High School Musical II

Tweens cope with cliques, impending adulthood, mega-fame

A A A Comments (1) By Mordechai Shinefield Tuesday, Aug 14 2007

Disney doesn't care what I think about this—unloading four million copies of the original High School Musical's aggressive teen-pop soundtrack (easily making it the top-selling album of 2006) earned them the right to critical indifference. That's typical when your audience is almost entirely tweens who found the made-for-TV flick turned cultural phenomenon, with its light high school transgressions, cathartic. Building drama around cliques and basketball games rather than drugs and violence is the kind of trick that justifies Baudrillard's witty critique of Disney: "Here is now the hallucination of the real in its ideal and simplified version."

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High School Musical II
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So while Disney may not care what I think, I—along with the many other adults (not to mention parents) who bought HSM—care what Disney thinks, and what Disney makes kids think. This sequel largely makes them think about fame. Which is understandable, given the franchise's ascending stars: Zac Efron acted in Hairspray last month and now grins from the cover of Rolling Stone, while Ashley Tisdale's dance-pop album crashed the charts in February. Now she satirizes a kind of tabloid decadence: "Fetch me my Jimmy Choo flip-flops," she demands on "Fabulous."

So the ubiquity of Disney's budding stars has a lot to do with the meaning of HSM II, but more universal themes remain. The original drew a number of Greasecomparisons, but this one's far closer to The Fantastiks—a story about young adult love deepened and tempered by life. Nothing here is as wistful as that musical's "Try to Remember," but the HSM II breakup duet "Gotta Go My Own Way" has all the angst of children wincing their way into the world: "I just don't belong here," Vanessa Anne Hudgens sings, pained. As Disney's stars get older and famous, the songs necessarily reflect that. It's still a "hallucination of the real," but this reality feels more pained and adult than ever. Catchy dance tracks can't obscure the archetypal moral of High School Musical: Growing up is hard.

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Adam 01/18/2008 1:31:00 PM

I lament the absence any really memorable melodies from HSM I or HSM II. The way the older writers could combine music and words was just on a higher level. It's not just a question of style. Just as in visual art, music and lyrics have standards of beauty based on symmetry and proportion. For example, "When You Wish Upon A Star," "In My Own Little Corner" or "Colors of the Wind" have really well-crafted melodies based on symmetry and proportion. HSM I has got "We're All in This Together," which is loaded which youthful exuberance - full of incisive rhythms and textures. "Stick to the Status Quo" is also a cut above the rest. But the rest are only really so-so in terms of quality. The best song in HSM II is the duet/ensemble "You are the Music in Me." Kind of catchy, but it doesn't rise to the level of artistry as some of the older songs. What's more distressing is the message that young men may be taking away from this film after they have seen it. Troy gives up a chance to get a full college SCHOLARSHIP! Did everyone forget about that? Troy acted honorably, resisting Sharpay's advances. Gabriella wasn't thinking past the summer. She was controlling. The movie ended with a terrible message for both boys and girls. It says to boys "The price you have to pay in order to be in a relationship with the beautiful girl is to subjugate yourself to her." It says to girls "Stick to your guns, ladies, because sooner or later he'll eventually cave." What about Dolly Parton's "Stand by your Man?" Real love doesn't demand that one partner sacrifice their dreams and aspirations for the other. If they are going to get married somewhere down the road, they need to think of their relationship as, not as a dominator/dominated model but rather as a CO-EQUAL PARTNERSHIP MODEL. The movie did not end that way. That's why I found it ultimately disappointing. My general impression is that the new Disney, while retaining much of the good about the old Disney, is more superficial, cheap, and tawdry. You can teach a kid "Zippity-Doo-Da" tomorrow and he'll know it. Let's say he already knows "Get'cha Head in the Game." Now 20 years pass without him hearing either song. Then ask him to sing the first line of both songs. Which is he going to recall better?