Stop Trying to Make Fetch Happen: The Elusive Nature of the Accurate High School Movie

Teenagers are often depicted as living in a world of polar opposites. You’re in or you’re out, you’re cute or you’re smart, you’re creative or you’re academic–rarely do we find a portrayal of young adult life that is fluid or multifaceted. This may be due to the way teenagers’ brains work, where largely inconsequential things can feel life-or-death, but it seems unlikely that this limiting myth is entirely created by teens’ own psyche. So where is this external messaging coming from? One potential source is the infamous “high school movie,” a genre beloved by some and detested by others. But why does the high school movie hold so many in thrall, and what effects does it actually have on teen life? To further investigate, The Barefoot Times spoke with current Sequoyah community members about their opinions on this cinematic category. 

Loella Kleiner ’27 shared her thoughts on polarization in high school movies, both in terms of the content and its target audience. “It goes kind of two ways: either being really amazing, and like, ‘We're gonna sing, and we're going to dance, and it's really fun, and I love it so much!’” Kleiner observed, citing the High School Musical franchise as an example. “Or it’s really bad and everyone gets bullied.” Kleiner believes these opposing subgenres within the “high school movie” are created for specific reasons as well–namely, who’s watching these movies. “Honestly, I think that [the target audiences are] younger grades, like middle school and elementary school, because they’re trying to show us what high school is like.” She also suggested that some of these films are made for adults nostalgic for their high school years–after all, Mean Girls (The Musical Movie) was released in January of 2024, supplying a dose of early-2000s familiarity for millennials who obsessed over the original 20 years ago. Though not fundamentally opposed to the genre, Kleiner expressed frustration at the lack of representation around mental health in high school films, as well as the one-sided nature of the content. High school movies “often only show one side of things,” she says. “They'll show the bully or the person being bullied and just say, ‘these are two very separate people.’” She noted that a better high school movie would directly address topics such as anxiety and depression that teens deal with on a daily basis, as well as depicting the teenage experience as more multifaceted. And no singing and dancing–for Kleiner, that’s a nonstarter. 

Harper Gowen ’26 also disapproves of singing and dancing, but is fed up with the high school movie genre as a whole. She noted these films are “good entertainment, but they're not good movies…primarily because of the unrealistic situations [they] portray.” Like Kleiner, Gowen expressed frustration with the intense social hierarchy communicated in many high school movies and the stereotypical depiction of kids as either mini-dictators or nerdy martyrs sacrificed on the altar of Ivy League acceptance. But Gowen recommended caution when these movies try to mix genres (High School Musical, again), calling their efforts unoriginal and corny. A trope Gowen personally despises is “popular male lead meets loser female, and when she takes off her glasses, she's suddenly gorgeous and glowing and everyone is, like, ‘Oh my god, where did this girl come from?’” She also called out high school movies for the pressure they apply to high school viewers who see a protagonist receiving straight As and wonder why they’re not that smart–it’s possible this pressure is inadvertent, but it’s notable nevertheless. Unlike Kleiner, Gowen believes that high schoolers are generally the target audience for high school movies, therefore causing depictions of academic and social stress to hit them more pointedly. 

Kate Schafer, Sequoyah’s high school biology teacher, had additional input on this topic from the perspective of the often-villainized educator. She remarked, “I don't know if it's amusing or sad that teachers are almost universally portrayed in a negative way and as being unsympathetic to students.” She cited Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as an undeniable example, though describing her fondness for the movie and others of the John Hughes era. Schafer also discussed the genre’s tendency to show only the shiniest parts of high school, disregarding the humdrum, and suggested this can cause insecurity for a high schooler wondering why nothing so interesting ever happens in their day-to-day life. However, she disagreed with Kleiner’s assessment of high school movies being targeted towards middle-schoolers and nostalgic adults, instead saying high school movies are for kids in high school. She cited the benefits of depicting the transitory years of teenage life, saying high school movies can “explore the angst and challenge of going from being a kid to being an adult. That is an important and monumental thing that happens during those years, and that's probably why so many movies are made about the high school experience.” 

The often-exaggerated world depicted in high school movies hasn’t gone totally unexamined at Sequoyah. Two years ago, Tingri Monahan ’24 gave a Talking Leaf titled “The American High School Movie: A Look Back on Feudal Society,” where she examines the high school movie genre through a capitalist lens. She argues that in our capitalist society, high school movies embody a feudalistic spirit, where everyone is assigned an unchanging role—the nerd, the jock, the Heather—similar to the stereotypical narratives remarked upon by Schafer and Kleiner. “The Prom Queens,” Monahan writes, “are the supreme monarchy of the high school system… the Jocks resemble the warrior class… the Nerds are not hopeless failures, they’re just succeeding in the wrong economy.” But eventually, the nerds transcend this social hierarchy through hard work and dedication, therefore marking the transition to an industrious capitalist society. So Monahan argues the propagation of these stereotypes is not only harmful on an individual level—who is shown in these movies and who is disregarded?—but on a more societal level: these films further a portrayal of high school as a microcosm only escapable by the ceaseless work ethic valued so much in modern-day America. 

No matter the intentions of individual high school movies, Sequoyans seem to realize the narrative they unconsciously perpetuate: your value is fixed and dependent on social standing, and there’s only one side to every story. And though recognition of these tropes is important, perhaps a more fundamental change in the high school movie genre must be introduced. Curbing the unrealistically pink portrayals of this integral part of teenage life would go a long way towards empowering teens to see high school as the difficult— but fleeting—time that it is. After all, to quote Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”