A masterpiece of all that is slangy, self-assured and
sweet-after-the-fact. Pygmalion (per
the back of the box) haunted by “The Real World,” the most compellingly
motivated high school Iago to be let out of the saccharine romance box and then
recontained as ridiculous, something like class conflict and Usher as a Puck
manqué. The first and favorite hate-pony of the budding early aughts
feminist: gorgeous, talented and mature Laney Boggs (Rachael Leigh Cook)
somehow makes it to senior year hiding behind shaggy hair and paint stains,
until the captain of the soccer team removes her glasses and she becomes
Worthy, Prom Court, All That by virtue of having been, inexplicably, nothing.
Meanwhile, simply by being All-That-and-some-art-house-dwarves, she is
transformed from Zack (Freddie Prinze Jr.)'s project into his inspiration—granted,
"Inspiration to what?" is difficult to answer, as he's not really an
asshole to begin with, nor does he require much opening up or settling down.
His half-assed self discovery redeems him for befriending her on a bet and
exposing her to ridicule (and the predatory notice of Dean Sampson—more on that
later); toss in a spontaneous, meticulously choreographed prom theatrical
number, and She's All That is nearly
impossible to separate from its snarky spawn, Not Another Teen Movie.
When it came out, my sister and I were still young enough to
be playing "high school" in the garage on a pretty regular basis, and
with a healthy supplement of Pokemon and lip gloss, we swallowed all the
fundamentals She's All That had on
sale: a high school with the social dynamics of a college for students
insouciant as middle schoolers about the "real world." A group of
undeserving populars who could be easily loathed, exposed and dethroned (the
popularity metric at my high school turned out to be Christianity—not much in
the way of "mean girls," but athletic girls with acoustic guitars who
prayed for, rather than preyed on, the outsiders, showing off their magnanimity
to the twitchy New Girl in the hopes of revealing yet another someone Just Like
Them). Quirky outcasts teeming with artistic promise, genuine and universally
accepting of fellow weirdos (I spent freshman year eating lunch outside with
the Juggalos, blissfully unaware of the ROTC kids getting handjobs under the
picnic benches, waiting on some big reveal of deep and longing souls from
people blown away by my inexperience who liked me mostly for asking them what
"blowjob" and "jerking off" meant). At the end of eighth
grade, I left my tiny, unacredited religious school to finally merge with the
sprawling, no-uniforms-or-creation-science public school, den of sex, drugs,
popular music and false gods, as the Southern Baptists assured me on my way
out. I was going to be the New Girl, and despite failing to establish myself as
anything but remarkably sweaty and tall in summer volleyball camp, I knew with
something bordering on the religious that I was going to get my transformation.
My mother (who graduated top ten and went to prom solo), grandmother (rejected
from the cheerleading squad for refusing to shave her naturally smooth legs)
and sister helped me put together my slow-motion entrance, Nana singing over the
phone, "Who's the most popular gi-irl in schoo-ool?" And I shipped
off my first morning to realize in the parking lot that the cliques had already
formed, and that, darting between cars like a sprawling, heavy-kneed deer in
mom jeans, I was not Rachael Leigh Cook.
Whither the transformation?
The same could actually be asked of the original film. The
dramatic removal of glasses and shaking down of ponytail parody of Not Another Teen Movie becomes less
resonant upon actually rewatching She's
All That. For one thing, no one in She's
All That seems to be under the impression that Laney Boggs isn't gorgeous—and
in 1999, real, less-stellar bodies were still permitted to roam the fictional
high school, even to dance on floats at the MTV spring break party, something
probably owing to the recurrence of “The Real World” in the movie. “The Real
World” is a persistent undercurrent against which the popular couple, Zack and
Taylor frequently, unwillingly measure their lives, Zack in his dreams and
Taylor in her relationship with Matthew Lillard as Puck (“Brock”) from the 1994
season. The reality show holds the movie hostage to some idea of the real, even
at its most extravagant: the ridiculed prom scene choreography is restricted to
the school dance team, and amongst the Rachael Leigh Cooks and Lil’ Kims (yes,
really) there are also pigeon chested guys doing the monkey, girls with rolls
and tankinis. Rather, we see Zack begging off transforming "The
Boggster" into prom queen because, “Look, fat I can handle. Weird boobs,
bad personality, maybe some sort of fungus. Scary and inaccessible is another
story.” Laney isn't up for transformation; while Mac pretties her up for the
big party, the scene which comes closest to justifying the comparison to Shaw's
Pygmalion, she is announced at the stairwell as "The new, not improved,
but different, Laney Boggs." What's really being announced in taking off
the glasses and cutting the hair back from her face is that the feat here is
opening up the girl already there, not Pygmalion
nor yet Taming of the Shrew, but
finally, simply the normal process of getting to know and trust another human
being. Not Another Teen Movie is
meant to scrape the veneer of plausibility off the "teen movie"
fantasy, and in juxtaposing scenes from the original movies with Janey's
painfully awkward reality, disclaims not against She's All That but against the self-identified Uniquely Rebellious
Girl who masturbates to it. But why does this presentation eclipse and finally
come to replace the nuance and, potentially, the truth of the original movie?
My little sister and I turned the perpetual swoon into a way
of being, but something about going to public school and just being generally
more grounded made her abandon FPZ, the posters, the tiny denim backpack full
of love poems, well before I did. We moved imperceptibly from my stepdad
shooing us outside upon interrupting an afternoon of damn near Victorian crying
over "My Girl," to my mother's discovery of making us write essays on
"From Justin to Kelly" as creative punishment. But for far longer
than I'd like to admit, something about She's
All That resonated—in what, I couldn't tell you, but disappointment after
disappointment, on into the graduation ceremony, I was a believer. Not in the
choreographed prom, or the perfect first kiss, not even in the well-funded high
school art department, but in some vision of identity, of the possibility of
being seen that is dramatized in She's
All That and that isn't so easily laughed off.
Laney and Zack are united, against the sea of other high
schoolers, by their inability or refusal to choose a self that will progress
into college, a self cut away from friendships, hobbies, small loves that won't
be made to pay the bills. They are defined, loosely, by these friendships and
extracurriculars, as we are in high school, but there's no nod to how those
hobbies and loves will be subverted, incorporated, traded off in the name of
making a living. The movie, compressed into the two months between spring break
and senior prom, recognizes the pressures on them to make these large
decisions, sees Laney and Zack confronting each other in the indecision to
which they feel they have no right...and yet, by graduation, we have no idea
where they are going. The movie ends, not with a graduation into the world of
career (Legally Blonde), not with Julliard
or Sarah Lawrence on the horizon (Save
the Last Dance, 10 Things I Hate About You), not even with a marriage or
some presumption of at least the continuity of this relationship into the future.
No acceptance letters are answered, there's no saying whether Laney would be
able to afford art school in the first place.
She's All That is
brazenly not about becoming, but about being. The first backlash against the
excesses of the movie, the "fucking teenagers" uttered by Molly
Ringwald at the end of Not Another Teen
Movie, could be directed at any fantasy--the complications and
disappointments of real life don't get adequate representation on screen. This
is the realm of the school DJ, Usher, who knows the lives and loves of all the
students and makes them important, who transforms the prom from Laney's perfect
updo and awkward dancing, from the teens taking bad pictures and drinking in
the bathroom, to a scene of spontaneous choreography that presupposes some kind
of high school hive mind and universal talent and confidence. It's the other
fantasy, the presentation of high school as an end in itself, this insistence
on what we are rather than what we could become. This is what makes the movie
hard to live with. This fantasy is both encapsulated and neatly demolished in
the spontaneous rap battle, complete with a beat boxer who couldn't possibly be
in high school, that informs us of the school-wide investment in the battle for
prom queen, an homage to Laney Boggs and her rise to popularity, supported by
this universal voice.
The idea of Laney Boggs, of anyone, being raised up
from the small details of her life and seen, universally, as this polished an
unimpeded Self, is what we came to see, what we want--and what we're forced to
acknowledge as impossible, ridiculous, in the scene of the rap battle. The
double truth that the Self I preened on weekends, putting in makeup and clothes
I was too shy to actually wear to school, posing and reading Cosmo and writing,
would cease to be true in the presence of another person who would also have
such a Self—and that, no matter how little I wanted to care, how little reason
I had to believe myself secretly on everyone's radar, the homecoming and prom
court nomination slips would always stab at the validity of this private me.
Forcing that acknowledgement, that we did really want this, that maybe we still
do, borders on cruelty, but also forces some recognition of that preening self
as still valid. There's a disconnect, for women at least, between this process
of becoming an interesting, mature self, and the fact that we don't usually
become this person while still in our high school bodies. Even if we were to
meet this stripped down and shimmering Self, rip off the glasses to reveal
something satisfying, adequately representative of the myriad things passing
through us and the sensation of motion and looking out when we close our eyes
alone, the Self of sediment—she would not inhabit the body in which I first became
aware of her, of my obligation to her, this Self that would fail to be seen by
anyone else and which I somehow must promote in the world. This is what lies
behind that cringe when we read our high school diaries, their unapologetic
declarativeness, shoddy performativity, their belief in their right to exist
and to be seen, and that does not, finally, unite with an actual person
existing in the world. The pages of trying on new signatures, new slang,
confidence and religion and pathos in various shades of gel pen.
Instead of something final and determinate to rail against,
like the idea of high school relationships being forever or romance stories
that end at marriage and leave out the rough bits, we end with Zack completing
the exchange that brought him into dialogue with this other undecided person,
making good on his bet as he walks the stage naked, covered by a soccer ball
which he finally throws to Laney: Zack, naked on stage, and being laughed at.
Another blow to our universal and embarrassing desire to be seen, yes, but
sexuality in She's All That is a
strange beast, an unseen reality that may finally be uninhabitable. Not Another Teen Movie opens on a dark
screen, Laney's voice coming through over Janey's clothes strewn on the floor
as the latter prepares her vibrator, "I just hope I didn't cause any
permanent damage." This is reference to the rape horn in her tiny beaded
clutch; when Zack and Jesse fail to warn her of Dean's intentions in time, she
holds the horn over his ear and blasts it. Before this moment, and his final
appearance as comically deafened at graduation, Dean actually has a claim to
sympathy that's almost Shakespearean, as he holds Zack to their bet and drops
his plan to ask Laney to prom, “Screw you, Zack. You know, for four years I’ve
watched you fool people into thinking you’re some sort of god in this place.
Well, guess what? This is one contest you’re going to lose." And he
surrenders this sympathy unseen by his...what, exactly? Assault? Suggestion?
Attempted rape? It's impossible to tell what's at stake when he escorts Laney
from the prom with the intent to get her into his hotel room: Zack and Jesse
immediately begin the chase for Laney, presuming her complete sexual ignorance,
and her description of what does happen is similarly opaque: "Sexual
harassment is a growing concern these days." It plays more into her
identity as a CNN watcher, whose heart bleeds ineffectually for whales, child
labor in Mexico, victims of riots in Mogadishu, than it serves to characterize
her common-sense relationship to her own sexuality. With Zack, however, there's
the possibility that sex, or sex with the right person, might be the catalyst
for his transformation, the removal of Laney's glasses matched by his throwing
of the soccer ball covering himself at graduation. Zack, who can't identify
himself with the composite identity put together for his admissions essays,
however well received. Prom king, student body president, fourth highest GPA
and captain of the soccer team, none of which add up to "Zack." This
last fantasy, unrepresentable because maybe letting go of it would be too much,
is of a self completed by sexual identity, the high school body upon graduation
into the world.
Whither the transformation? Towards the end of high school,
quantifying myself for another scholarship search engine, I dismissed a
drop-down menu of eclectic, highly specific disorders. My mother twitched,
flashed the menu again over my shoulder, laughed nervously. "What?"
She laughed again, just looking. "Nana said never to tell you." She
clicked us away from the list before I could look again. "I'm kidding, I'm
kidding!" We moved on. The only term I had been able to identify:
"hermaphroditism." I spent the week on edge, half positive I had had
a secret penis removal at birth, trying to assimilate this into something like
a key to my identity. The actual question came out less dramatically. "Oh
God, no!" My mother laughing authentically. "No no no. Here, look at
the list." "Tourette's?" "Yeah. That's all."
I mined it for possibilities, something revelatory, some way
that I was reducible to my tics and squeaks that I'd been dismissing for years.
Not much. A ready answer for applications asking about my "greatest
hardship." It became a useful accessory, landing me firmly in the realm of
quirk, but organic quirk, quirk as an extension of my body, explaining nothing
but covering its multitude of sins. Maybe an explanation for the way words
enter and leave my body. A touchstone, to which I keep returning—impulse, or
desire?
She's All That presents
us with the uncomfortable proposition that there can be an "I am"
stripped clean of "I do," "I enjoy," "I believe."
That this self is not available for display as we live it and know it, but must
be given openings onto the world--a ritual, a bet, a twitch. That these
openings are often most effective when they take the form of another person,
whatever this may suggest about unhealthy dependencies and failures of self
actualization. That this private self requires an observing gaze in order to
exist, that this gaze may be predatory, that we may finally be unable to tell
who is seeing us, who is seeing themselves by means of us, who is simply
mocking.
There's something to admire in Not Another Teen Movie, in its frantic, breathless, baldly
declarative scope. Like it knew it could never happen again and had to speak an
entire genre at once, destroy an edifice of cute and quirk in one blast and
leave time in the exhale for something like a real, necessary claim. There's a
version of this, my writing, that gets everything at one go, that moves deftly
from close reading to symptomatic analysis, that reveals the right things and
hides the unchecked, uncertain gel pen awkwardness of performing myself, all
while being formally intriguing, unpretentious, and finally creating an
interest in Me, without ever giving the impression that this is what I wanted.
That version, of course, doesn't happen. Balancing my needs with leaving room
for unaccountable desires from without, spending too long and saying too
little. Not Another Girl Poet: the fear of not being prickly enough, of being
too easily consumed and finally dismissed as just bleeding out for an audience.
But what She's All Thatputs out,
what's missing from so many high school movies after they abandoned themselves
to the snarky scream of Not Another,
is that the gesture, even though the circumstances fall away, can be repeated.
Megan Boatright is
from the Florida panhandle, currently a doctoral student at the University of
Chicago in comparative literature working in critical animal studies. Her work
has appeared in ditch, Short, Fast and Deadly, Word For/Word, flashquake, and Kaleidotrope. She has written for cracked.com under the name Megan B. and lives/works
with her cat, Sophie.
