When TV Meets Reality, What’s the Truth?
Rochell Fulmer
September 3, 2010
Filed under A & E, Opinions and Views
Stereotypical high school is full of nerds, jocks, jerks, preps, homosexuals, not-so-nice girls, cheerleaders, druggies, gangsters, artsy kids, band geeks, wanna- bes, emos, and outsiders. Let’s not forget the pregnancies, the drugs, and the parties that ruin peoples’ lives. There’s also the wimpy kids stuffed in trashcans and, of course, the cat fights. Mean Girls lays this out on the table.
Sound familiar? It should. This is how high schools are portrayed on television and movies. Entertainment media presents teenagers in high school as sex-craving, popularity-seeking, pill-popping brats. Is this honestly how high school is?
According to junior Rick Basey, it is. “Cliché’s are cliché’s for a reason: Because they are true.”
It seems so. In a lunch room, people sit with their reflections at one table and completely ignore the people who are not like themselves. In class rooms without assigned seating, the same thing occurs. Basey also says, “High school is just used as a reason to see your friends.”
The media often shows high school as a social gathering more than a place to receive education. Teachers often appear to not care or be involved with their students. In Pretty Little Liars, a teacher even has a relationship with a student. The Secret Life of an American Teenager warns teenagers of how life could be when engaging in sexual activities. Yet, that is all the show consists of. High school involves much more than sex.
The Hard Times of RJ Berger is every nerds life-long dream: getting recognized by the most popular girl in school is something exciting. Yet, it only happens on television.
Movies, books, and television shows could never grasp the full reality of actual high school because, “It is too complex. On television, everything happens to one group of people,” junior Rebecca Rudisill thinks.
Senior Alisha Bohman agrees with Rebecca, “I think the media sees high school as sort of a battle ground such as jocks vs nerds, smart girls against mean girls. I think they over publicise the things that are so small.”
High school, and any school, consists of more than a single group of people. Ten or twelve people do not form a school and could never portray real-life high school.
Rudisill finishes with, “In the real world, everyone has a story. And as long as everyone has a story, art will never match reality.”
Does this look like real high school to you?
