This film was severely suffering from a lack of diversity and a lack of originality. None of the students seemed to have unique stories, and when their lives were presented in such a tired narrative format, it just got...boring. The animated sequences were bizarre and pulled the viewers out of the storyline. Her choice of filming "a nerd, a jock, a rebel, and a queen bee" was, in my opinion, a mistake. These overused archetypes are not going to surprise anyone. If Burnstein wanted to do a documentary about high schoolers that nobody had seen before, she should have told stories that have not truly been told in an unbiased, uncut form before. It would be far more interesting to see the parallels between the high school experience for, say, a black inner-city jock, a bisexual Asian rebel on the west coast, a nerdy white girl in Illinois, and a Latina mean girl than it was to watch four white kids in the same town all prove that we all have a lot in common. Also, the documentary seemed too polished--the capturing of two sides of phone calls with supporting characters threw me out of the story and made me wonder how they had managed to have a camera crew at some random kid's house at the exact moment he was calling.
One criticism I actually didn't agree with was the concern that teens would never be so intimate on camera. People like to open up about their lives, and in this digital age, they aren't very camera-shy. The most intimate moments of the film happen months into filming, so the teens would've been used to being followed around. That said, the filmmakers clearly set up some things--it seemed very unnatural to me that the explanation of the queen bee's sister's death would come out on camera in the way that it did. It seemed set up to give us a reason to pity her after we'd seen her being rude and rather one-dimensional in every other situation. And the whole scene with her friend and the boyfriend was difficult to follow and also seemed fake.
My biggest problem with the film was Hannah's hats. Why did she keep wearing hats???
I disagree that it was a mistake to make a documentary about "a nerd, a jock, a rebel, and a queen bee." While it indeed may have been interesting to make a documentary on a black inner city jock or west coast asian rebel, it simply wasn't the directors goal to make film on high schoolers nobody on had seen before. In fact I think the director's goal was the opposite: to make a documentary showing how the stereotypes of high school many people assume to be exaggerated really do exist. Also you should take note that none of the high schoolers fit perfectly into these stereotypes, such as the jock being potrayed as an overall nice guy.
ReplyDeleteSo do I have it right that you believe the teens opened up honestly and fully on camera and yet the film suffers from a lack of originality? The subject matter is the subject matter. If it's honest, then how is it not original? I think you feel that the students featured might suffer from a lack of originality, conforming to social expectational norms.
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