I came in to say Fast Times at Ridgement High. I recall it as being very similar to my own late '70s high school years. The book, too, was excellent.
What’s not realistic?
I remember in my high school, my best friends were this troubled billionare’s son who was kind of a dick, this other guy who was really athletic and dated the same girl off and on for like ten years, this other guy who everyone thought was a dork for some reason, and a really charismatic guy who was always pulling pranks and getting away with all kinds of crap. We mostly dated this group of girls who were all pretty hot and always dressed like they were going to a cocktail party for whatever reason. The one girl was kind of a bitch to everyone and the others just sort of followed her around. Everyone now and then one of us would date some transfer student or some teacher’s wife or the principal’s daughter but they tended to only stick around for a few days and then we never saw them again. We pretty much dealt with the same issues every other kid dealt with - teen pregnancy, drugs, alchohol, divorce, illegal gambling, trying to bring two girls to prom at once, dad arrested for embesslement, undercover student narc officers, trying to repair a car you accidently totaled before anyone found out, girlfriend shooting your brother the abusive boyfriend, winning the local karate tournament and applying to colleges.
All of that sort changed when my dad got transferred to a job in the inner city. Those kids were a bunch of badasses, but then we got this substitute teacher who really got through to us with his unorthodox brand of tough love. It actually inspired me to take my step dance troope all the way to state championships.
It sounds like your high school experience actually would have made a great movie. The lack of realism I’m talking about refers to the frequent one-dimensionality of high school age characters, unrealistically-stratified levels of “Jock, Nerd, Freak” or whatever, and generally characters either possessing way too high a degree of self-awareness, or none of it at all.
For once I’d like to see a movie set in a high school where the characters actually seem like real high school students. Maybe there just aren’t enough good young actors. That could be a big part of it.
███** SIT NOMINE DIGNA **███
Yes, it is basically Columbine. I won’t say he nailed the two shooters psychologically at all, but the way he portrayed the rest of the kids in the high school pretty much mirrored my own high school experience.
I think you dismissed Freaks and Geeks but they also seemed pretty realistic to me. Especially the Geeks. They just looked like the kinds of kids who would be on the fringes.
And the Freaks were good looking, a lot of them, but at the same time they were kind of made up to look grungy. They wore the same clothes, there wasn’t a lot of fancy hair. And the lighting wasn’t flattering to anyone in particular–it all felt very fluorescent. Daniel in particular looked just really burned out and greasy looking. I could see why a girl like Lindsay might have a crush on him for a while while a girl like Millie or Vicky would see him as gross or weird.
Same with My So Called Life. A lot of good looking kids–Jordan Catalano and Ricky Vasquez, for example. But I mean, I could really see Ricky as being kind of an outcast just based on how he dresses. And even though Angela is gorgeous, Claire Danes really nailed the awkward/unsure of herself vibe and it’s clear that Angela herself doesn’t usually think of herself as all that attractive.
Another vote for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, mostly because it was set in the 80s when I went to high school. I still love that movie because it always brings back vivid memories of similar experiences and situations I witnessed.
My second nomination is for Heathers (which I think is far better than Mean Girls), but only the less murder-y bits. The high school archetypical characters pretty much nailed the various social strata in high school in the 80s.
You obviously did not go to high school in Southern California from the 50s to the 80s.
I have been shoved into lockers, and I have shoved people into lockers.
Wedgies, Pink Bellies, Indian Burns, Dutch Rubs, Titty Twisters and Purple Nurples? Giver and Getter.
I have been bullied by the strong and have bullied the weak. Not proud of it, but I did.
High school was preparation for life. There IS a pecking order. There ARE alpha males you have to challenge or serve or kill. You WILL meet bullies as an adult. The HOT chicks will think you are a dork. There will be people who don’t like you just because you are breathing. Yes, the football players get the cheerleaders. But…
In the end, geeks (like me) get hot chicks, proving that time is the great equalizer.
Which is one of the things that was realistic about Dazed and Confused. There were no cliched cliques, and to the extent that there were social divisions (which of course there were) there was interaction among the various social groups.
Save that several of the principals (Judge Reinhold, Richard Romanus, Brian Backer) were clearly too old to be high school students, I’d have to agree that it portrayed the experience very well. I knew a couple of students and a geograpy/history teacher who fit the Spicoli/Mr. Hand role to a T.
The scene where Tammy Metzler campaigns for class president under the promise to abolish pep rallies was brilliant.
Stranger
So it seems the question has been answered, and the answer is YES for some and NO for others. Argent Towers rejects the broad archetypes as frequently portrayed in such movies, while others connect with the same. Everyone had different experiences (duh!), and all of our memories are flawed and colored by our distance from high school. Even our interactions with current high schoolers are abstractions colored by our own attitudes and persuasions.
In some cases it simply doesn’t serve the story to add depth to characters when frequently subscribed-to archetypes will do.
Another vote for Napeloen Dynamite.
But really every high school is different, different people, different attitudes. At some high schools semi-violent hazing of 9th graders is common, I had never heard of that at my high school.
I think if a show or movie accurately depicted high school it would be a very boring show.
I’ve got to second “Election.”
While the central story itself is a bit farfetched, the characters were all remarkably realistic - indeed, it’s one of the things that makes the movie work. The self-decided popular girl and would-be class president, Tracey Flick, is an overachiever who doesn’t really seem to have a lot of friends. The jock isn’t the most popular kid in school, and the rebellious girl isn’t the least popular. The supporting and bit players all seem hghly realistic and are played by actual teens. The election itself is treated as a joke by most students, also a realistic point.
Damn. You were a terrible student.
“But I prefer noogies.”
Here’s a 4th for Dazed and Confused. The cars, music, stoners, jocks, parties, teachers, this was a page right out of my Dallas highschool yearbook.
Everybody in high school knew somebody like Wooderson. Matthew McConaughey should have won an Academy Award for that movie.
Yeah, but did you stand outside a girl’s bedroom window in a trenchcoat and sneakers after being jilted by her with Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” blasting out of the boom box held over your head? 'Cause the high school experience just isn’t complete without that. And, of course, all the great advice you get from your friends:
Denny: Man, all you gotta do is find a girl that looks just like her, nail her, and then dump her, man. Get her of your mind.
Mark: Your only mistake is that you didn’t dump her first. Diane Court is a show pony. You need a stallion, my friend. Walk with us and you walk tall.
Luke: Bitches, man.
Stranger
I think Mean Girls has some realism in it.
Freaks and Geeks, by far. wedgies, check. Beaten up for no reason, check. (there was a guy who would stop by everyday while I was waiting for the bus to go home just to repeatedly punch me.) shoved into lockers, check. (If the lockers were big enough to fit in, I guarantee I’d have been locked in one.) Spit on, check. Cliques, check. Heirarchy among the geeks, ayup. But good times among friends in the same “level” of the Heirarchy.
My affluent suburban high school:
Live chickens were released in the school as a senior prank.
A student hooked up a repelling aparatus to descend an interior two story stairwell between classes. He made it down half a story before the poorly constructed device unravelled, dropping him down to the ground on his head (he lived).
Oh, and a pipe bomb exploded 100 feet from me, taking out the bathroom wall, drinking fountain, and lockers across the way.
I’m pretty sure if any of these showed up on a show about high school life, they’d raise eyebrows as unrealistic.
Ouch. One of the local HS around here used to have a senior pranks day but it got canned back in the '80s (when I was at HS) after someone blew up the Principal’s desk with some homemade ammonium triiodide (?) (or at least blew a hole in it) . Fortunately no-one was hurt. Nothing like that at my affluent boy’s-only HS… well maybe a rubbish bin set on fire by the delayed reaction of chlorine and brake-fluid… but I wouldn’t know anything about that.
All US series about HS life look a bit odd from my NZ pov… but we still had popular kids (at my HS the sporting ones: the rugby 1st XV, and the rowing 8 in particular), who also got made prefects (joy!) and the un-athletic and geeky ones like yours truly (D&D player, wargamer, etc). And kids picked on for being weird… but mostly the groups ignored and avoided each other… unless they couldn’t.
I don’t know how it works in US schools, but here on rainy days the kids would be confined to their “home” room during the lunch-break, and if there was no teacher present it could end up as a scene from Lord of the Flies.
The worst experience for me was (this one-time in HS…) on one of those wet days ending up in a moderately serious fight with one of the rowers, the upshot of which was that he pinned me to a blackboard and patted chalk onto my face with a blackboard eraser which his friend (and co-rower) then shaved off me with a fold out straight razor. (Yes, it got reported to the school authorities and I’m still amazed that neither of them – or at least the guy with the razor – suffered serious punishment).