My Haiku

Virginia Tech Terror

Gunshots in my hall.
Sound then silence--RA hell
It could happen here.

High School Musical: A Reversal Essay

This is an assignment that I did for my Teaching Composition class, but I think it applies nicely to the media blog premise for this class.

The Truth About High School Musical

“Miss Laura, Miss Laura! Can you really speak Spanish?” a breathless Olivia Schwalb gasped at me. “I should hope so Olivia, since I’m your Spanish teacher,” I replied looking at the enthusiastic seven-year-old with my eyebrows raised. “Yes! I told Jackson you could tell me what it means!” she laughed as she strutted towards her eight-year-old brother Jackson, her every move dripping with presumed superiority. I turned to the summer camp counselor next to me curiously “I wonder what that’s all about?” “Sounds like you might have a little translation work on your hands…I’m sure you’ll find out soon,” was the laughing reply.

Sure enough, as soon as the first-graders were safely settled into their seats in my Spanish/Language Arts classroom Olivia pulled a DVD out of her sequin-covered purse and the class let out a collective gasp. Then: “I love that movie!” “Troy Bolton is my hero” “Can we watch it Miss Laura?” “Yeah, can we watch it, please?” “Please, pretty please!” I sighed. It was going to be nearly impossible to get them to calm down when they were in the same room with the Remix Edition of Disney’s High School Musical. “Okay, Olivia, tell me what you’ve got there” I demanded as soon as I could quiet the class down long enough to get a word in. “Well Miss Laura, see, there’s Spanish in this movie and I just thought we could watch the Spanish parts for practice. You can tell us what it means and we can practice it.” “Yeah, yeah, Spanish!” was the general class reply. At times like these, I was profoundly glad that I could design my own curriculum and I wasn’t teaching for a test; I was teaching at an academic-based summer camp, and if I wanted to let my kids design their own learning experiences, I could. So, I slipped the DVD into the player, handed Olivia the remote with a request to find the “Spanish part” quickly, and prepared to be disgusted by the low quality and mindless content of the pre-teen film I was about to “translate.”

I’d been hearing about High School Musical for months. My little sister watched it on the Disney Channel the night they premiered it, but I was in the middle of my first year of college at the time, and I had much more important things to think about than my sister’s gushing recommendations of some pre-teen Disney Channel Original Movie. I was above such things. When I came home to work for the summer, my sister listened to the soundtrack incessantly, and tried to convince me to rent the movie and watch it with her. I was annoyed by the whiney voices and shallow lyrics of the stupid songs (I had no context to put them in), disgusted with my thirteen-year-old sister’s jump onto the bandwagon, and most definitely adamant against the idea of exposing myself to the latest pre-high school Disney phenomenon. I was convinced that the adult world, of which I considered myself a member, was not to be infiltrated by a pre-teen flick like High School Musical.

When Olivia found the scene she was looking for and let the movie play, two over-the-top characters danced onto the screen and the classroom was transformed. I watched that whole class of seven-year-olds singing along, swaying to the music subconsciously. “Adults don’t like Disney Channel Originally Movies,” I warned myself. At first I was determined to find fault with the show, even if I was only watching a small clip. I couldn’t. Sure, it was corny, it was over-the-top, but it was catchy, it was fun, and it was wholesome. I was converted. High School Musical was no ordinary pre-teen waste of time, it was a funny, wholesome show with catchy music, fun dancing, and themes that apply to all ages, pre-teen and beyond. I found that you don’t have to be a “tween” to be a High School Musical fan.

The popular website Wikipedia describes High School Musical’s plot as “a modern retelling of Romeo & Juliet…a story of two high school juniors from rival cliques: Troy Bolton, captain of the basketball team, and Gabriella Montez, a beautiful and shy transfer student who excels in math and science.” When Troy and Gabriella decide to break the norm and try out for lead parts in the school musical, their friends try everything they can think of to discourage them. In the end, Troy and Gabriella “resist peer pressure and rivalry, inspiring others along the way not to ‘stick to the status quo’.”

The basic plotline goes as far back as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Again and again this plotline has made appearances onscreen and onstage. West Side Story and Grease both follow the same pattern, and they were/are wildly popular musicals. Why shouldn’t High School Musical join the ranks of movies that expand on the universal themes of love and acceptance? In a CBC news article, John Calhoun, the famous Broadway director commissioned by Disney to bring the TV movie to the live stage, compared High School Musical to the similar-but-sketchy musical Grease, and explained the universal charm of this “bubble-gum version” of the story: ““In Grease, the message is: you have to be a greaser to be cool. Sandy [the heroine] has to lose her real self to become cool. And at this show, there’s a wonderful message that you can just be yourself and that’s cool enough; whether you’re Troy the basketball star, or the brainiac like Gabriella, it’s OK to be whatever you are. It’s a wonderful message.” Cliques, stereotypes, and unfair judgments are not unique to high school. Peer pressure to be someone you are not is a universal occurrence. Do seven-year-olds fully understand this concept? **Probably not. Do adults relate and identify with this concept? Probably. Thus, High School Musical is a film for all ages—kids can love it for it’s fun representation of high school life and adults can love it for the be yourself theme.

In June 2006, a news website called Times Online posted an article about the High School Muscial phenomenon stating, “The story might seem hackneyed to anyone over 20, but High School Musical has caught the imagination of an army of American kids and is about to sweep the world.” They assume that you have to be younger than twenty years old to really enjoy Disney Channel’s latest huge hit, but I think people of all ages can relate to the movie, appreciate it, and downright enjoy it. **You don’t have to be in love with the actors, you don’t have to belong to a fan club, and you don’t have to wear t-shirts with Zac Efron’s (the actor who plays Troy Bolton in the movie) head prominently displayed on your chest and stomach. You do have to enjoy catchy music and fun choreography, look past the corny exterior to the real message, and give the movie a chance.

Natalie Neilson is almost twenty-one years old, and she loves High School Musical. “It just makes me smile,” she says. “They say it’s like Romeo and Juliet, but I say you don’t have to be that serious to get the same message across. It’s okay to be fun and colorful and exciting and it’s okay to like a movie that was made for kids. You get what you want out of it.” Patty Keyser is almost fifty-five years old, and she loves High School Musical. “I’m not afraid to let my future grandkids watch this. I’ll watch it with them! It’s fun and happy and just darn good for everyone who’s watching.” We all like the movie for slightly different reasons, but one thing’s for sure: “we” does not just include the tweens of America.

High School Musical characters belt out, “This could be the start of something new, it feels so right to be here with you, oh-oh-oh, and now looking in your eyes, I feel in my heart—the start of something new.” These are not the normal lyrics you’d here booming from a college student’s car at a stoplight, but chances are pretty high that you’d hear them streaming from my car’s speakers on any given summer afternoon. Me and every mini-van full of pre-teen/early teenage girls in the nation. At least that’s what I like to say jokingly when people ask me about my choice of music. But the truth is, people of all ages can enjoy a good viewing of Disney’s High School Musical.

Sources:

“High School Musical.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 10 March 2008. 14 March 2008 .

Keyser, Patty. Personal Interview. 15 March 2008

Morrow, Martin. “Teen Spirit: High School Musical Plants it’s Upbeat Message Onstage.” CBC News Online. 28 August 2007. 12 March 2008.

Nielson, Natalie. Personal Interview. 15 March 2008.

Rushe, Dominic. “Disney Hits High Note with the Tweenagers.” Times Online. 4 June 2006. 12 March 2008.

Educational Context: This is the text from the assignment description sheet in case you need to put the essay in context.

Surprising Reversal Essay (Informative)

We have had some practice with closed-form writing (five-paragraph essays). This essay will build on that in some ways (mostly by being thesis-based) and move away from it in others (mostly by moving the thesis away from the beginning of the paper and by using literary elements).

What topic do you know more about than most people know? This assignment will ask you to use your own personal experiences, observation, or research to enlarge your reader’s view of that topic in a surprising/interesting way. Imagine an audience of general readers who hold a common view. In a general way, this assignment requires you to pose a question about your topic, provide the commonly accepted answer to the question, and then give your own surprising answer. The actual paper will be more subtle than that, but that should give you the basic idea.

Although this assignment looks like it might be trying to change the reader’s mind, your writing will actually be informative rather than persuasive since it both poses a different kind of question and also considers a different reader stance than persuasion does. In this case, your question (or topic) should not be controversial, as is typical with persuasive writing, with its strong rational arguments for all sides. Also, in persuasive writing, we imagine a resistant reader who may argue back; however, in informative prose, we can imagine a more trusting reader willing to learn from your experiences or research.

In this paper, you should have an introduction that engages the reader and provides necessary background or context. Do not put your thesis early in the paper; instead, delay it until after you have explained the common, expected understanding of your topic. This delay in presenting the thesis creates a slightly open form, and the structure of the paper overall helps add tension to your thesis.

Carrie Underwood’s “Think Before he Cheats”

T-Shirt Alert

Context: Some of my classmates in English teaching classes have some interesting t-shirts that have caught my eye recently.

Descriptions: The first t-shirt I noticed was an unremarkable beige-ish color, but on the front in fancy letters were the words, “Shakespeare Hates Your Emo Poems.” The other shirt was a white, self-created, iron-on t-shirt sporting the heading “A Tribute to America’s Great Women.” Underneath the heading were black and white sketch-effect head-and-shoulders shots of Paris Hilton, Brittney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and other American female celebrities who are constantly making the top headlines.

Analysis: First, the Shakespeare shirt. For one thing, the shirt can make the wearer seem like a poetry elitist. It can send the message that Shakespeare is far superior to anything that can be written by angsty teenagers. However, in my opinion, several of Shakespeare’s poems are just as “emo” as today’s angsty teenage love poems. To be fair, in Shakespeare’s day the language was different, and I’m not trying to undermine his poetical genius. I’m just saying that “emo” is short for “emotional” and to be perfectly honest, Shakespeare’s poetry is about as emotional as poetry can be. So really, the shirt is kind of a contradiction by nature. As for the other t-shirt, the most interesting thing about this t-shirt to me is the fact that it was created by a 15-year-old. This girl clearly has a sense of humor and a cynical view of America’s priorities. She saw what the media portrays as America’s most interesting, noteworthy women, and she chose to point out her skepticism about these choices on a t-shirt with the label “A Tribute to America’s Great Women.” She’s reflecting on the fact that instead of choosing great female scientists, philosophers, or contributors to world peace, America idolizes celebrities.

Educational Context: First of all, t-shirts as media is an interesting concept that could lead to a great discussion about how what we wear and the messages we choose to advertise on our clothing help people determine who we are. We could guess the personality traits of the people who wore the t-shirts and then compare our guesses to the actual personality traits of those people. This could lead to a great evaluation of how the messages we advertise reflect on who we are.

Scary Mary: Re-cut Fun!

People Magazine: Hooray for Pretty Pictures!

Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend”: A Peek into Punk Popularity