’s not invited to his party, and then spits right on his shirt? Spits on him? Are you kidding me? I have never seen that kind of open unprovoked hostility in a high school, and I went to high school with some crazy people. I never saw anyone get shoved into a locker, I never saw anyone get a “wedgie” or anything in gym class, and I never saw anyone beat up a smaller, weaker kid. Never. I saw a few fights, real fistfights in the cafeteria between rough-neck farm kids - but never did I see hostile, pointless bullying of some little dork by big, strong jocks.[/QUOTE]

All I can say is that either you weren’t looking, or I wish I’d gone to your high school. I find Freaks & Geeks to be painfully accurate in its observations.

3

Gee, I came in here to name Freaks and Geeks. I knew lots of kids like the ones in that show. I myself was part Lindsay (the smart part) and part each of the geeks. Mr. S says he was mostly Harris Trinsky.

Hell, the opening scene of the first episode conveys that this show won’t be a “Melrose Place High School” all about the pretty kids and their “made-up” soap-opera lives, but rather about the ones under the bleachers that the popular kids ignore unless they need a punching bag. That was me and the people I knew best. And I liked the glimpses into their home lives that told us a little bit about how they got so screwed up, things that they would never reveal at school.

I guess it’s all about what kind of high school experience you had.

4

The “freaks” on these shows are like a colorful, krazy pack of loveable parodies of what “freaks” are actually like.

If a show wanted to show real “freaks” in high school, or more properly, show the kids who are actually the social zeroes, they would show dour, uninteresting, badly-dressed, and unattractive losers. At any real high school in real life the characters played by James Franco and Jason Segal would be the coolest kids in school. They would mix on a social level with the jocks and the other popular kids.

It’s charisma that determines whether someone will be cool in high school, in my experience, and not social class, or whether you wear a torn jacket.

5

Well, I saw that. All the time. Along with rock throwing. “Flag football” that was actually played as tackle football, where the biggest kids always tackled the smallest. Entire roomfuls of kids ganging up on one kid. Lockers set on fire. Kids hitting each other with chairs. Gangs of big kids chasing a lone little kid. And so on.

6

Ghost World got it, for me. But then my experience was probably different from yours. And everyone else’s. It all depends on perspective. Talk to people you weren’t friends with but who attended the same high school and you’ll find a warped version of history, including, perhaps, your place in the social hierarchy (Remember that episode of 30 Rock where Liz realizes she hadn’t been bullied, she was the bully?). Just because you weren’t getting beat up or getting stoned after school doesn’t mean nobody was.

Of course, Freaks and Geeks is still exaggerated for entertainment’s sake, but I still think it’s believable. High school kids are retarded judges of both character and beauty. I really believe Daniel would have been treated just like that as a manipulative, hot guy who’s a bad influence with little future. Segel’s character wasn’t exactly charming – he was a bit creepy and obsessive. As for the geeks, Sam and Bill are spot on. It’s not like they’re always churning out zingers. They’re weird and mumbly and funny to one another.

7

Glen Ellyn, IL’s Glenbard West High School was used by Fox to represent a typical American high school in its series, Yearbook. Note that it is set in Glen Ellyn, IL, one of the wealthiest of Chicago’s suburbs, and in Dupage County, one of the nation’s wealthiest counties, so living in one of its slums has not protected me from real estate taxes well beyond those of people I know who live in very nice areas.

Where was I? Oh yeah. When I drove through town in my Datsun 510 wagon going to junior college I noted that one student drove an Excalibur. Made the mistake of mentioning to Wife that I regularly picked up a high-school student who was hitchhiking. In my defense she was endangered by hitchhiking in an area loaded, at the time, with serial killers, and I wasn’t one of them. Against me stood that she was cute and I was married. I was more likely to survive an encounter with John Gacy than my wife, so I stopped.

8

If you ignore the convoluted storylines wrenched into unlikely shape for the sake of dramatic television, Grange Hill was a reasonable facsimile of my High School life.

Your kilometreage will undoubtedly vary.

9

I agree with the OP in that my high school experience was not like what is ever shown on TV/movies. In fact, I’ve always thought that a movie based on my high school experience would be something like a (non-violent) ‘Fistful of Dollars’, of sorts.

In all seriousness though, I think ‘Joan of Arcadia’ had a pretty good depiction of high school life as I saw it.

10

Fast Times at Ridgemont High had some elements of high school right for me.

11

People were always getting beaten up, spat one etc etc at my highschool. Superbad was pretty reminiscent of what high school was like for me though. Kind of nailed it.

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Let me guess…the bathroom scene? :smiley:

13

My best friend was smart, chubby and was a compulsive cock-drawer (he’s now a dermatologist). The only difference I guess is that my school wasn’t co-ed, but we had a girls school pretty close by so it hardly made a difference.

14

I’m gonna say Dazed and Confused, which seemed to me a pretty accurate portrayal of high school in the 70s.

15

I will second this since it is what I came in to say. In many ways it was spot on with my experience going to high school in Texas in the late 70’s/early 80’s.

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I don’t watch many high school movies, and haven’t seen either Freaks and Geeks or Superbad, so I can’t speak to the movies as a whole.

But I can say that I was spit on in school more than once. I saw small kids smacked around, and big kids pushed into lockers. I can’t recall any wedgies, but coming out of the shower (we were required to take showers after gym back then), geeks like me were often met with a barrage of “rattails” (wet towels rolled up tight and snapped against naked skin like a whip).

And that wasn’t in some rough inner-city school. It was in a relatively nice part of a relatively nice Colorado town.

17

So, what you’re saying is that the high school movie that most closely fits your experience is Dangerous Minds. Gotcha.

18

Holy fucking shit dude, what kind of school did you go to? Of the three high schools I went attended, two of them were poorest high schools in Bakersfield (one school has horrid race issues, especially from the administration) and I’ve never seen anything even close to that. Every once and a while there’d be a fight, but that was because two kids just didn’t like eachother.

I couldn’t even tell you who “the popular kids” were at any of my schools.

19

Is there one single damn movie or show that shows any field of human endeavor in a realistic way? (And would we really want to watch it if it did?)

20

Nobody got spit on in my high school, but wedgies and other humiliations abounded. The lockers were only half height, thank God, because I’ve seen plenty of movies where the full height lockers with kids shoved in them looked very plausible. I was thrown in a garbage can once during gym class by four of my classmates. Apparently I put up a titanic struggle, because they complained about it and never tried it again, and I bashed my head on the concrete floor at one point, fortunately no blood. But I knew that they had no intention to hurt me, just humiliate me.