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Couldn't relate to it even remotely, but I still kinda liked it. Might have liked it more if I had anything at all in common with the experiences depicted...it's not just the time period (I was not yet even in high school in 1976) because Fast Times At Ridgemont High also totally fails to connect with me (though I like the film) even though it's set during my high school years.
It may be as simple as me not having gone to an American high school: we didn't have the cars, we didn't do drugs, and -- at my high school -- we weren't even co-ed. The kind of cliques that I see so prevalent in US high-school films (and the whole 'jock' phenomenon) was just something that we didn't have. We had the school's athletes, of course, but it was very different to the situation in American schools and they were not elevated above others or separated, whether by policy or not. Same at university: what I saw when I attended an American university, in terms of how the athletes are treated and the whole semi-pro aspect of collegiate athletics, was nothing at all like university in my home country, where phys-ed was not a course but just something that people did extramurally, on their own time, and where there were no athletic departments but just athletes.
I think the way it's done overseas is far better, on balance...universities (high schools, too, depending on the sport and possibly on the region, as exemplified in stuff like Friday Night Lights) should be for learning, not for molding players of high-profile, high-profit sports, few of whom will go on to do it professionally. Sports may have many benefits, mental and physical, but in other countries people still engage in them (I would bet anything that there are a broader cross-section of people actually playing sports in certain other countries, including adults, than in the US, where people may know all the sports stats but rarely actually partake in the sport). We were very active, physically, without having to take for-credit classes to that end or being scouted for varsity teams.
And the whole frat/sorority thing kind of blew my mind. Just like the hazing in this film. If some doofus had treated younger kids the way these seniors do in the film I'd have beaten the hell out of the bully...actually, I did do that. :D
I wouldn't have traded the background I had for anything like what's represented in this film. Girls, sure....that might have been good. But not the drugs and alcohol, parties, and peer-group crap, not that I'd probably ever have succumbed to peer-group anything. That's just me, I guess. None of that stuff ever had any appeal at all to me. I think I was better off for that, in the long run (short run, too).
But the film was pretty good even though I couldn't relate at all to any of the f***ers in it and -- probably as a result -- a lot of it kind of dragged for me. At least it wasn't as totally alien to me (and annoying) as the John Hughes kind of films, like The Breakfast Club. Cool soundtrack, too! Nice to hear stuff like "Free Ride" (they also threw in the sequel, "Slow Ride," a couple of times) and all that good stuff -- '70s guitar rock was and is so cool, back in those days of long ago when Top 40 acts could actually play their instruments (and, for that matter, carry a tune without electronic reprocessing). If anything, actually, the nostalgia value of this piece for me had nothing to do with high school and everything to do with the music. And, come to think of it, some of the fashions...undoubtedly a product of my kidhood, but seeing women dressed like some of the girls in this film, even just the inhumanly tight blue jeans and T-shirt thing, can kinda make me melt a little (though the same could be said of women dressed any way, I guess...I'm easy, that way). Melvin's disco shirt is cool, too. :-)
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