American Teen

American Teen – How well does it relate to my own teen life or experiences? American Teen follows five different students in their final year of high school and each of the five are vastly different in personality and social classes within the high school structure. From dating, to hanging out with friends outside of school, family matters, and future planning for college. However, this movie, and how it was laid out to viewers, made it seem more like a reality TV show than a real life, authentic experience. One example was how the bullying was handle by both the bullies and the bullied girl, Erica. A second example would be Megan’s vandalism scene and aftermath. At least, that is how I saw it. While, overall, I believe this movie seemed more

When she and her friends are all hanging out, Megan starts to become mean and rowdy, as if to show off. To be more precise Megan was yelling at her friends and talking over them to “be in control”, thus causing some fallout in her circle of friends she normally has around her. I believe Megan acts out like this because she is being filmed. She seems to enjoy/love the attention since she is portrayed as the “popular girl”. From personal experience, no one from my school would dare to act as extreme as Megan did in the movie, because at our school if you were caught by teachers doing anything against the rules they usually followed with harsh punishment instead of a warning at first. This was especially clear with Megan and her vandalism scene since she walked away with very little punishment. In real life, vandalism would be looked at with way more severity rather than a simple slap on the wrist. There was a day my bus drove by our rival school to show us something, it was a Catholic school, and it turns out someone spray painted an upside-down cross on the front of the school. No one found out who did it, but it was likely that our rival school suspected one of us from my school. The vandalism scene, therefore, seemed scripted

There were two clear examples of things that were shown in the movie that shouldn’t have been. The first scene was with Erica’s nude photo. While not shown explicitly, the way the whole deal was shown and handled was too real for some people who have gone through things that Erica has. Erica was bullied and made fun of for a while and her so called “friends” even went behind her back to share the photo school wide as well as made a website to make fun of the photo. This can be a major problem because something of this magnitude could lead the bullied person to depression, or worse, suicide. Erica even spoke directly to the film crew and lied saying she wasn’t really bothered by all of it but was clearly ready to breakdown and cry at any moment. Due to being on camera she hid her true emotions and pretended to be tougher than she really was. I have witnessed a lot of bullying throughout high school and tried to help those being bullied since I know what it feels like. People that are aggressive towards others usually have issues themselves and I will talk to both sides. It works well when resolving issues. The other scene that should have been left out was Jacob’s drinking scene. Jacob had visited family out of state and got drunk at a party. Jacob is underage and shouldn’t be drinking. In real life that could have gotten his family member he was with in huge trouble had they been