High School Movies and Media

There’s a reason media around high school seems to be so prevalent. Falling in love for the first time, watching your friends change and grow, experiencing the epic highs and lows of high School football. Adolescents is cinematic. It’s a universal experience that connects all of us regardless of generation or age.

Every era from the 60s to the 80s to the 00s has great, iconic depictions that capture what it means to be young in that era. But I’ve begun to notice that there’s nothing on the same level for Gen-Z. Why is it that so much teenage media today doesn’t feel authentic?

HOW THE UNCINEMATIC NATURE OF DIGITAL COMMUNICATION MAKES IT HARDER TO CONNECT GENERATION TO GENERATION

OR

WHY PHONES MAKE MOVIES HARD

THE DIGITAL ASPECT OF GEN-Z LIFE MAKES IT HARDER TO DEPICT THEM ACCURATELY

You couldn’t make Seinfeld today.

And not for the reasons you think. If you spend any time on the Seinfeld subreddit about once a month somebody posts about how if you think about it, actually almost all of the conflict in the episodes could be voided entirely with cellphones. Sitcoms are a genre that’s almost entirely based around miscommunications and misexpectations. The ubiquity of cell-phones changed the way that sitcom situations could be portrayed. So what was the solution that sitcoms came up with to get around it?

Mostly by ignoring it.

Look at an average episode of How I Met Your Mother or the Office or Parks and Rec — or any of the sitcoms that were popular and being made after the ubiquity of cellphones. None of the characters spend significant time on their phones.

There are exceptions of course, take the HIMYM episode about looking new people up online, or the Modern Family episode that takes place entirely on the screen - but these are exceptions rather than the rule.

Generally, episode to episode, sitcoms still deal with rushing to the auditorium at the last minute to stop the big thing; getting stuck in somebody’s closet without them knowing; a gaff that involves two people showing up to the party in the same outfit.

And why? Because it makes for better TV. It’s more exciting. It’s more cinematic. The audience doesn’t care that maybe they could call somebody else For sitcoms, dancing around phones is completely understandable. The genre isn’t about recreating reality or even capturing it, it’s escapism. I think a lot of sitcoms are almost an analogue for like a Shakespearean farce. Nobody believes Sebastian and Viola are truly identical but it doesn’t matter because that’s not what the story is about. (And someday I’ll make a video about how annoying all of you are when it’s like “um actually if you think about it all of the characters in your favorite sitcom actually are bad people. Like yeah, wait til you find out real people also don’t face the same direction at all times. You want a sitcom about a bunch of people who are too busy with work to hang out with their friends?”)

So if depicting phones doesn’t matter for sitcomswhat about the genres where reality is a little more important?

WHAT HIGH SCHOOL MEDIA GETS WRONG TODAY

Dating has changed dramatically since the invention of smart phones, and these changes have really accelerated since the pandemic. 60% of Americans now meet their partners on dating apps. The average American teenager spends eight hours a day on their phone. The way that we talk and communicate and love is changing at a breakneck pace, and it’s not really getting captured on screen in an accurate way.

Take Euphoria for example. It’s a show about high schoolers, filled with relationships, breakups, emotional turmoil, — but almost all of these interactions happen in person. Which, probably doesn’t ring true for most people in high school. How many of us have been out with our friends, faking a smile, while fighting with our boyfriend or girlfriend under the table.

You’d be surprised how much social media and snapchat has changed the adolescent courting ritual. Streaks, best friends lists, liking instagram stories, getting blocked, unblocked, re-followed, double texted, being left on read- all of these are plays within the larger game of dating — and traditional media hasn’t really found a way to depict that.

Film and television excel in visual and auditory storytelling — movement, space, and expression. Confined boxes on phone screens don’t play to those strengths. The medium is about a small frown or a shadow in the back or watching someone walk across the courtyard. It’s not good at capturing what it feels like to send somebody a vulnerable message and then you see the three dots show up saying they’re typing only for it to disappear. Or what it feels like to be taken off a close friends story. But if you’ve been 15 in the last ten years you’ve probably felt that. And if you’ve been 15 in the last ten years that moment probably feels cinematic, it feels important. But it doesn’t come across like that visually.

That’s why — in media about young people — we’re caught in a faux 2000s version of reality where technology exists in the background instead of in the forefront. Bullying on screen still looks like being shoved against a locker instead of finding out that all of your friends are in a group chat without you — or hearing that you showed up on someone’s private story and they’re all laughing at you.

And sure, a lot of teenage shows like Euphoria or Outer Banks aren’t realistic or even trying to be. The high school I attended didn’t have anyone who looked like Jacob Elrodi, Sarah Cameron, or Hunter Schafer — but I think the inability to capture some of the ways we interact with each other is affecting our ability to empathize with each other.

Roger Ebert famously said that “Movies are the great empathy making machine.” They allow us to see the world through someone else’s eyes and they can help us bridge generational divides. We all live in increasingly different realities. The America your grandma sees on Facebook is different from the one your Mom sees on Instagram and you see on TikTok. But how can we connect with each other when even the way we fall in love with each other is foreign.

When my Dad was a teenager he had to call girls and might have his Mom accidentally on the line, or have to call and ask someone’s Dad to see if Amy was there — technological challenges I don’t have to deal with. But I can understand it because I’ve seen jokes about it on Growing Pains or on other TV shows. What can I point to to express to my parents what it means to get the golden heart for the first time on Snapchat? Or what it means to lose it? When she starts sharing her location with you? When she stops?

Just because it’s uncinematic doesn’t mean that the way Gen-Z experiences relationships isn’t romantic. Waking up to a good morning message for the first time is romantic. Having her set you as her home screen is romantic. Sitting next to someone as your thighs touch for the first time and she scrolls through ever photo in her camera roll — and yeah, its a lot of pictures of her dog, and she’s skipping through segments because there are a lot of photos with her and an ex-boyfriend — but that’s romantic too because it’s what actually happens. And nobody is earnestly depicting it.

I think it’s hard to capture Gen-Z on film. Because we’re all engaging in it every moment of every day, culture moves really quickly now. And movies take a long time to make. By the time something shows up on the screen it feels inauthentic.

And while Wendy’s tries to sell you on how friendly it is, and Lockheed Martin on how progressive it is, anything other than legitimate authenticity feels like pandering.

Maybe it’s only a matter of time until some Gen’s age into more senior production roles — but maybe it’s not possible to capture the digital age in a non-digital format. Maybe the best depictions of modern romance or post post post modern romance or whatever is is we’re doing here, have to be through the primary format we all engage with. Short form video.

Creatively we’re still dealing with cave paintings when it comes to storytelling in short form video. I think the way that it operates as collage is fantastic at capturing feeling, but I don’t think it’s great at expressing ideas or long form experiences yet. But I’m excited to see what’s coming, as people start engaging with it as an actual meaningful form of artistic expression. Maybe you can’t express the world in landscape when we all engage with it in portrait.