Loved how the peace of the first couple of minutes is shattered when that stationary shot of the hallway dissolves into decay and 'Welcome to the Jungle' comes up.
Powerful scene and also so sad.
I was appalled by the shot in which we see a teachers head being slammed into the floor repeatedly. All the teacher did was try to stop a fight.
shareI was appalled by the shot in which we see a teachers head being slammed into the floor repeatedly. All the teacher did was try to stop a fight.
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I was also very much appalled by that scene too. That was just horrifying and sick. Seriously.......I don't know how people can get pleasure out of injuring another person. I hope that teacher was ok and didn't come out with too much damage.
just remember we are all not like that! (black people) a lot of those kids were decent and just trying to survive, but they weren't going to be able to do much about it because of the violent ones
shareOf course. It was just the way the film went overboard with the violence that at that time I felt that way.
shareI remember the first time I saw it, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, from the attack in the bathroom to the injuring of the teacher. And considering it was being done by blacks, I was saying to myself, "Well, that's black people for you! Drug addicts, troublemakers, and rapists."
Its the truth (sometimes).
I am only 19, and growing up in DC.
And from my view point, the black community in these younger schools has gotten better over the years, but when I was going to these neighborhood schools, things were very harsh.
Ghettos where everywhere, and hood fights always seem to break out. It still like this today, but seem mostly in the high schools now rather then the younger schools.
Young Black people, that don't ever seem to give a crap about our history, and what it took to get to the point now, where we can go to a decent school, to get a education.
My point is that the original poster thinks that the behavior is natural to Black people. I'm almost 40, so I'm about twice your age, and I've seen alot in our community. But the stuff that happens in White communities is mostly kept quiet.
share"I was appalled by the shot in which we see a teachers head being slammed into the floor repeatedly. All the teacher did was try to stop a fight."
I know! That part was very disturbing.
That teacher might have gotten brain damage from that!
I also felt sorry for that poor girl who got her clothes stolen in the bathroom.
And then a guy started harassing the teacher who was comforting her!
Hooligans (the kids).
All I can say is I hope that poor kid didn't suffocate in that locker :(.
Glad I didn't go to that school...I would have been killed!
-Amanda
"She will remember your heart when men are fairy tales in storybooks written by rabbits"
Come on you people can't possibly believe inner city schools are like this scene. I went to an inner city school that had a bad rep and things like drugs being sold openly and teachers getting hit happened but that opening was beyond over the top. I mean its not as if there is really a school were a person is almost beaten to death every second as that clip shows, things like this happen then the cops show up and things calm down. I mean even prisons have moments of calm. I was laughing when I saw one student huddled in the corner while EVERY single other student was going nuts. Not every student in the inner city is a gangster there are gangsters that go to inner city schools but not every student is there to get in trouble. There are normal people at these schools as well yet reading these boards shows how little some people know about the inner city school system.
shareI went to an inner city high school in Pittsburgh my Freshman year in the late 70's. One day three students cut class and went behind the school and smoked some PCP, and two of the kids thought it would be cool to set the third kid on fire. Another time a student beat up a teacher and the teacher wound up losing an eye. Another cool tactic was to spray lighter fluid into a kid's locker and set it on fire; that happened once a month or so, and they never caught the student who was doing this.
My family relocated to South Carolina for my senior year of high school, and at my school there a teacher was showing a film to his class and there was a knock on his door. He opened it up and a student stabbed him in the chest with a butcher knife and he died an hour or so later in emergency surgery. It isn't just the big city urban schools where this kind of violence happened.
I wonder what did you think of the opening scene was that accurate to the schools you went to?
shareI think the Eastside High as depicted in the movie was much worse than the schools I attended. For one thing, the schools I went to would have hired a full time painter just to keep the graffiti off the interior walls.
The high school I attended in Pittsburgh, Taylor Allderdice, was considered the most prestigious of the Pittsburgh city high schools as it was located in Squirrel Hill, which was, and still is, one of the better areas of the city. The other dozen or so high schools in the city limits of Pittsburgh were much worse off; I would imagine the worst of them were probably pretty close to Eastside High.
This was set in the 80's buddy. It was a much different place than how it is now.
They wanted to highlight a day where things were out of control. Did things go into full riot on a single day? No. But the dysfunction shown in the school was very much real. The school was filled with gangs and thugs and kids had no options, no way to escape.
This was very much real and I'll just say it again..this was set in the 80's not the 2000's buddy. It was exaggerated but these things did happen. People like Sams who wasn't even a horrible kid, he wasn't a gangbanger or bully but still he was headed down the wrong path with no direction. There were many kids like that at Eastside, and Clark inspired them.
I didn't go to high school in the 2000's buudy so you can stop being patronizing. The fact that it was so exaggerated yet many on this thread can't tell was unnerving
shareWhen I first watched the opening minutes of this movie a few months ago --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldYNQNStcOI
-- I seriously thought that a Hell's Angels biker gang was going to cruise down the hallways of this high school! This sh-t was SOOO over the top!!!
Religion should be made fun of. If I believed that stuff, I'd keep it to myself. -Larry David
That was twenty years ago, okay? Today I don't believe all that. It was just the way the blacks were being presented that fed my rage at the time.
share
The opening shots were brilliant, and the song fit perfectly into them. I've seen a school get almost that bad (my middle school).
A school is only as good as the people running it. If there is no discipline, that is what happens.
One of my favorite professors, a black man himself, shocked a class by saying how he feared a lot of young black people and agreed with the assessment of many of them by some people.
His statement was "What, I'm supposed to defend someone just because I'M black?! Nope. A criminal is a criminal, no matter what color you are."
I agree. I've CERTAINLY seen more than my share of white trash, you better believe it. I'm not going to defend them just because they're white.
That said, as to the movie, that teacher scene is one of the most violent I've seen! I'm surprised the man wasn't killed! He did nothing wrong, he was trying to both help someone and do his job! But what was almost as shocking was the scene where the kid was put in the locker, and the janitor JUST IGNORES his cries for help!
Wasn't the kid who was put in there the same kid that cries to Mr. Clark about getting another chance?
"I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus."
"Didn't he discover America?"
"Penfold, shush."
According to my readings, that guy that got his head bashed in was the principal before Joe Clark arrived. In real life he did get his head bashed in when he tried to defend a student from some bullies as depicted in the film. He did suffer some brain damage from that attack.
I don't see how anyone can blame Joe for making sure that the same thing didn't happen to him when he became principal.
Exactly. "They used to call me Crazy Joe, NOW, they can call me BAT-man!" Exactly!
shareI have to agree its something about that scene each time I watch this movie that opening song "welcome to the jungle" come on you just know disaster is going to strike. That one with the teacher getting his head bashed in on the ground.....ouch I felt that as I was watching the movie. Poor guy had to be hooked to an IV was he was being wheeled out.
That one scene with the one female and her blouse being ripped off....now that wasn't necessary I thought those girls was just going to dot her eyes or something but rip her blouse off.
I'm 30 years old now and I think God my dad was in the Air Force and me and my younger brother and sister who are 6&7 years younger than me had the chance to go to great schools. When we got back to the states in 2001 and I went to school in Killeen Texas the first day of school I saw a fight break out. That was school was mostly blacks. I went to that school for about 2 days. Then I went to the school on base at Fort Hood, Texas. In Camilla, GA I had the chance to go to that high school for a couple of weeks and Mitchell Baker High School is a mostly black school also, even the elementry school and middle school is mostly black. It wasn't so bad when I was going especially to the elementry school back in the early 90's. Because then teachers used to paddle students of they got out of line.
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Totally agree. Amazing opening scene though
shareI first saw that movie when I was like, 10. That was probably too violent of a sequence for anyone my age back then. Even though the movie tapered off as it went on, that was still a lot of violence to start a movie.
Wasn't Sams the kid shoved into the locker? Someone was worried about him suffocating in there. Well, I think he made out OK :-). The locker should've had vents in it anyway, so if he kicked and screamed long enough help should've came. OR he could've calmed the hell down and simply try to open the locker from the inside (the turnstile is uncovered in some lockers, making it possible to flip open on the inside).
When I first watched the opening minutes of this movie a few months ago --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldYNQNStcOI
-- I seriously thought that a Hell's Angels biker gang was going to cruise down the hallways of this high school! This sh-t was beyond over the top!!!
Religion should be made fun of. If I believed that stuff, I'd keep it to myself. -Larry David
I thought the security guard ignoring the kid screaming inside the locker was a bit over the top.
Who does that? I've seen teachers ignore kids getting slapped or even in a fight.
But screaming inside a locker that they cannot breathe?! Not even glancing over?
"I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus."
"Didn't he discover America?"
"Penfold, shush."