Comparison of Two Different Movies

Films, television, and other forms of media are often primarily seen as entertainment with little relevancy to real life situations, but I have always found these pieces of media to be a reflection and analysis of important issues. The story of a working-class protagonist entering an elite college prep school on a scholarship, and dealing with the attitudes of the upper-class students, is common in Hollywood films. School Ties and Finding Forrester both tell these stories from the perspective of the working-class student who has earned their spot through hard work and devotion to academic excellence. David Greene and Jamal Wallace are both sympathetic characters who face opposition in their prep school environments. They are also both minority characters in a primarily white upper-class Christian culture: David is Jewish, and Jamal is black. David and Jamal represent the ideal heroes of a meritocracy. Their positions are earned through their own individual abilities, not through being born into wealth and privilege. They both have to overcome adversity, in the form of antagonists who disrespect them due to their status as working-class minorities. These stories reinforce a narrative that claims anyone can enter the upper class through hard work and dedication, and thus favors meritocracy. The podcast Three Miles, however, presents a counter-narrative that challenges the Hollywood portrayal of the working-class student in the elite school and examines the reality these types of students face. Melanie and Jonathan, who are both teenagers from the Bronx who participate in an exchange program that allows students from a poor public school to tour an elite private school located just three miles away. Both teens face challenges when they are confronted with the stark differences between their lives and the lives of the private school students.

In Finding Forrester, Jamal Wallace is a black teenager who is invited to attend a prestigious prep school based on both his athletic and academic abilities. Jamal faces adversity in the form of Crawford, a teacher who doubts his abilities and assumes he is plagiarizing his essays. Crawford’s stereotyping of Jamal as unworthy and unwilling to adhere to the rules of academia is consistent with common racist stereotypes about black men being “criminals” and of inferior intelligence. Finding Forrester is an example of Hollywood attempting to provide a counter-narrative that tells the story of the black teenager overcoming adversity and succeeding on his own merits.

In School Ties, David Greene is a popular football player in his senior year at St. Matthew’s. He is there on a scholarship due to his athletic ability and he comes from a working class Jewish family. His classmates are extremely anti-Semitic, and he goes from being universally well-liked to being socially outcast and harassed. The students who are there based on their families’ wealth have a collective negative response to David’s religious background, which reinforces the narrative that wealthy people are often morally undeserving of their opportunities and can be cruel and prejudiced. However, David perseveres in spite of their prejudice and goes on to succeed academically while his primary tormentor, Charlie, is defeated and exposed as a cheater by the end of the film. In “Hollywood Goes to High School,” Robert Bulman argues that through this narrative, “Hollywood is expressing another fantasy of the middle class—that meritorious individuals can break into the upper class and that the undeserving rich will suffer the consequences of their unethical behavior” (Bulman, 2015, p. 121). Bulman is clear in his pronouncement of this Hollywood narrative as a “fantasy,” and this fantasy is marketed toward middle class people who still hold hope of achieving upward mobility. This hope is what keeps middle class audiences consuming media such as School Ties, where the hero is relatable and the villains are wealthy and privileged, people they normally would be jealous of. However, this narrative is also problematic because it still glorifies the elite, upper-class brand of success as being the ultimate level of success, and as being accessible to anyone who is intelligent, morally upright, and a hard worker. This elite definition of success is, of course, not the only way to be successful and is often inaccessible to working class people who, despite working hard, do not have the opportunities or resources to achieve this level of upward mobility.

The glorification of this meritocracy narrative indirectly leads students to believe that if they have not achieved the elite level of success, such as getting into a top university, that they have no hope of any type of success and are doomed to minimum wage work and a working class lifestyle for the rest of their lives. This is evident in Melanie, the Bronx woman featured in Three Miles who ran away from high school after failing to receive a coveted full scholarship to Middlebury College. Melanie was an exceptional student who did well in school; because of this, she and the teachers and counselors around her believed in a meritocratic system that would deliver her the full scholarship to a highly ranked college, because she deserved it. However, when she did not receive the scholarship, Melanie was so thoroughly disappointed that she gave up entirely on the idea of college and the belief that she could ever escape her life in the Bronx. Melanie’s story resonated with me because of the clear influence Hollywood’s meritocracy narrative had on her expectations for the scholarship. She believed Middlebury, an elite college, was her only hope for escape; later, when she was interviewed for Three Miles, she reflects and acknowledges that if she had reached out, things may have turned out differently. She did not reach out because she was disillusioned and believed nothing would change. This sense of helplessness is addressed in “Why the Myth of Meritocracy Hurts Kids of Color,” where Melinda Anderson examines the effect a cultural belief in meritocracy will have on kids who are victims of systemic discrimination. Anderson argues that “for those marginalized by the system—economically, racially, and ethnically—believing the system is fair puts them in conflict with themselves and can have negative consequences” (Anderson, 2017). Just as members of privileged classes cling to meritocracy in order to believe that they achieved their position through hard work, disadvantaged members of society are forced to believe that their position is due to their innate inferiority. People will use stereotypes to profile kids from urban working-class neighborhoods as criminals, which then leads to these kids engaging in criminal activity because they believe that the same system which perpetuates these stereotypes is also “fair” and meritocratic.

Overall, I believe films like School Ties and Finding Forrester, despite their unconventional protagonists, still reinforce a dominant narrative of meritocracy, which is a narrative that is challenged by Three Miles and other nonfiction pieces of media that highlight real-life experiences of working-class teens trying to break into the upper class. It is my opinion that meritocracy is a damaging cultural belief, and instead of reinforcing it, Hollywood media should use its vast social influence to create counter-narratives that address existing social inequalities and tell stories of underprivileged people who work hard but still cannot manage to achieve the elite level of success.

Works Cited

1. Anderson, M. (2016). Why the myth of meritocracy hurts kids of color. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/why-the-myth-of-meritocracy-hurts-kids-of-color/502601/
2. Bulman, R. (2015). Hollywood goes to high school. Psychology Press.
3. Finding Forrester. (2000). Directed by Gus Van Sant. Culver City, CA: Columbia Pictures.
4. School Ties. (1992). Directed by Robert Mandel. Universal City, CA: Paramount Pictures.
5. Three Miles. (2015). Produced by Sarah Koenig. Serial. WBEZ Chicago. Retrieved from https://serialpodcast.org/season-three/1/a-bar-fight-walks-into-the-justice-center
6. Turner, B. (1994). Social capital, civil society, and democracy. American Behavioral Scientist, 37(1), 25-35.
7. Valenzuela Jr, A. (2018). Social capital, meritocracy, and upward mobility. Journal of Poverty, 22(6), 497-516.
8. Wiewel, W., & Zubrzycki, J. (2017). Social capital and education: Implications for educational policy and practice. In S. Van Zanten & M. Ball (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of sociology of education (pp. 150-164). Routledge.
9. Zander, L., & Zander, R. (2019). The art of possibility: Transforming professional and personal life. Penguin.
10. Zhou, M. (2004). Revisiting ethnic entrepreneurship: Convergencies, controversies, and conceptual advancements. International Migration Review, 38(3), 1040-1074.