Five high school stereotypes from left to right: The criminal, the basket case, the jock, the rich popular kid, the high IQ nerd
Pumpkin Person rating: 9/10
The recent discussions about high school jocks and nerds reminds me of one of my 10 favorite movies of all time: The Breakfast Club.
I don’t know how well this film applies to young people today and it may not be relevant in foreign countries, but it was the defining high school movie for generations of teenagers, and I suspect in many ways it’s timeless.
To those who were surprised to see a non-horror film in my top 10, I say that in a strange way it is kind of a horror film. There was something strangely creepy about these five teenagers being all alone in a normally bustling high school on a Saturday afternoon, serving detention.
All alone except for the strict principal and the creepy janitor, who in one haunting scene, tells the students he secretly reads their letters and listens to their conversations.
The creepy janitor
But perhaps the creepiest scene of all comes when the principal takes the delinquent student aside and says something like “many years from now, when you’re long gone from this school and living your shitty life and everyone has forgotten about you, I’m gona be there! And I’m gona beat the shit out of you!”
The high school principal
Just thinking about that scene gives me goosebumps. Kids thinks of their teachers and school principals as authority figures to be mocked behind their back, but they forget that these are actual people, with egos, feelings and insecurities.
Imagine your school principal not only knows you’re gona grow up to be a loser languishing in poverty, but that when you do, it will be safe for him to hunt you down and BEAT THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF YOU because by then, no one will care about you.
Creepy.
The film is about high school stereotypes: the high IQ nerd, the jock, the popular rich kid, the criminal, and the basket case and how they all come together and bare their soul against the still silence of the empty school.
In many ways it’s just like this blog. People from all walks of life sharing intimate details of their lives against the utter silence of cyberspace.
The smart nerd: Bruno,
The jock: Race Realist
The rich popular kid: Afro
The criminal who is constantly mocking the others: Mug of Pee
The basket case: illuminaticat,
The creepy janitor: Philosopher
Anthony Michael Hall is great as the high IQ nerd because he really looks like a young Bill Gates. Lion of the Blogosphere says that high IQ guys are nerdy partly because delayed puberty allows the math brain to grow more, which he says also explains why boys are better at math than girls.
Pumpkin Person 
I’ve been hospitalized 5 times since I graduated in 2007. In the mental ward. So many mental breakdowns and my condition. It’s not Autism. I’m just timid, no self-esteem, lots of insecurities. No friends. I mentally shake inside. Can’t get my thought straight. Try to find things to do. Learn things. Talk to people online. Do research. I write things in my notebook.
This is from my latest findings
I found the main problem.
How to create generalized internal feedback.
This is what is usually meant by cognition, thinking, and introspection.
Internal feedback allows imagination and creativity and reflection.
There should be a template for all intelligence systems that can be made.
When you need to go inside yourself or outside this should guild A.I.
Then the volition of thought that needs to happen next can just happen.
I do not like being shaky inside.
I was a bit to polymath to be very nerdish and not driven enough – in like Gates and computing – but I had this « stupid lost » look this actor has.
True that Afro is a very « fashion » sensitive. This place has plenty of characters You, Gond, the girls Masha and Dealwithit, etc
It s quite rich. Thx Pumpkin for running this.
PS : I had music up to 4 am extremely loud in the street. I envy this Irish nerd who constructed an anti-young crowd repulsive alarm some years ago …. Except he got a one month jail sentence and was incarcerated
RR is also his own category. Afro is not unintelligent and he doesn’t bully so he would be the white jock. The dark joke is not only arrogant, but cruel, in particular with nerds and basket case.
Philo is the only one bullying kitty, and the bullying is quite mild and even can be more helpful than hurtful. Despite strong words, I don’t see real verbal violence in this place. UK people are the most violent ones I have seen among Occidentals. That may have influenced Philo (of Feenopy now) .
”The basket case: illuminaticat,”
Please dont become like others here PP.
illuminaticat has far more of a sense of humour than you think. He can take a joke, as long as it’s not mean-spirited.
Pumpkin, I suppose you thought there are other nerds and basket cases here because of the comas 😉
My List:
Creepy Janitor: Pumpkin
Mental Retard: Afro
Principal: Philosopher
SJW Womens/Transgender/Hermaphrodite/Minority/Eskimo Rights Activist: Deal
Escaped Convict: Jason
🙂
I guess Jason is supposed to be Jimmy, but schizy is so dumb he can’t even remember names.
No Jason was the super PC guy who was constant accusing RR of being racist
Nah, schizy probably doesn’t remember this one, he’s confusing Jason and Jimmy.
I’ve noticed the way this is a very white thing to have diversity, real diversity of personalities.
In Asian, african or latino schools I doubt you get as many archetypes.
[redacted by pp, June 22, 2018] would call me ‘reactionary’ for saying that. But it helps explain why literature is so poor outside of the west comparatively.
Philo,
Most French people can’t imagine the degree of violence in UK schools, both elite and Chavy, so I imagine Japanese, with such a codified and socialized society, must be among the worst. The number of suicides is certainly one symptom.
English people behave like Polish people. I’m almost certain the English nobility are an entirely different breed to the peasantry. English people are extremely different from French & German people and so are Slavs.
Scary. Even the girls being drunk and vomiting in the streets. Nowhere else I have seen that . And the violence in the bars. In France of Spain, people talk. In the Uk, they start fighting.
I’m currently in Northern Ireland and it’s pretty bad indeed, the locals I’m with have a theory, they say the clubs close too early, right at the peak of drunkenness and energy. So once the party’s over and everybody’s left to their own devices on the streets, they just randomly start fights over virtually nothing.
The Irish are nice people though. Chavs aren’t nice, they attack you for no reason, to steal, to kill, if you look at them the wrong way etc. I suspect Maghrebin are the Chavs of France but over here in England, Chavs are Chavs.
I dont see any large difference in crime between continental europe and the british isles, though wikipedia says the homocide rate in Britain is around 50% higher than in Aermany, and 100% higher than that of poland, czech republic, Norway,Spain and Austria. The UK seems to be comparable to Bulgaria and Finland. In Scandinavia, Finland has always been regarded as more violent, even though they have improved.
Bruno, you said you wanted to fight the people in the street making music. Now youre pretending to be a sophisticated connoisseur of haute couture. Which is it?
Hahaha, Pill….
Philo, I imagine “connoisseur of haute couture” is a metaphore ? I have no interest in fashion even if a close relative was working in fashion industry at a high technical level (She headed an atelier de Haute Couture).
I made the remark about the noise because I found interesting that the day wich is dedicated to music in France is the day where you have the less music and the most noise. It is what happens with mass entertainment, even deemed to be cultural events. I never intetended to confront the people . I went to have a beer and when I came back at midnight I bought some earplugs.
But as often, I appreciate your intuitions.
I am someone who doesn’t like to enter into any fight with any body. I almost always never respond to agression (nasty behaviour or comments). But I have an extreme violent capacity inside of me. I have been confronted to real violence 3 times (1 when I was 11 and then in my middle twenties twice), and my behaviour was tough. I recently discovered that some Asperger kids can be of un-imaginable cruelty. I don’t think I have exaclty Asperger, but the description of the violence I read really fit what I experience in my mind. But I have never been un-vontarily violent nor violent to innoncent people. And more, those 3 times, it was a response to clear physical violence by armed people (knife, iron bar) from un unarmed man. Today, with all cameras in the streets, it is not impossible that I would have had some trouble though.