After a few days of mourning, allow me to reflect on John Hughes, one of the most criminally under-appreciated producers, a man who polarized filmmakers from the last 20 years. What made John Hughes so great was his ability to write a realistic teen movie. I will admit that I love teen movies and have seen almost all of them. But many of them do a TERRIBLE job of depicting what high school is really like. The jocks and cheerleaders rule the school and the entire world revolves around these seemingly perfect kids. The guy always gets the girl, class never exists, and everyone comes to some profound realization at the extravaganza that is prom.
But is high school really the plastics in “Mean Girls” ridiculing the student body by chronicling their flaws in a burn book? Is it really Preston Meyers carrying a pathetic letter around for four years before finally presenting it to Amanda Beckett, and without ever meeting, the two fall passionately in love in “Can’t Hardly Wait?” Is it really this status-obsessed, image-driven environment that all the movies paint it as? Or is this just what the movies make us think high school is?
Why do I have such cynicism towards the teen movie? Why am I so passionate about something as trivial as the elements and stereotypes presented in teen movies? Perhaps I have too much time on my hands. I have seen way too many teen movies in my time. It was not until I lived the life of a high school student that I saw just how silly teen movies really are compared to the reality of the daily grind. Every teen movie seems to be the same thing. They share the same plot twists, their characters come to the same realizations (that beauty is not skin deep, that social status doesn’t matter, blah blah blah) – and they even play the same corny songs over the credits. These illustrations are what I based my beliefs on the social aspects of high school on.
What I learned though, is that high school is not jocks and cheerleaders. It is not freaks and geeks. Prom is not some epic life-changing experience. Students do not break into random song and dance in the middle of geometry. Teachers actually teach. The skewed world of the teen movie where we all fit a distinct mold and where the guy always gets the girl is not reality. These are not accurate descriptions of high school. Teen movies see high school students in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.
John Hughes did not boil them down to their lowest-common-denominator. For that, we should be eternally grateful.
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