Do other countries in the world have the same experience?
Because most of its citizens peaked in it.
I genuinely have no idea, my HS was an absolute nightmare and I hold no nostalgia for it whatsoever.
I don’t think I see anyone else saying it: Because High School was the last school for the vast majority of people. It was the transition into adult life and responsibilities.
In American history a lot of people didn’t even make it to High School. You got enough of an education to work whatever job, or were forced to quit schooling and start working because of family financial needs.
College wasn’t needed for a good paying job that would be enough to own a home, car, have a family, etc.
So High School was the end of the line for being a kid in school and whatever freedoms came with that. Especially for the Boomer generation the economy at the time really allowed a lot more freedoms for High School kids than had ever been available before.
This is one of the signs of stagnation. Sure, high school was enough education half a century ago but the world continues to get more and more complicated. Why haven’t basic education requirements ever risen to match?
Free public school needs to be through an additional two years of what is currently called college/vocational/trade school
Why are you asking about US when Japan got all that highschool themed stuff?
Wut
The women with plaid skirts and blazers, I assume is the reference
from my experience, people from romania do
Baby Boomers are the reason why high school became so culturally relevant.
You had a large cohort of students coming of age together at a time when the country was wealthy enough where you had a class of people who had gone through puberty but wasn’t being given the full roles and responsibilities of being adults. This new separate age group between kids and adults was relatively novel.
You also started seeing a major change in cultural forces like music and cinema which catered to this set of consumers. This catering became very important as companies realized this was when adults formed a lot of their tastes and preferences. Cultural output started focusing on this age group as tastemakers.
Because adulthood is shit.
That’s not something specific to the US. If you chose a manga or anime at random, it’d most likely revolve around a highschooler.
Yup, one of the reasons Black Lagoon is now one of my favourite animés is that it neither involves school nor a magical alternative universe. It does revolve around a salaryman though … can’t win them all I guess :-/
May I interest you in Samurai Pizza Cats?
I don’t mind the magic, I like fantasy. The highschool theme got boring, fast.
Not necessarily, sometimes its a Japanese salaryman being reincarnated into a video game.
Tbf, season 1 of that show is honestly good. After that it gets really stale and boring though
That’s a more relatively recent thing.
This, this is not just an American thing
Post-war Japanese culture is very american though.
Children are not particularly discriminating consumers. They’ll watch pretty much anything shiny that you put in front of them, because they don’t know any better. A moderately well written film to an adult will literally be “the best thing” a teen has ever seen. When you catch a teen’s interest early, they’ll probably continue be interested in your brand for the next 10-20 years, at least. That money adds up. The attention they get from sharing everything with each other adds up.
Adults need to be impressed, and even then their interest will be moderated. It’s a lot harder to make something a lot of adults are excited about.
It’s also a “milestone” in everyones lives that most people have in common. Not as many people have gone to college and colleges can vary more. So I think they believe it to be relatable. Personally I wish movies were more focused on 25-30 age group, because I feel uncomfortable with how many movies and shows focus around romance/ people getting together or just outright hooking up, and as much as I want to engage in a movie and celebrate character/plot growth cheering on someone kissing a minor isn’t for me.
Like I understand people say “it’s a fantasy world” but Khaleesi was 13 in the first Games of Thrones book. Celebrating her growing a meaningful connection to a man who abducted and raped her is just… Yeah
Like I understand people say “it’s a fantasy world” but Khaleesi was 13 in the first Games of Thrones book. Celebrating her growing a meaningful connection to a man who abducted and raped her is just… Yeah
True, but if you think about it, a lot of GoT is just edge-bait. While it’s awful they’re normalizing that, it’s also not that strange from considering everything else in the series
Indeed, one of the reasons Love Lies Bleeding is my favourite movie is because it’s a romance between two people who are actually grown up (if not mature), they aren’t star-crossed lovers, and they both already know what they like in bed
that’s how life was in those cultures. it still is in afganistan and other undeveloped peoples where brides are married off at 12.
the concept of adulthood being 18 or later is modern teenagerhood only really existed as a concept post ww2. post secondary education wasn’t mandated across the entire usa until 1950, and only started getting adopted in 1920.
in the 20th century in europe and the USA lots of people were being married off before 18, especially in rural communities/countries that had not made secondary education mandatory.
that’s how life was in those cultures
What are “those cultures”? Because the person you replied to only mentioned GoT and that’s not a real culture.
nomadic horse peoples. They existed, and they still do in Mongolia, Afganistan, and other remote inland areas with steppe geographies.
The rural tribes in Afganistan are full of trading in children as sex objects to secure political deals and favors.
Brother, no. Please stop apologizing for pedophilia. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now to sexualize minors, even if it was socially acceptable. Also the “then” were referring to is most generously applied to like 800AD or something, but it didn’t exist. And this whole comment you’re replying to is about disliking fictional shows about romance. It’s okay to find fictional romance with minors a line you won’t cross, because it’s entertainment and doesn’t matter, only watch what you like. It doesn’t make you better for liking things that are “more realistic” because it glamorizes pedophilia of an analogous real culture.
It doesn’t read as pedophilia apologia to me, and more like a statement that it is unfortunately still done in some cultures on Earth
dumb people think if you acknowledge that something exists, you support it.
Sure, still gross.
it’s ok. the dothraki would have not raped you, just cut off your head because you’re weak and can’t ride a horse.
Because life in the U.S. is all shit after high school.
It was shit in high school too. College was alright.
My life improved markedly after I left high school. For a while, anyway, I loved university.
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Tbf it was pretty shit in high school also.
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Countless coming of age experiences happen around that time
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A massive peer group, with all the dynamics that entails. For most, it’s the last time they will regularly interact with that many peers ever.
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only about half the population goes to college, and 20 years ago it was only about a 1/3 and so on.
high school is a universal experience, college is not. so there is a broader media audience for high school, and yes for many people high school was there youth and they became working adults once they left it.
the prolong adolescence of college and post-graduate study is mostly for the top 25-10% of the population who are wealthy and not relatable to the vast majority of the population. when i was a college kid and a graduate student, my uneducated parents thought college was just partying all the time because of movies about college only showed frat parties and antics. They had no clue I was working 80 hour weeks and getting drunk maybe once a month or less.
They have noth much more in their life.
We don’t…
Corporations market to that demographic, because their brains aren’t fully developed yet and you get in there before they know better.
For media like TV/movies, it’s partly the same thing, but also lowest common denominator. All the target demos can identify with a story based in highschool because they’ve all lived it.
That’s why in John Wick he avenged his dog, a 12 year old boy understands that waaaaay more than losing a child. So even tho that would make the movie make way more sense, he goes all Liam Niessens over a pet.
In an ultra capitalist society, everything else always take a backseat to marketing, including the plots.
Some Americans “peak” in high school. They were popular and/or good at something like sports. After they moved on to university or their first job, they found out the larger world isn’t impressed with their high school accomplishments.
