Cedric Washington
English 1100
November 29 2013
Social differences
It's amazing to see how high school can really define a person's character. In four years a 13 or 14 year old can mature into a young adult sculpted by their peers who they've acquainted themselves with. In high school teenagers form peers and those peers align themselves with more peers who have a commonality and this group of friends is referred to as a clique. In some cases a person may bounce from clique to clique throughout high school but it is no doubt that your clique defines you. Much like in the real word you are judged based on the people you choose to surround yourself worth. There are cliques in high schools all across the globe but what makes every school unique is the types of cliques and the variations in the number of cliques. The example is never clearer than in the difference in both Napoleon Dynamite and 10 things I hate about you. Both movies explain the life of teenagers struggling to grasp the social aspect of high school but their environments were very different. The core differences between the two movies were the level of cliques, the clique’s fondness of each other, and social perception.
In both movies there are both the inner circle and the outer circle. This meaning there is both a group where socially they are recognized as the popular crowd that everyone knows and envy’s and the outer crowd would be the group of people who are not as popular and are looked down upon by the inner crowd. The similarity ends there because the variance in social cliques was far different. In Napoleon Dynamite you have a high school social setting most like the economic classes in today's society. There was an upper class, which included Summer Wheatley and her group of friends, and then there was the middle class, and finally the lower class which included Napoleon, Pedro, and Deb. In Napoleon Dynamite there a vast amount of the middle class and smaller amounts of the popular and “nerdy“. In difference to that in 10 Things I Hate About You where more variety of inner and outer circles had. There was a clique for almost everyone in the school. The qualities about a person instantly placed them into one group or another at this high school. Unlike in the Napoleon Dynamite film where the middle class were all placed in a clump. To quote a lot few lines from 10 Things I Hate About You as Michael explains the cliques to Cameron, “Over there you’ve got your basic beautiful people Now listen. Unless they talk to you first, don’t bother...... To the left we have the coffee..... these delusional are the White Rasta. Uh, they’re big Marley fans. They think they're black......" - Michael “Wait. Let me guess. Cowboys?" -Cameron....... "These are your future MBAs- We're all Ivy League accepted. Yuppie greed is back, my friend." - Michael. In 10 Things I Hate About You its more based around the idea that everyone must be unique but also belong. There is still an inner circle, being Blanca Stratford’s and Joey Donners group of friends. As well an outer circle, being Cameron, Michael, Kat, and Patrick.
The variety of lack thereof in social placement not just a key difference between the two movies, likeability between social groups was also a difference. Which in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You there is a quite remember able scene where a party in thrown. The party was the most intriguing because not only was the inner circle like Bianca and Joey there but also Kate, Patrick, Cameron, and Michael. It was a social gathering which included both inner and outer circles and a mix of the other cliques from the previous quote above. At one point Kat gets on a table and begins to dance at which point a gang of people watching begin to cheer and praise her. Yet in the Napoleon Dynamite movie at one of their social conventions, the prom, Napoleon is left alone sitting while his date leaves to hang out with her friends. One strong fact that can be made is that Napoleon would have been dateless to the prom had the girl’s mother not forced her to go with Napoleon. Which furthers the point home that the social likeability is very thin when it comes to the inner and outer circles? Another comparison that can be made is that in 10 Things I Hate About You Cameron asked the most popular girl to prom, Bianca, and was rewarded with a yes. As for Pedro who asked Summer and predictably rejected with a note. These examples show that when it comes to coming together between social classes it is more present in 10 Things I Hate About You than it is in Napoleon Dynamite.
This difference in behavior between social classes in both movies directly correlates to the way each school perceives each other and how much they care to keep up an image. The expectations for a high school student were different for each school. The concept on being judged on what you wore and who you hung out with was more of a factor in 10 Things I Hate About You than it was in Napoleon Dynamite. In 10 Things I Hate About You pep dressed in an entire that would show loyalty to the cliques that they were included in. Such as the cowboy clique dressed up in western attire. Also some of the people with in the movie cared about what other thought and behaved in manners that would please others. Which brings up the scene in the movie where Bianca is begging her dad to let her go to the party because if she doesn't go she believes everyone will think less of her and her social status will drop. This is not the case for Pedro in Napoleon Dynamite who is unfazed by how he may be perceived by the rest of the school and runs for president against Summer. Another example of the difference between social acceptances in both movies is when Napoleon gets on stage and preforms a dance in front of the school for his friend Pedro and is not discouraged at all by the thoughts of his class mates. This proves that in Napoleon Dynamite the characters are less driven by the perception of their classmate than the characters in 10 Things I Hate About You.
These movies both provide excellent examples of social issues in high school. Even though both of these movies are completely different in how social standards are kept at both schools. Similar to homonyms these schools in each movie may seem to have the same social concept but they are very different. For one there are a wider variety of social groups in 10 Things I Hate About You than there are in Napoleon Dynamite. Another difference is that in Napoleon Dynamite the characters from different social classes are Lot less fund of each other than in 10 Things I Hate About You. Last but not least the envy for social acceptance is far greater in 10 Things I Hate About You. For though these movies grasp the same concept of social life in high school they still have reached different details on how students think and behave.
