just musing

Hollywood loves to sell us this idealic, black and white vision of high school. The groups always need to be clearly defined, seperated, and maybe one character, the protagonist most likely, will be realistic and capable of navigating between them. Real life is course not like this, but somehow it has begun to conform to the image we've been fed. My guess is the '80's had alot to do with this. Anyway, I think most people who went to high school in the late 90's (or early 2000's, or whtvr we call them. infact, blog post on that subject soon....) can simply think of cheerleading. In hollywoodland, cheerleaders are the top of the food chain, the popular, hot girls, always parading around in their uniforms, snidley looking down their noses at the lesser students, those who can't make the squad or toss around a pig skin in some silly homoerotic wargame. In the real world, at least in the north east, cheerleading is generally for the unpopular girls, who gravitate towards it, as far as I can tell, in hopes that it will make them popular, granting them the power girls on tv and in the movies have. I've noticed a male equivalent to this trend. (I hesitate in employing gender binary and making such generalizations, but unfortunaly gender is still a prevalent and ubiquitous demarcation line. More on this later too, I suppose. But I've observed over the years many unpopular highschool age boys, 'uncool' almost unarguably, who have gravitated towards metal, usually the worst kinds, for similar reasons. The rebel sell, again. The whole rise of 'emo' and the alternative press/fuse crap has made it worse I think, as the verieties of metal which seem to make these kids seem cooler have gotten worse.

On a related note, I personally can never just skim the surface of a subject I'm interested in without feeling inauthentic, and thus i require a commitment most people are unwhilling to make. I buy too much music.... But look at this guy www.scaruffi.com I'm not that bad. Although, sadly perhaps, I aspire to be like him. Not a bad role-model, eh?