American Teens, Perky As Candy
Disney's dorky smash hit "High School Musical" proves teens aren't what you think. Are they?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
I have no idea who the hell is buying this thing called the sound track to the Disney Original Movie "High School Musical" in such quantities that it is, as of this writing, the No. 1 record in America.
I have no idea who is buying it in such quantities to cause this perky, virgin-kissed sound track to go certified platinum, over 1 million copies sold, with nine count-'em nine singles in the Billboard Hot 100 last month and five singles on the iTunes Top 100, and the CD was the No. 1 download on the iTMS for two solid weeks, longer than James Blunt or Jack Johnson or Mary J. Blige, and "HSM" is so popular that Apple even added the full-length "HSM" movie itself to the iTMS for download, well ahead of mainstream flicks like "King Kong" or "Crash" or "The Perils of Jennifer Aniston." But someone sure is. Buying it, that is.
No wait, that's wrong. I do know. The buyers are, of course, teens. Or rather, tweens, the 9-to-14-year-old ones with cute little pink Amex cards, lots and lots of happy bubbly nonpornographic all-American tweens who have apparently turned "High School Musical" into a certified phenomenon, the most successful Disney Channel movie ever, and they're downloading the flick by the truckload and digging its cheesy dancy saccharine bubblegum pop sound track and its clean-cut nonswearing nonsexual teen cast because, well, they apparently didn't get the memo.
You know the one. The memo telling every young American student that, according to most every media report, sociological analysis and vile target marketing focus group, teens are supposed to be jaded and burned out and drugged up and just a little dangerous, video-game addicted and sexually overwhelmed and sugared up and so hooked on glue inhalers and MySpace.com and bad gangsta hip-hop they can't tell a condom from a KFC chicken popper from an illegal Kanye West download, much less a kicky little ensemble dance number in the high school gym.
What this cynical demographic is most definitely not supposed to be buying is mountain loads of playful, innocent, ultracheesy, singsongy, "Saved by the Bell"-meets-"Grease" musicals with zero sexual subtexts and zero drugged-out bitchy heroines and not a trace of violence or morning-after birth-control pills or alcoholic divorced parents who suck down paint thinner and scream at the moon and beat the cat with a hose.
Nor are modern Americans supposed to be digging the vibe of a movie with values set squarely in the bowels of about, oh, 1954, wherein the geeky virginal girl and the sweet, too-perfect jock guy discover they just so happen to sing like songbirds whenever they're together and hence they overcome their personal cliques and peer pressures and parental directives in order to -- you guessed it -- sing like songbirds in the high school musical.
Yes, it's that simplistic. Yes, it's that derivative. And yes, it's that insanely popular.
Something is amiss. Someone has their numbers wrong. Who is buying this thing? Hey, 13 is the new 17, right? Innocence is gone, youth is co-opted and depressive and lost. How can "HSM" possibly be so ridiculously trendy? Can it really be true that the kind of sweet, naive kids depicted in "HSM" still populate some American high schools? Can it be that there are genuine bona fide high school or junior high kids out there who still think this sort of thing is, well, really cool? Amish excluded?
And by the way, what to make of the completely foreign notion that there still might be public schools somewhere in this broke and broken and Bush-addled nation that can still afford to have functioning drama departments, flourishing programs that actually manage to produce big dorky-fun musicals in which not a single cast member is, you know, regularly drunk? Or pregnant? Or stoned? Or secretly gay? Or all of the above? What's going on?
I suppose it's possible. It's possible that, despite the dire media reports and dour trend predictions and despite the ultraviolent video games and the horrifying recent tales of fresh young teens who insist on gyrating their bodies in parent-horrifying ways at the school dance, America is still somehow swarming with viciously innocent, wide-eyed kids who aren't having gobs of unprotected ______ or piercing their nipples or getting illegal tattoos or s__________g down basement meth or getting themselves pregnant in South Dakota and then being burned alive. I mean, who knew?
(Of course, I do not know any of these innocent teens. The ones I see on the San Francisco public transit system are not, I am quite certain, the ones buying "High School Musical." These urban teens are, by turns, aggressive and intentionally ugly and completely unconscious of ferocious rudeness, and they hurl cell phones at each other and scream "f--" at each other and talk like they have a mouthful of nails. But then again, this is San Francisco. This is to be expected.)
I'm not buying it. These perky-sweet kids, they do not actually exist. The "HSM" sound track might sell millions, but its innocence and swell feel-good vibe is just a fantasy, a warped teen utopia where no one swears and no one gets and everyone looks like Nick Lachey's confused cousin. The "HSM" world is, of course, merely something shiny and safe for young teens to cling to in desperation as the world begins to manhandle them like a tired butcher handles raw sausage. Or is that too bitter?
Nah. Because in truth, there is no "High School Musical" teen, just as there is no gun-totin' pot-s__________' inner-city thug teen. These are merely tropes, devices, rarely seen extremes on a baffling continuum of youth, cute reference points used by entertainment media to sell either Will Smith or Jay-Z or Hello Kitty cases for your iPod Nano. Like open-minded Republicans, stars with real , in Alabama: They do not actually exist in anything resembling worthwhile numbers.
I imagine the "true" American teen is, of course, somewhere in the middle, a radiant muddled bipolar hodgepodge, one part innocent gleeful "High School Musical" angel-pie innocence and one part bored saturated overmarketed co-opted media and 1,197 parts confused skittering depressive whirlygig of emotions and instincts and burgeoning tingling genitalia, a tormented grab bag of hormones and gleaming hopes and entirely appropriate, happily jaded misery.
You know, same as it ever was.
Disney's dorky smash hit "High School Musical" proves teens aren't what you think. Are they?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
I have no idea who the hell is buying this thing called the sound track to the Disney Original Movie "High School Musical" in such quantities that it is, as of this writing, the No. 1 record in America.
I have no idea who is buying it in such quantities to cause this perky, virgin-kissed sound track to go certified platinum, over 1 million copies sold, with nine count-'em nine singles in the Billboard Hot 100 last month and five singles on the iTunes Top 100, and the CD was the No. 1 download on the iTMS for two solid weeks, longer than James Blunt or Jack Johnson or Mary J. Blige, and "HSM" is so popular that Apple even added the full-length "HSM" movie itself to the iTMS for download, well ahead of mainstream flicks like "King Kong" or "Crash" or "The Perils of Jennifer Aniston." But someone sure is. Buying it, that is.
No wait, that's wrong. I do know. The buyers are, of course, teens. Or rather, tweens, the 9-to-14-year-old ones with cute little pink Amex cards, lots and lots of happy bubbly nonpornographic all-American tweens who have apparently turned "High School Musical" into a certified phenomenon, the most successful Disney Channel movie ever, and they're downloading the flick by the truckload and digging its cheesy dancy saccharine bubblegum pop sound track and its clean-cut nonswearing nonsexual teen cast because, well, they apparently didn't get the memo.
You know the one. The memo telling every young American student that, according to most every media report, sociological analysis and vile target marketing focus group, teens are supposed to be jaded and burned out and drugged up and just a little dangerous, video-game addicted and sexually overwhelmed and sugared up and so hooked on glue inhalers and MySpace.com and bad gangsta hip-hop they can't tell a condom from a KFC chicken popper from an illegal Kanye West download, much less a kicky little ensemble dance number in the high school gym.
What this cynical demographic is most definitely not supposed to be buying is mountain loads of playful, innocent, ultracheesy, singsongy, "Saved by the Bell"-meets-"Grease" musicals with zero sexual subtexts and zero drugged-out bitchy heroines and not a trace of violence or morning-after birth-control pills or alcoholic divorced parents who suck down paint thinner and scream at the moon and beat the cat with a hose.
Nor are modern Americans supposed to be digging the vibe of a movie with values set squarely in the bowels of about, oh, 1954, wherein the geeky virginal girl and the sweet, too-perfect jock guy discover they just so happen to sing like songbirds whenever they're together and hence they overcome their personal cliques and peer pressures and parental directives in order to -- you guessed it -- sing like songbirds in the high school musical.
Yes, it's that simplistic. Yes, it's that derivative. And yes, it's that insanely popular.
Something is amiss. Someone has their numbers wrong. Who is buying this thing? Hey, 13 is the new 17, right? Innocence is gone, youth is co-opted and depressive and lost. How can "HSM" possibly be so ridiculously trendy? Can it really be true that the kind of sweet, naive kids depicted in "HSM" still populate some American high schools? Can it be that there are genuine bona fide high school or junior high kids out there who still think this sort of thing is, well, really cool? Amish excluded?
And by the way, what to make of the completely foreign notion that there still might be public schools somewhere in this broke and broken and Bush-addled nation that can still afford to have functioning drama departments, flourishing programs that actually manage to produce big dorky-fun musicals in which not a single cast member is, you know, regularly drunk? Or pregnant? Or stoned? Or secretly gay? Or all of the above? What's going on?
I suppose it's possible. It's possible that, despite the dire media reports and dour trend predictions and despite the ultraviolent video games and the horrifying recent tales of fresh young teens who insist on gyrating their bodies in parent-horrifying ways at the school dance, America is still somehow swarming with viciously innocent, wide-eyed kids who aren't having gobs of unprotected ______ or piercing their nipples or getting illegal tattoos or s__________g down basement meth or getting themselves pregnant in South Dakota and then being burned alive. I mean, who knew?
(Of course, I do not know any of these innocent teens. The ones I see on the San Francisco public transit system are not, I am quite certain, the ones buying "High School Musical." These urban teens are, by turns, aggressive and intentionally ugly and completely unconscious of ferocious rudeness, and they hurl cell phones at each other and scream "f--" at each other and talk like they have a mouthful of nails. But then again, this is San Francisco. This is to be expected.)
I'm not buying it. These perky-sweet kids, they do not actually exist. The "HSM" sound track might sell millions, but its innocence and swell feel-good vibe is just a fantasy, a warped teen utopia where no one swears and no one gets and everyone looks like Nick Lachey's confused cousin. The "HSM" world is, of course, merely something shiny and safe for young teens to cling to in desperation as the world begins to manhandle them like a tired butcher handles raw sausage. Or is that too bitter?
Nah. Because in truth, there is no "High School Musical" teen, just as there is no gun-totin' pot-s__________' inner-city thug teen. These are merely tropes, devices, rarely seen extremes on a baffling continuum of youth, cute reference points used by entertainment media to sell either Will Smith or Jay-Z or Hello Kitty cases for your iPod Nano. Like open-minded Republicans, stars with real , in Alabama: They do not actually exist in anything resembling worthwhile numbers.
I imagine the "true" American teen is, of course, somewhere in the middle, a radiant muddled bipolar hodgepodge, one part innocent gleeful "High School Musical" angel-pie innocence and one part bored saturated overmarketed co-opted media and 1,197 parts confused skittering depressive whirlygig of emotions and instincts and burgeoning tingling genitalia, a tormented grab bag of hormones and gleaming hopes and entirely appropriate, happily jaded misery.
You know, same as it ever was.
