Imo, a movie that accurately depicts the social atmosphere of a modern high school would have bullies from the 90s crying in a corner. High school kids today are fucking brutal with their insults. Also school shootings would have them horrified, because they wouldn't have seen coverage of Columbine
I have come to regard the "everyone so sensitive today" discourse as literal background chatter because for as long as I can remember people have been saying this. "Ah you could never get away with that today" like yes society does seem to be growing and changing don't it and the sky is up there yet, and the rock's still hard.
Sure you can't call people a n-word anymore, but at least now black people are allowed to wash their hands in the same wash basin and you can show interracial kisses on TV.
Sure you can't jail people for being gay anymore, but at least they are allowed to be who they are and even adopt an orphan.
Sure you can't hit your wife anymore, but at least they now have the right to vote and can start their own bank account without a mans approval.
We are currently more free than before, just not for a particular group of people.
The particular group of people that experience butt-hurt at the improvements are also exactly as free as they ever were. One of the most damaging arguments against freedom is how poorly some choose to use it.
Teachers are trained to ignore the situation, punish both parties or whichever party they think is the problem, and move on. This tends to result in the victim being punished, simply because the victim is more likely to complain about their abuse than the abuser is to admit to it.
Why? Because if you were an underfunded educator being used as a glorified babysitter by the state, and constantly being accused of spreading communist propaganda when you tried to tell people with the Confederate War was bought over, whoever you think the problem is is whoever is speaking the loudest.
Important part there. Bullies thrive in plenty of shitty schools today and haven't changed much. Biggest difference is they can now use the internet to further their bullying.
Well if you listen to tankies (which you shouldnt) America is why the whole world is like this. We control everything and also are a total failure. It's weird to be two opposing things at once.
Bit of an extreme but Look Who's Back (German: Er ist wieder da)
In 2014, Adolf Hitler wakes up in the Berlin park where his Führerbunker once stood. Disoriented, he wanders through the city, interpreting modern situations from a wartime perspective.
And the scary thing is lots of people supported him. It was filmed like Borat where the parts of him interacting with the general populace are not scripted.
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.
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.
I wonder how much diversity and inclusion there really is in a school today. Many little kids are dicks, and will always be dicks.
Changes in what the adults tell them is or isn't appropriate won't sway them, they're going to continue to abuse each other and come up with colourful reasons to separate into groups, be it clothing, hair style, gender, skin colour, accent, what flavour of crisps you prefer.... etc.
I am not sure if this is even measurable anymore. A lot of things that happened in the past were not considered bullying. Even really serious stuff.
Additionally, especially when looking at anecdotal evidence, how respectful kids treat each other can be different per school and even for each class.
For a few things we have semi-reliable statistics. For example in Germany the number of knives that are regularly taken from students has significantly increased. Also the number of times schools called the police because they needed help getting a situation under control. But this could also mean there are more extreme single cases. It doesn't necessarily mean the overall atmosphere is more aggressive.
Billy Madison explored this a little bit when he made it to high school. Pretty much any movie where someone goes back to high school does this. 21 Jump Street was mentioned by someone.
I’ve seen three shows basically try to make this joke. Somebody from an earlier time comes to now and can’t adjust to the political correctness. Clone high did it, Futurama did it, and I think another show I watched as well. It’s pretty played out already.
Dr Who did it, but in a very weird way. they made thr first Doctor kinda sexist, which fits the time, but not thr character, because he wasn't really sexist in his time even by our standards.
Unfortunately, defending (or even creating) diversity and inclusion requires the courage to speak up against bullies. I'm not sure we are encouraging our kids ourselves to do that enough.
Rom-com ending - the bully is gay or trans in the end
After-School Special ending - there are two bullies, one becomes friends with the LGBTQ+ kids and goes on to college, a well adjusted advocate and the other bully ramps up until he ends up in jail for accidentally killing a kid.
American ending - the bully ends up snapping, bringing his father's collection of semi-auto firearms to school and kills 20 people. The NRA and Conservatives circle the wagons and lift him up as a champion of CIS rights, have the LGBTQ+ friendly administration and school board fired, and every kid he bullied is seen in the final cut scene doing drugs in lower Philly as he walks by in a $3000 suit to his 500k/yr consulting job.
I just want to say that in real life, obese kids are bullied by skinny kids. The "fat bully" stereotype is very harmful to society.
Edit: No, I know the obese kid being the bullied thing is not an absolute. One of my adoptive brothers was obese and took no shit from anyone. He was cool and kinda smart and also the class clown; and eventually he kinda thought he could get away with anything, bought into thug culture, and now he's in and out of jail.
Well the audience has to know who the good guys are, and what better way than by making the good guys look aesthetically pleasing compared to the bads?
That said when I was a kid, the bigger kids tended to be the bullies, I always assumed it was because they could hit harder.