Half Nelson and Dialectics‪.‬

For years, I have been writing about what I call "school films," which I define as films that are in some way, even incidentally, about a teacher or a student. Most of the films that comprise the school film genre are set in the suburbs (or sometimes in small towns) and feature middle and upper middle class White students as the main characters. In these films, teachers are typically very minor characters (usually comical figures), if any teachers appear at all. As I have explained elsewhere (Trier, 2001), these suburban school films are very diverse in terms of genre, ranging from light-hearted romances (Pretty in Pink), fluff comedies (Clueless), Pygmalion stories (She's All That), cult classics (/ Was a Teenage Werewolf), celebratory youth-rebellion movies (Pump Up the Volume, Dazed and Confused), supernatural thrillers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Carrie), sci-fi tales (Disturbing Behavior, The Faculty ), dark-humor comedies (Heathers, Pretty Persuasion), spoofs (High School, Not Another Teenage Movie), and a few serious accounts of violence committed in schools (Elephant). The other main subgenre of school films, comprised of far fewer films than the suburban school film subgenre, features an educator in the main role. Though a few films have been made about principals--the most popular of which is Lean on Me--most of these films are about teachers. And among these films, most are about teachers who work in inner city schools (blockbuster exceptions are Mr. Holland's Opus and Dead Poets Society, which take place, respectively, in a suburban high school and a private school catering to White students from wealthy families). The classics of this subgenre of inner city school films about teachers are Blackboard Jungle; To Sir, with Love; and Up the Down Staircase. Blockbusters from the 1980s and 1990s include Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds. And the most recent popular addition to this subgenre is Freedom Writers.