A lot of time has passed since the year high schools were founded in the US, and now schools are completely different: popular kids, nerds and parties, that’s what movies always made us believe high school was going to be.
Every kid graduating from middle school cannot wait to experience the time of their lives. And not only them, people from all over the world dream of being teenagers in America, that’s why it is the country with the most foreign students.
This is a list of the top 3 movies about high school:
- Grease: No words needed to explain why this movie is in the first place. Known all over the world, Grease, with its music, fashion and the incredible actors Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta, was the beginning of the high school rush, making everyone believe they could experience the same feelings felt while watching it.
- High School Musical: Early 2000s and Disney at its peak, people were crazy about this trilogy of movies. Troy and Gabriella’s love, born between the walls of a high school, made every teenager’s heart beat faster than ever. The theme songs were so iconic that most of the people born between 1990 and 2010 know every single one of them.
- Ten things I hate about you: Emotional, but still fun, “Ten things I hate about you”, is another cult movie that if you haven’t watched yet, you can’t miss out. Main character Kat Stratford, with her strong and smart personality, added a fun touch to the plot. First released in 1999, it is finding a whole new life among gen-z.
Movies like this set high standards for our expectations. This thinned the line between movie and reality, sometimes making us mistake one for the other.
For instance, how many girls really go to school dressed up as if they’re going to a party, breaking a hundred different dress codes, hoping to find their Peter Kavinsky (from “To all the boys I’ve loved before”)?
Actually you’d be surprised to find out that in my first week of school here I’ve seen more girls with cute summer dresses, than girls with slippers.
Who would have thought?
My Italian friends were being too naive when they told me that I would soon acquire the “American style,” aka: pajamas at school.
However, I have to admit it, there’s still a major part of the population who meet those standards: one of the main pieces of evidence being that on the anatomy lab quiz there was a statement about people who cannot wear sandals or any shoes that don’t cover toes while doing projects.
In Italy you wouldn’t even have to make it a rule! People hate feet.
The good thing about American high schools though is definitely the diversity of people, popular boys and girls, sport or band kids, nerds… the list goes on infinitely.
Everyone has a place in their own little world.
However, what movies tend to not show is that this diversity doesn’t lie on appearance as much as it actually does on every student’s variety of interests. Of course on screen, we’re used to watching a more stereotypical version of high schoolers.
Luckily, when I first came here, I wasn’t surrounded by Sharpay Evans or Regina George type of girls, but I only found genuine and kind people, willing to help me if I needed to.
American teenage movies are in part surly an exaggerated version of what happens in the reality; nevertheless something they accurately display are football games: the emotions I felt during the first home game cannot be completely captured by words.
I realized I was actually living my dream and my eyes couldn’t believe what they were seeing, almost as if a movie was being played in front of my irises.
Legend has it that in the end American high schools do not hide as many skeletons in the closet as one might imagine; sometimes they’re true to on screen representations, but most of the times they’re even better.
Fun fact if you’re a “High School Musical” passionate: every time a class is about to finish and kids won’t stop looking at the clock, I can hear in my head a subtle voice saying “What time is it? Summer time!” (I hope you get the reference).
