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Honestly why the heck did movies in the '80s do nothing but make me absolutely slasher film level terrified of going to high school?
Because your parents' generation thought it was hilarious that your school was turning into a prison.
They really, really did didn't they? My Dad was a teacher and did barely fuck all to reassure me high school would be alright, while I'm talking to him about a TIME magazine article about how we've reached peak bullying and it's scarring children for life. This moment a week before I begin high school.
It didn't go well, not because I was bullied but more likely becsuse my fear response / emotional reactivity had grown massive.
The bullying had leveled off by the time I got to high school. All the really traumatic shit happened in Jr. High.
There was a really specific reason why bullying got a lot better in my high school - I went to Frankfurt American High School in Germany and the fall of the Soviet Union caused the Drawdown, the removal of a lot of US troops from Europe. 9th grade, lots of kids, plenty of bullying, 10th grade and on, less kids, much less bullying.
Wow! American army brats were bullies there? đ«Ą
Oh yes, I was bullied for a few years. Thank god the internet wasn't a thing yet!
Ouch. đźâđš
I remember there was the show called root of all evil, where two people would get together and debate over which of two things was the greater evil facing the world. I caught the pilot episode in was turned off immediately, as they we're debating between American Idol and High School.
Well American Idol is just a blip on pop culture that people really only remember because of various parodies of Simon Cowell...
Meanwhile everyone who went to my high school, know somebody who was abused by faculty so hard that they attempted suicide. And in some circles, I am that friend.
So when American Idol won the debate and was considered the greater evil, I never saw an episode of the show again, because I was convinced that the judge was an idiot or they were just going with whatever Society considered the bigger punching bag at the time.
My dad actually liked the show, and felt that they had made the right call claiming that American Idol had ruined the music industry by elevating pop music over Rock music. And while that is true with rock becoming more of an underground genre and pop is the new standard music, not only is American Idol more a symptom of that than a Cause...
But we will always have Rock music, it's not like pre-existing rock musicians transitioned over to pop, or that rock groups don't still exist... I mean sure we don't have 90s Hard Rock anymore, it's not a sound that people generally go for, but I can say the same thing about every decade, music is constantly evolving as per society's taste.
The countless people who take their own lives because they just can't handle the abuse, most of them children, can never be replaced.
My dad isn't a terrible person, and I don't think he would make this call today if we talked about the show again, but it really shows the generational divide.
He thought of high school as a necessary evil that just happens you up and prepares you for the real world, because that's what everyone thought of the suffering of teenagers going to high school. It was just commonly accepted that standing up to your bullies is what made you a man or that by bullying someone else you were just asserting dominance.
Amongst my generation, we were a a bit less likely to view life through the lens of some '80s movie where you punch Biff Tannen across the face and win the girl. Why? I guess in the '80s they didn't know just how bad abuse could be, maybe they didn't take Mental Health seriously...
But I got out of high school in 2008 ready to put that part of my life behind me, and just let my life carry on, maybe move out of this town and off to better things. Anyway to make a long story short we entered a recession, and the lower classes never really recovered from that.
Anyone else wants to play armchair historian and try to figure this out? Be my guest.