Graduation

Tyler Kuch

                June 5, 2008 was a very big deal for me.  That was the day I finally graduated from high school.  The road leading up to this day was a long one.  Although I did enjoy high school (as much as someone can really enjoy school), I was ready to be done.  It was time to graduate.  Now, a lot of people probably have a nice, sentimental song that they associate with graduation because it mentions your future or it talks about graduation.  For me, however, the song I associate with that time of my life is “All Summer Long”, by Kid Rock.

                I don’t particularly like Kid Rock or his music, but that song was being played all the time on the radio that spring and summer, as you can imagine.  At the time, I wasn’t thinking about college yet, it was too early.  I was just pumped for summer vacation, and that’s what the song was about.  The lyrics pretty much mirrored what I was excited for (except more mild and less Kid Rock-ish).  I was at the time in my life where I didn’t really relate to adults as well as I like to think that I do now.  There was no dislike, but I just saw them as authority figures, kind of how Raby talked about kids being able to relate to adults better when they behaved more like kids.  The song talks about being at a beach with a girl, and, at least the way I think of it, there were no adults nearby.  So that part of the song was particularly meaningful to me.

                Another part of the song I related to was when Kid Rock says “Catching walleye off the dock, watching the waves roll off the docks”.  I love to fish and I was getting pumped for that for the summer.  This may not be right, but I kind of picture fishing as somewhat of a masculine activity, at least the hardcore fishers.  In “Dude, You’re a Fag”, by Pascoe, masculinity is discussed, and how it relates to sexuality for guys.  So in that way, I guess to me it seems like fishing is a typically heterosexual activity.  But I wasn’t thinking about any of that on graduation night.  I was getting ready to be done with school, and have a whole bunch of fun “all summer long”.

Works Cited

Rebecca Raby, “Across a Great Gulf?”, 2007

CJ Pascoe, “Dude, You’re a Fag”, 2007

Kid Rock, “All Summer Long”, 2008

Blog 2: Growing up in a different culture

Tyler Kuch

Blog #2

            It’s pretty well-known that cultures are different all across the world.  There are certain moments in each child’s life that might be specific to the culture they were raised in.  It seems there are different cultures in every country you visit.  But what we don’t always realize is that there are most definitely multiple cultures within even a single country.  Here in the United States, the West Coast is a lot different from the East Coast, and both differ from the culture in the Midwest.  What I am going to discuss is the experience growing up in the Boston area, as seen in the movie, The Departed.

            For those who have seen the movie, The Departed does not really focus on the childhood of the characters except for during the first few scenes.  But I do think it is a good example for answering the questions about adolescence in a different culture.  The movie starts out showing us Matt Damon’s character, Colin Sullivan, as a boy, about 12 or 13 years old.  While he’s in the grocery store, he is approached by the known head of organized crime in the area, Frank Costello, played by Jack Nicholson.  Colin has been growing up without his parents and living with his grandmother, (which Costello knows), and Costello tells him if he ever wants to earn some extra money to come see him.  Costello later tells Colin and the other boys he recruited about what it’s like growing up in the Boston area, saying “No one gives it to you, you have to take it.”  Costello also mentions that growing up, adults told him you could either be a cop or a criminal, but he retorts, “I say, when you’re facing a loaded gun, what’s the difference?”

            This ideology of having to make your own way and not count on anybody to provide for you was the way it was like for Costello growing up in Boston, and in turn, what it is now like for Colin.  Now although this is in the United States, I say it still differs from many other parts of the country.  In upper-class parts of America, other people will most certainly be providing for you.  You see the parents buying their kids everything they want, and as a result, the kids become somewhat soft and dependent.  The way it worked for Costello, he had to do whatever it took to survive.  If that meant stealing or killing, so be it, and he worked his way all the way to the top.  This type of lifestyle is referenced in the masculinity reading, “Making Men Out of Them” when the author wrote, “A boy is not expected to reach out---to his family, his friends, his counselors, or coaches---for help, comfort, understanding, and support.”  The way this culture goes, the boy is expected to solve all his problems himself, by any means necessary.

            One other similarity between the culture that Colin grew up in was referenced in Raby’s essay, “Across a Great Gulf”.  She talked about children identifying with the “least-adult”.  In this case, Costello was the “least-adult”.  He clearly wasn’t playing by society’s rules and knew what was important to a young kid like Colin.  In that way, he was not like most adults in society (mainly cops), and that allowed Colin to identify with him a little more.

            The Boston culture, although in the United States, is different from many of the other cultures in this country.  According to the movie, at least, women are seen as loyal sidekicks, and anyone who is not a white male has a harder life.  “You’re a black guy in Boston, you don’t need my help to be completely f----d”, says Billy Costigan, Leonardo DiCaprio’s character.  A few aspects of this culture can be seen elsewhere, but to me, the way it was shown is pretty unique.  It’s a little easier to appreciate the good parts of my culture, having seen this movie.  People I know don’t regularly get shot, and I can depend on my family to be there for me.  But others aren’t as lucky, and that’s what we need to realize.

Works Cited

Raby, Rebecca.  “Across a Great Gulf”.  “Representing Youth: Methodological Issues in Critical Youth Studies” New York: New York University Press. 2007. Print.

Cohen, Theodore.  “Making Men Out of Them: Male Socialization in Childhood and Adolescence”  “Men and Masculinity: A Text Reader, 1^st Edition”. 2001.

The Departed.  Scorsese, Martin, Monahan, William.  Film.  Warner Bros.  2006.

Mean Girls

Tyler Kuch

            Although maybe not the most original choice, I decided to analyze the movie Mean Girls, the 2004 comedy starring Lindsay Lohan.  This was an easy media choice because almost the entire movie deals with adolescents.  Throughout the movie, many social subjects come up, and because all the main characters are high schoolers, we get to see their perspectives.

            Mean Girls is not supposed to be non-fiction or a documentary by any stretch of the imagination.  It was made purely for entertainment, and supposed to portray an exaggerated view of high school stereotypes.  But that doesn’t mean that some of the issues aren’t real to teenagers today.   First, we have the existence of cliques.  Just like in many high schools around the country (or the world, for that matter), the Mean Girls high school is divided up into many cliques based on almost anything.  There are the Sexually Active Band Geeks, the Asian Nerds, the Unfriendly Black Hotties, and many more.  Those groups can be divided according to race, sex, class, and almost anything other social characteristic you can think of.  Now of course, in the real adult world, cliques are viewed as immature and wrong.  But through the eyes of the teenagers in the movie, cliques are just accepted.  They don’t necessarily condone them, but they accept them as fact in their dysfunctional high school.  And even though they don’t want to admit it, all students want to be in the “cool” group, a side effect that usually isn’t a good thing.  In the Education.com article “Social Life in Middle and High School: Dealing with Cliques and Bullies” points out, “Cliques can blur individuality” and “They usually require some degree of conformity”.  No matter what the consequence though, these students still wanted to be “cool”.  As an adult, that thought process still exists, but to a lesser degree.  In high school, and especially in this movie version of high school, it’s a top priority.

            Another part of society that is depicted differently through the eyes of teenagers in this movie is the differences between the sexes.  In real life, ideally anyway, each person is thought of as his or her own person, and judged based on their personality.  That may not happen one hundred percent of the time, but that’s what we like to think is going on in people’s minds anyway.  This movie, on the other hand, takes a very different approach.  For the most part, the girls are viewed as sluts who will do anything to be on top no matter who it hurts, while guys are  seen as super horny with a one-track mind.  Even the “normal” guy character, Aaron Samuels, can’t resist Lindsay Lohan’s character, Cady, even though he has a girlfriend.  And he’s supposed to be the good guy.  This distorted view of reality is the difference between what these adolescents see and what really is happening in the real world.  Yes, some people fit the stereotypes, but certainly not everybody. 

            Like Raby discussed in her writing, adolescence is “obviously occupied as a temporary position”.  It’s almost impossible to make teenagers see the world the way it actually is, and Mean Girls helped show us that.  Because the adolescents are so skewed in their views, this movie was able to depict the ideas of society in such a different way.  Kids don’t see the world the way everybody else does, and that’s exactly what made this movie so entertaining.

Works Cited

Mean Girls.  Mark Waters, Tina Fey.  Film. Paramount Pictures, 2004.

Education.com.  Joshua Mandel.  2006.  NYU.  10 Feb 2011.  http://www.education.com/reference/article/bullying-in-middle-and-high-school/

Raby, Rebecca.  “Across a Great Gulf?  Conducting Research with Adolescents”.  Representing Youth: Methodological Issues in Critical Youth Studies.  New York:  New York University Press.  2007.  Pp 39-59