Gossip Girl. Hannah Montana. The Princess Diaries. iCarly. Mean Girls. Cliques and their drama lie at the heart of so many media portrayals of the teenage years. This depiction of teens creates a vicious cycle of ever-increasing stereotypes.
High school is portrayed as a place where each student has his or her place in a system of cliques. This categorical system, of the jocks and the nerds, of the cool kids and the losers, has been shown in every movie from Grease to High School Musical.
These stereotypes are translated into reality when kids go to middle school. These students are in their early adolescence, the time when they are most sensitive to being “normal.” All of their childhood, they have been watching Disney and Nickelodeon shows that portray high school as full of clearly defined groups. Therefore, these students do what they believe to be “normal,” and imitate the cliques the see on TV.
These cliques produce one-dimensional people who are identified solely as their category not as themselves. Why not be a jock, a nerd and a cheerleader all in one?
This school has managed to avoid major clique issues but this could be a product of an ethnically diverse student population. In a school where 94 languages are spoken, it goes without saying that there is an exposure to other cultures. Therefore, American culture is less emphasized, including cliques. Unfortunately, that is not true for many other schools.
Rosalind Wiseman’s nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabees: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence records the state of middle school as described by the thousands of students she interviewed over a decade. Her chapters are full of vicious backstabbing, shunning and more. The book reads like a Gossip Girl novel.
So, when film and television directors and authors chronicle the middle school or high school experience in America, they naturally draw upon the cliques that do exist and dramatize them. Unfortunately, this perpetuates the cycle.
Over time, the cliques will only get worse. To stop the vicious cycle, there are only two options. Either children should stop watching shows and movies with such harmful stereotypes or the media should stop emphasizing them.
2011-10-19