Social networking allows people to put off a certain image that doesn’t truly reflect their reality. You know those people who check-in everywhere they go, that girl who has 80 pictures of her face, and the guy who gives you his entire day’s schedule? If you saw them at your high school reunion, you might find out that the girl with the photo album of her face weighs 500 pounds and the guy with the itinerary works a boring nine to five. These people are using Facebook as a medium to make their lives look better than they actually are.
Before the days of Facebook, the best way to snoop and show off to former classmates was at the high school reunion. In 1997, Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow starred in “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” a movie about two dimwitted friends who devise a ridiculous lie to impress the “A-list” group who tormented them in high school. This silly, feel-good comedy follows a predictable formula, the popular kids peaked in high school and the misfits turn out to be successful but the ambiguous concept of what it means to succeed, especially for women, is an interesting topic throughout the film.
Romy and Michele share an L.A. apartment, one works as a cashier while the other is unemployed and they spend their time making fun of movies and hitting up dance clubs. When they get news of their ten-year high school reunion in Tuscon, an event that typically demands you be on the road to success, they realize that they don’t have much to brag about and the popular girls will probably be looking to demean them all over again. The girls decide that they will pretend to be business tycoons, the inventors of post-it notes, and the way to pull off this scheme is to show up riding in an expensive car and dressed in professional-looking suits.
For two ditzy girls with no real ambition, the fact that they decide pretending to be driven careerists to impress their former classmates implies that they are, in fact, post-feminist women who value intelligence and independence.
When we see the A-group at the reunion, they are all very pregnant and boasting about their happy marriages. The popular girl married the jock and had his babies and to her, that is success. Acquiring a relationship and family fits the pre-fiminist stereotype of what it means to be successful. You can be the fashion editor of Vogue Magazine but if you’re not married with kids, she is not impressed.
Throughout the night, the truth comes out and Romy and Michele are exposed as frauds but rather than fleeing in embarrassment, Michele tells Romy, “I never knew that we weren’t that great in high school, we always had so much fun together, I thought high school was a blast and until you told me that our lives weren’t good enough, I thought everything since high school was a blast!” The girls realize that despite anyone else’s format for success, they have been happy with their lives all along.
Later in the night, the concept of image versus reality is further exemplified when we discover that the jock/husband is an alcoholic and a cheater. Now, Romy and Michele’s aimless existence seems much happier in comparison. The women in the A-group are stuck in an empty marriage tied down with children while the “nerds” get their revenge simply by living well.
Whether it is at a high school reunion or everyday on Facebook, “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion” teaches us that there is no fork in the road to success leading to either financial gains or a family unit, there is only one simple way to achieve success and that is to be happy in whatever we are doing despite what other people think.
No comments:
Post a Comment