movies/tv Why is middle school such an under-used setting?

[TheMisterManGuy 344]

If there's a show aimed at a young audience on TV that takes place in school, chances are it's going to be High School. High School may be one of the most overused settings in TV, and in kid shows, it's often portrayed as the best years of a kid's life. But what about Middle School, that awkward stage in between elementary and high school. If high school is considered the peek of adolescence, middle school is probably the weird beginning. But looking at a list of shows with middle school settings on Wikipedia remind me just how underused of a setting it is. If and when a Jr. High setting is used, it's often butchered and sanitized to target an audience much younger. Granted you can say a similar thing about High School settings, but High School is a setting that's used even outside kid shows. There's rarely a show or movie that actually portrays a realistic middle school setting. The closest thing we can probably get is anime, but middle school in Japan is treated much closer to high school in America than in the US from what I've heard. So why is middle school such an underused setting, is it because it's often considered the worst years of your life (which would actually make sense? Is it because America doesn't want to portray 12-13-14 year olds as actual 12-14 year olds who swear and talk about sex? So what is it?

[A Black Circle 1,586]

Nobody wants to remember those days.

 

Nobody.

[Durandal 623]

Because Middle School is this weird transitional phase between Elementary and High School that no one liked or even remembered.

 

It's bad enough that so much crap is set in high school, we don't need the genre even more crowded.

[Kamii 595]

Being one of the most awkward times of a person's life, I think people just don't want to include that setting in shows or movies because of how forgetful those years are.

[Snake 516]

Because Middle School is absolutely terrible. Seriously. I wouldn't WANT a show to take place in Middle School.

[1111 1,284]

High school has more appeal to younger and older kids, even middle school kids don't want to watch that. plus middle school isn't that bad.

[AnArtisticPontato 91]

it might a bit more difficult to do because of the fact that it is a transitional phase. I think the movie "Stand By Me" portrays kids in middle school pretty well, swearing and talking about bust sizes yet also keeping the innocence of a grade school kid. High school is an easier setting to use because you can just kinda slap a few stereotypes in and you're set. A character in middle school would require a few more factors and more thought to be put into their personality.

[Lucky Shot 232]

Middle school is superfluous and isn't globally relatable. It's largely a Western phenomenon, whereas a setting in a high school is easily understandable by say, Japanese audiences.

 

Even if the setting were a middle school, chances are they would just call it a high school in international localization anyway. There's no great difference between the two. Why bother with the duplicity?

[LunaLover92 338]

Nobody wants to remember those days.

 

Nobody.

Amen to that!, middle school is just hell on earth!

[Hocus Pocus 636]

As a general rule, I prefer to pretend I didn't exist until around my junior year.

 

Most people I've met that don't cringe when they think about their socially awkward middle school selves have not yet matured out of having a middle school mindset, it's not really a time I want to have ever happened.

Edited November 12, 2015 by Hocus Pocus

[Silver Letter 1,832]

I don't know. It could be that those children aren't cute anymore but not mature either. Maybe because mainstream media can't hire adults to play them like they do for high school age characters.

Edited November 12, 2015 by Silver Letter

[Megas 27,743]

Most creators probably feel late elementry/early high hit sweet spots for whatever audience they're aiming for.

 

Also because most people hated middle school

Edited November 12, 2015 by Megas75

[cmarston1 5,959]

Because nobody cares about or remembers middle school.

[TheMisterManGuy 344]

it might a bit more difficult to do because of the fact that it is a transitional phase. I think the movie "Stand By Me" portrays kids in middle school pretty well, swearing and talking about bust sizes yet also keeping the innocence of a grade school kid. High school is an easier setting to use because you can just kinda slap a few stereotypes in and you're set. A character in middle school would require a few more factors and more thought to be put into their personality.

There's also a movie called Thirteen, which is about a 13 year old girl who hangs out with the popular girl in her grade and essentially becomes corrupted by her. I think a middle school setting can be used pretty well to illustrate the trials and tribulations of the growing pains of the onset of teenhood. The reason people don't really take advantage of that I think is 

 

A.) Middle School is an akward time most people like to forget

 

B.) Parents may not feel comfortable with having their kids see 13/14 year old kids acting like actual 13/14 year olds. Which by the way, whenever a show does actually take place in middle school, the students are suddenly written likey they're 4th graders, or (in a few cases) are written like mini-high schoolers, dumbed down for younger kids.

Edited November 13, 2015 by TheMisterManGuy

[Pulse Wave 44]

If and when a Jr. High setting is used, it's often butchered and sanitized to target an audience much younger.

Probably because hardly anyone except for Disney has ever used such a setting.

 

First, Disney bought Doug from Nickelodeon after its four-season run was over because they wanted to cash in on its immense success on Nick. In the Nick show, Doug is a sixth-grader, but with the show ended his sixth grade and thus his time at elementary school. If Disney wanted to continue this franchise — which they did —, they had to send him to middle school as a seventh-grader. Which is what they did. Now he has to deal with the older and seemingly cooler eighth-graders, beginning puberty and general coming-of-age. Although the old Nick Doug fans were infuriated about the many changes Disney did on the setting, the five new seasons were somewhat successful. Then again, while Doug has aged by about one year, his original audience has aged by four years since the premiere on Nick.

 

Since The Brand Spanking New Doug didn't bomb completely, and since Disney hadn't made an animated show for girls, they made a second show with a middle school setting about a seventh-grader, this time for a female audience and with a protagonist who tries to be cool instead of staying boringly average (and with a younger sibling who's an actually cool sk8r instead of an older sibling who's a Shakespeare-worshipping beatnik): Pepper Ann.

 

Years later, Disney made yet another show about seventh-graders: the extremely popular The Weekenders. Why The Weekenders? Well, they probably didn't want to show the protagonists at school. Instead, each episode is one weekend. Even more than in Doug and Pepper Ann, the characters hardly act their age. At least the shiptease among the protagonists was cut down a lot.

[TheMisterManGuy 344]

Probably because hardly anyone except for Disney has ever used such a setting.First, Disney bought Doug from Nickelodeon after its four-season run was over because they wanted to cash in on its immense success on Nick. In the Nick show, Doug is a sixth-grader, but with the show ended his sixth grade and thus his time at elementary school. If Disney wanted to continue this franchise — which they did —, they had to send him to middle school as a seventh-grader. Which is what they did. Now he has to deal with the older and seemingly cooler eighth-graders, beginning puberty and general coming-of-age. Although the old Nick Doug fans were infuriated about the many changes Disney did on the setting, the five new seasons were somewhat successful. Then again, while Doug has aged by about one year, his original audience has aged by four years since the premiere on Nick.Since The Brand Spanking New Doug didn't bomb completely, and since Disney hadn't made an animated show for girls, they made a second show with a middle school setting about a seventh-grader, this time for a female audience and with a protagonist who tries to be cool instead of staying boringly average (and with a younger sibling who's an actually cool sk8r instead of an older sibling who's a Shakespeare-worshipping beatnik): Pepper Ann.Years later, Disney made yet another show about seventh-graders: the extremely popular The Weekenders. Why The Weekenders? Well, they probably didn't want to show the protagonists at school. Instead, each episode is one weekend. Even more than in Doug and Pepper Ann, the characters hardly act their age. At least the shiptease among the protagonists was cut down a lot.

And who could forget Lizze McGuire? Yet another show about a seventh grader trying to be popular. In all seriousness, it wasn't just Disney who used that setting, Nickelodeon's The Secret World of Alex Mac had a middle school protagonist, as did other Nick shows like Ned's Declassified, As Told by Ginger, and UnFabulous.

 

The thing is, when a middle school setting is used, it always has feels like it has to be heavily restricted. When Lizze McGuire first premired, it was primarily targeting a slightly older demographic than the 6-11 year old audience of the OSM shows, hence why the 7th graders that show were a year older than the ones in the OSM shows. Even then, it had to be sanitized. Granted the show later became part of OSM during the block's last year or so, but it wasn't originally. What I'm saying is that, nobody seem to have the balls to target an actual teen/ young adult audience with a middle school setting. Granted I can kind of see why, high schoolers are more mature and easier to write than a bunch of 13 year olds. But the only middle school based show that can be edgy is As Told by Ginger, and even that show had to be shackeled with a TV-Y7.

Edited January 1, 2016 by TheMisterManGuy

[cider float 2,538]

I think there are some sitcoms or something that meander on Elementary and Middle School.