High School Confidential - Pretty in Pink and Footloose

After reading David Denby’s “High School. Confidential” I watched two different movies from the 80’s to see if they could relate since they are both “high school” movies. The two movies that I watched were “Pretty in Pink” and “Footloose”. While watching these movies, I was looking for something in particular: stereotypes in high school. Here’s what I found:



Just like “High School Confidential”, “Pretty in Pink” had the stereotypical outsider female: a girl who lost her mother, who is middle-class, doesn't follow fashion norms, who is awkward, and is an artist. This character would be Andie. They also had the mean girls that according to the reading were: blonde with big hair, usually flipped in a swirl, she's tall, she follows the fashion norm, she usually upper class, and rude. In “Pretty in Pink” this character would be Benny Hanson. Then the reading spoke about the stereotypical jock and defined him as a guy who is usually a football player, is the most attractive guy in school, pulls pranks, and doesn't do well in his classes. “Pretty in Pink” had a guy similar to that, minus the fact that he doesn't participate in sports, and he is Steff McKee. According to “High School Confidential”, the jock and the blonde are dating. This would be true in “Pretty in Pink” if Steff McKee was a jock, he's just a high-class male who parties, who is rude, who is a flirt, and doesn't care about a true relationship with a female. Then when Denby started talking about the outsider male, a guy who stutters or giggles a lot, the friend of the female outsider, has an undeveloped body, and is brilliant but preoccupied. Duckie from “Pretty in Pink” came to mind.
   Overall, this movie follows high school stereotypes even though it’s an old movie. For my school, high school stereotypes are close to/ nonexistent, I cannot speak for other schools, though. My school is also very small, so I think that it may be harder to distinguish an exact high school stereotype like the movie showed. The movie also tells you something about the filmmaker according to Denby. He said, “My guess is that these films arise from remembered hurts which then get recast in symbolic form.” So, in “Pretty in Pink” where Andie’s mother isn't present, the filmmaker probably had an absent mother as well, then made the movie with an artistic girl that has an absent mother become the girl that ends up getting the guy she wants and having a happy ending. To try to either make up for the filmmaker’s absent mother or maybe they just came up with a random plot and went along with what they wanted.



The second movie that I watched was “Footloose.” This movie was different because it didn't really show high school stereotypes. “Footloose” had the new guy from Chicago, Ren, that wanted to abolish the law against music and dancing. The main girl was the reverend’s daughter, Ariel Moore, who didn't want the other teenagers to think that she was the reverend’s daughter. In order to do that, she didn't act like the perfect angel Rev. Moore thought she was. She had a boyfriend, Chuck, who acted like the top dog. He wanted to challenge Ren to a game sort of like chicken but with the two boys driving tractors towards each other to see who will jump off first. The characters in this movie kind of resemble people today, but not completely. I say this in the sense that we have people that are the children of reverends or persists but the children act up the most, we have the teens that are very reckful and almost get into accidents that could kill themselves or other people, we have the teens that don't do anything but silently watch, and we have the ones that join the reckful ones but quit halfway through. For the movie relating to the filmmakers, at the moment, I cannot see how this movie can relate unless the filmmakers parents prohibited them from music and dancing when they were young.