Most of us know the movie High School Musical. For those few who don’t know this movie, it is about a group of happy, singing, and dancing teens in high school. Many of the characters are dating, but the movie focuses on Gabriela and Troy’s relationship. Troy is the star basketball player and his dad is the coach. Gabriela becomes the star actress. After Gabriela signs up to audition for a part in the school musical, so does Troy. That is where their relationship begins. This movie made many young children excited about high school. However, is high school actually anything like the movie?
Opinions on the subject varied among Logan students. Senior Kelli Gutierrez thought the movie High School Musical was different from actual high school.
“It’s almost close to reality. If you take away the musical part and change the movie a little,” Gutierrez said. “Then, I think it would be pretty close to how it actually is. Maybe throw in a bully or two or a depressed kid. I think that’s pretty close to how it actually is.”
In actual high school, there are more than just stereotypes. There are bullies, people in the background, or the kids who are trying to “fit in”. We all have those types of students who put others down to make themselves look or feel better. The movie doesn’t really display this. Yes, there is Sharpay, the bully antagonist not the wrinkled dog. However, she isn’t exactly the type of bully Kelli was talking about. If the movie had a couple of depressed students in it, it’d be pretty close to how actual high school is. Let’s be honest, not everyone in high school is that happy. Even those students who are often happy have bad days. High school is a complex social environment.
“I feel like in the movie, there’s one main conflict, and when they resolved it, everything was happy again,” Freshman Lauryn Librero said. “Actual high school is not like that. It is never really resolved because there’s always something else you have to look out for.”
High School Musical made actual high school seem better than it really is. Everyone in the cafeteria doesn’t just get up and start dancing and singing the same song. Cute random guys do not join karaoke with you. The basketball team does not dance better than the cheerleaders, and in the middle of a baseball game, players do not start singing and dancing.
