High school movies ruined our expectations

OPINION

Mary Pogosian

Chronicle Reporter

Growing up, students watched movies about characters in high school, and they raised our expectations for high school way too high. Every high school movie portrays it as a magical place where you make a lot of friends and fall in love. However, many other high school movies portray it as a bad place where bullying occurs.

The main movie our generation grew up watching was “High School Musical”, in which we saw a bunch of friends pursue their aspirations and interests of music and theater. In certain ways, kids at Hollywood High could relate to this film, but not everything that they imagined would happen, actually happened. 

“I would have to say that our school is most likely like “High School Musical” because I am in the Performing Arts Magnet. I would always watch this movie when I was younger, which also persuaded me to join PAM,” said sophomore PAM student, Genesis Saldana. 

“Mean Girls” is another film with a high school setting. The narrative of this movie may reflect our school because some friend groups may experience drama. However, towards the end of the film, all of the characters went a little too far with how they treated each other. I’m glad our school doesn’t have the same amount of drama as the characters in Mean Girls.

“10 Things I Hate About You” is another film that takes place in high school. This film made us believe that we would be popular and go to fun parties every weekend, yet the majority of students stay in their rooms completing their homework assignments. 

“The Breakfast Club” is an 80s film that portrays high school in a more realistic manner. This film follows five high school students as they come to know one another better. They discover that they have a lot in common when it comes to their high school experience. 

“I would relate our school mostly to “The Breakfast Club” because I’ve met a lot of students who are like the characters. The friends group seems to also seem like mine because we all like to have fun and have conversations,” said sophomore TCA student, Emily Surenyan. 

“Clueless” is yet another high school film that has boosted our expectations for high school to high levels. This is mainly because of the aesthetic and style in this movie. When we watched this movie before high school, we thought we were going to be wearing nice outfits with cute pink skirts when in reality most students come to school with grey sweats and hoodies.

7 thoughts on “High school movies ruined our expectations

  1. I can agree with the idea portrayed in this story. Although my experience in High School is very, very short so far, it is already way different than I expected

  2. I definitely agree, as a current freshman I really thought everyone will be dressing up like Cher in clueless. Unfortunately, that surely didn’t happen.

  3. In many ways I totally agree with what was said about how movies have a huge impact in the way they portray High school for many but I also have to disagree with that all though movies show that high school is amazing and fun or just full of that famous bully, if you look around you can find elements like that in your high school years when not stressing over work.

  4. In my opinion, I think that is article is true because from what I see in movies is somewhat different from what high school actually is.

  5. So true. Many movies made us believe high school was going to be easy and super fun.

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