A Danish movie critic reviews High School Musical 3

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A Danish movie critic reviews High School Musical 3

I saw the following on DR2's new movie review program the other day and felt simultaniously self-rightious and proud of being Danish, and being not American... I want to share it with you, to hear your views on it, all the while knowing just how self-rightious it sounds to sit over here in "wise old" Europe and judge "angry, immature" USA. I think the following review is very good, and working with pre-teen kids as I do, I have followed the High School Musical craze, as it goes on here in Denmark, so this stuff is certainly on my mind.

As a disclaimer, if you think I'm being condesending and judgemental by wanting to bring this to your attention, know that I have noticed the irony of it myself.

I suspect that many of you regular posters here will agree with the review, but even so, it is a rather scathing critique of American popculture, and coming from someone like me, who is outside of America, and myself a consumer of American culture, it might appear both self-rightiously judgemental and hypocritical, so I hope I don't offend too much.

I've translated the review, but if you want to see it too, you might be able to find it here:

http://www.dr.dk/DR2/premiere/forside.htm

 

A Danish Movie Critic wrote:
What does a youth musical or a youth dance-movie need to be able to do?
Apart from rocking, it needs to underline that success can be measured in many different ways, and it needs to encourage the youth to defy authorities, and to find themselves, and their leather jacket. Do you remember these?:

(A short montage of Grease, Dirty Dancing and Footloose follows)

Not since Grease has there been a movie-musical phenomenon as big as the film I'm about to review. High School Musical 3 got BT (ed: a Danish newspaper) to publish an extra section on it this Friday. Because High School Musical is an international TV, merchandise and movie hit, from Disney, and it's a phenomenon that occupies pre-teens the world over.

(A montage from the movie follows, with the reviewer talking over it).

In the latest installment of High School Musical: number 3, the students are putting up a musical at their school, and meanwhile they are faced with the choice of what they are going to do after their graduation.

I haven't seen number 1 and 2, but with Footloose, Dirty Dancing and even Grease in the back of my mind, High School Musical 3 looks like a propanganda film created by reactionary parents and the American Ministry of Education.
The film is clinically cleansed of loosers and people that stick a little bit out in the crowd, and it is a brilliant example of a pedagogical method of motivation that is based on FEAR.
Fear of defeat, fear of inaddiquasy, fear of humiliation. There is no room for mediocracy or small ambitions, so stand up straight while you are young and in school, and: "allow yourself to be great", as we hear in the movie.

This is the stuff anorechsia and High School massacres are made of.
High School Musical makes me think of what one of the creators of South Park: Matt Stone, has said about the American educational system:

(A clip from Bowling For Columbine follows: it's an interview with Matt Stone)

Matt Stone wrote:
I remember being in 6th grade and I had to take the math test to get into honour's math in 7th grade, and they were like: "Don't screw this up, because if you screw this up you won't get into honour's math in 7th grade and of course, if you don't get into honour's math in 7th grade you won't get into honour's math in 8th grade, and then not in 9th grade, and 10th grade, 11th grade, and then you'll just die poor and lonely."
And that's it, you know what I mean, it's like... you know, you believe in high school and alot of it's kids, but the teacher's and counselors and principals don't help things. They scare you into conforming and doing good in school, by saying: "If you're a looser now, you're gonna be a looser forever"


High School Musical preaches that every single moment is crucial to the rest of one's life, and that is of course a wonderful preasure to perform to place on children and teenagers.
Let's have a look at a couple of quotes, to get a feel for the rethoric in the movie.

In the locker room the coach says:
"make this moment last"

The prom is:
"A night to live forever"
...so I guess you better hope you have a date that evening.

"This is our last chance to get it right", "This is our last chance to make our mark", "History will know who we are"
and so on and so on...

So it is these student's last chance to get themselves written into history, and their about... 17 years old...
Kids can be whatever they want to be, as long the result of their efforts is some form of absolute greatness, the movie tells us.

The cast is smartly put together, so that the biggest, most readily digestable minorities in American society are represented: blacks and hispanics. It is basically un-controversial, thoroughly tested minorities.

There are no Chinese people and (Asian) Indians, the kind of weird minorities that use ginger in their cooking.
One can of course choose to shrug over a movie like High School Musical, and think: "boy how campy and funny in a Beverly Hills 90210 kinda way", but I don't think it is inconsequetial what we tell our kids.

I'm not so worried about Danish kids being exposed to High School Musical, because we have a powerful tradition of children's TV and movies, to create a counterweight, and to tell the kids that it is completely acceptable to fail.

But I get nervous on behalf of American kids, because if this is the expression of a dominating American pedagogy, then it is not the last time they have seen a High School student express his sense of defeat with a automatic rifle.
Because there is of course more than one way to get yourself written into history.

(The review closes with a clip from Gus Van Sant's movie: "Elephant&quotEye-wink

In a High School cafeteria a boy walks around writting in a notebook. A girl notices.
Girl: "What are you writing?"
Boy: "Oh this? This is my plan"
Girl: "For what?"
Boy: "oh you'll see"

 


At the end of the program the reviewer gives High School Musical 1 of 6 stars, and says:
"High School Musical 3 gets one star for remnants of enthusiasm in the Dancing scenes, and for it's references to better films."

 

So what do you guys think?

Have any of you seen it?

Any of you have kids that are into it?

Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin


EXC
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Americans like to pride

Americans like to pride ourselves on being independent, free and without social classes. Yet high school here is nothing but a place of conformity and clicks. I think that most teachers and administrators are very immature people, it's like they never grow up so they just hang out and teach high school their whole life.

 

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen


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LOL! I refuse to watch it so

LOL! I refuse to watch it so i see i am refusing on some descent grounds. I don't know EXE some of my best teachers in high school, I don't think ever grew up completely but they actually were the ones that the parents would get pissed off with when their child failed. Alot of the Teachers that grew-up were the ones who tried to make it so that everyone passed and no one would fail...


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Never forgot the Breakfast

Never forgot the Breakfast Club where the really cool goth gets converted into some bimbo who was far less interesting post change


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While I agree that High

While I agree that High School Musical 3 is likely terrible, I completely disagree with the reviewer's contention that, 'this is the stuff high school massacres are made of'. Frankly, while like like South Park as much as anyone, I also don't consider Matt Stone to be an expert on teen psychology and am very tired of hearing him quoted as though he is one. Sticking out tongue

Go look-up Columbine. Even a cursory Google investigation reveals that the anecdotes and opinions of students and faculty at the school are just emotion-fuelled drivel; a very thorough forensic analysis was done by the authorities, and the overwhelming consensus was that Eric Harris was a clinical sociopath - and certainly not an outcast.

Go look-up the VT shootings. Cho was mentally unstable, with a number of likely anxiety disorders.

 

I do wish people would stop pretending to be experts on subject matter they just happen to feel strongly about, as though their gut instincts might carry with it some worthy insights.

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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The way US schools tend to

The way US schools tend to do little or nothing about bullying could easily be a cause for that sort of thing happening. I know if I had access to a gun back then there's a good chance I'd have made the news (though it would have only been certain people, not random students. )

Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team


Kevin R Brown
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...And are you a mentally

...And are you a mentally healthy person, Matt? Sticking out tongue

I'm not trying to disenfranchise bullying or the victims of it; I'm saying that insisting on it as the primary mechanism behind school shootings, even long after the gunmen have been identified as psychopaths & paranoid delusionals, is ridiculous.

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


MattShizzle
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That's only 2 of them though

That's only 2 of them though - what about the rest? Could Dylan Klebold have been more easily influenced do to this? It's a fact a person can only take so much before something happens.

Matt Shizzle has been banned from the Rational Response Squad website. This event shall provide an atmosphere more conducive to social growth. - Majority of the mod team