By most people's standards, a Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM) is a strange, unceremonious, and--I don't know--maybe insulting? way to begin a project highlighting female directors. For me, that's decidedly not the case. Despite my love of all things Sundance-savvy, Cannes-ready, and Oscar-baity, media targeted at preteens remain more savory feast than guilty indulgence. The tastiness is myriad:
1) These are the messages shaping realities and possibilities for young people tomorrow. This is a forum with the dramatic potentiality to inspire a future world that is empathetic, socially conscious, prepared to navigate the world relationally, and armed with a toolbelt for self-love. It matters.
2) It's nostalgic, bringing me back to a time of intense self-discovery and exciting possibility. Movies were how I discovered realities beyond what my small-town had to offer: worlds where I could be gay, could have none-white friends, could find alternative expressions of masculinity, could find value in myself. My local rental store not only introduced me to the world outside my town--a window to an existing world--but it created a world within my town that didn't exist before. It brought the outside in and it redefined what the inside was.
3) I love it, and it totally does it for me. Especially as someone who feels deeply but struggles to show that, I respond well to melodrama and broad strokes. I soak up the pulpiness and revel in simple, plain approaches to getting at complex truths. Teen and pre-teen media communicate to me in a way that's fun, accessible, powerful, and meaningful. I'm all about it.
Now post-High School Musical DCOMs are often very similar beasts. A musical-component to maximize merchandising and franchise potential. A cast that's racially diverse, but ethnically ambiguous, and that operates in a world where race doesn't matter and is essentially invisible (which is, you know, problematic). A minor character or cameo role who is either overweight or visibly disabled, and one can assume that this is something that a genuine and caring producer fought hard for to ensure the casting was as diverse as possible and that every child watching could find someone to identify with. And, as always, a central message of being fiercely yourself, or sometimes less successfully, being "an individual" (which is more archetype than authenticity).
Lemonade Mouth is rockin' all this necessary accoutrement, but it goes several steps further. On the assumption that most of you haven't seen and won't be seeing this, I'll provide a brief synopsis, then get into all the ways the movies goes right.
LM starts out as The Breakfast Club with 5 very different high school students, all struggling in some capacity to find a place or use their voice, meeting in detention and changing each other's lives.
There's Stella, the rebel-rouser and Hot Topic anarchist who feels out of place in her family of scientific geniuses.
Wen, a doofy-yet-brooding Anthony Michael Hall, who can't even about the fact his father is preparing to marry a 28-year-old woman. He gets to rap with respectable flow.
Olivia, shy and invisible and cutoff from social interaction because her mother has passed and her father (we learn in an inconsequential third act reveal) is in prison. Guess what, guys? She finds her voice! And, honestly, it's one of the better voices to be churned out of the Disney Channel Machine. I'd listen to Bridgit Mendler, Disney darling who plays Olivia, cover Avril Lavigne songs any day of the week. It is worth mentioning that Olivia gets detention because she's discovered sitting alone in the janitor's closet reading "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" by Emily Dickinson. Disney just picked up the eating-your-lunch-in-the-bathroom-stall-because-no-one-would-sit-with-you-in-the-cafeteria mic and dropped the fuck out of it.
We also have Mo, beautiful daughter of Indian immigrants, who just wants to be a teenage girl, but her father expects a model of woman that won't allow it.
And Charlie, who feels trapped and unnoticed in the shadow of his soccer-prodigy brother. Charlie is also REALLY hot. I'm pretty sure he was not 18 when this movie was made, but he is now, so I think we have to talk about it. Look at Charlie smolder. Look at Charlie smile! He can even charmingly pull off the lipbite thing.Less successful at having a popcorn kernel lodged in his throat but staying pretty serene about. Least appealing as the dead offspring of a Criss Angel, Jack White, The Crow threesome.
Anyway, the kids meet in detention where they organically transition into performing music together through environmental noises like jangling keys, spray bottles, and dripping water a la Cell Block Tango. They form a band to compete in a competition where the winner gets a record deal because that's the plot of any movie worth watching. Of course, there's a rival band who presents obstacles and shenanigans. Of course the bandmates experience a journey of self-discovery and encounter struggles they are now prepared to weather thanks to friendship and the power of being voiced. More unexpectedly, the band creates a social movement that exists well beyond themselves and sort of orchestrates a baby revolt against capitalism that, like most revolts against capitalism, is resolved through a well-intentioned and immediately beneficial compromise with capitalism.
So, let's discuss the things:
1) Guys, like I said, there is coded class warfare and coded class revolution going on here. In Disney movies, everyone's rich, even the people who are poor (unless they're an orphan? I think that's the formula). So visible, literal class warfare is out of the question. Instead, the school is divided into haves and have-nots along fairly conventional high school lines. The jocks and cheerleaders are in power; the arts kids and nerds are literally all relegated to the basement and identify as "the subterranean." The jocks/cheerleaders have the ear and the heart of the school principal/dictator, and the backing of corporate sponsor "Turbo Blast," Disney's douchey gatorade. The subterranean wave a different banner, the totes East German Mel's Lemonade, a dingy vending machine that the school plans to remove from their basement-ghetto. Lemonade--and the band's music--becomes a stand in for all things counterculture, bohemian, and queer. The LM kids stage a revolt against the status quo and the powers that be both through their music-- calling for all people to stand up, be heard, and fight against their oppressors--in an act of civil disobedience where they protest the removal of the Lemonade vending machine and are ARRESTED-- and by rallying their fans to their cause. The Lemonade Revolution is resolved Deus Ex Machina style when Stella meets Mel (of Mel's Lemonade) at a wedding and convinces him to build a top-dollar arts wing for the school. Money saves the day! And the revolution and the fight against the man lives on only in song, just as it does for most of us lazy socialists.
Still, you have to wonder if Disney temporarily wielded a soft-spot for sticking it to the capitalist machine. Lemonade Mouth was cable's No. 1 original movie in 2011 with 6 million viewers of it's premiere (7 million with DVR) and had all the necessary elements for a franchise. But Disney ultimately decided against making a sequel because they felt the story was complete and didn't see the point of shooting a second film just to make a little money. That's such a Mel's Lemonade thing to do!
2) I'm all about the yin and yang of Lemonade Mouth and their also beverage-named rival, Mudslide Crush. On the surface, the two bands have oppositional messages. Lemonade Mouth sings songs of self-love and self-celebration, friendship, and standing for what you believe in. Mudslide Crush serves up a lot of douchebag swagger songs about having hot girlfriends, nice cars, and making everyone jealous of their superiority. But it's easy to see Mudslide Crush's message as the insecure brother of Lemonade Mouth's... both bands promote self-celebration, but MC cynically assumes self-worth must be proven and it must come at the expense of others. What's interesting about the tone of the piece is we're not supposed to hate Mudslide Crush; they're meant to be musically impressive and their swagger is mad sexy, has great appeal. The director seems to trust her audience will ultimately be drawn to the more authentic and more loving expression, without forcing them in that direction.
3) Mo's story line should be shared and discussed with any pre-teen or teenager you know. It's empowering and it's important. She is in a relationship with a potentially controlling partner but she never acquiesces to him or silences herself around him. She maintains and insists upon her identity within the relationship, negotiates power, and stands up for herself against her partner. As she navigates relationship challenges, including potential infidelity, she puts herself first, asks for what she wants, and through the power of communication is able to make her relationship work. You do not see this happen in depictions of high school girl's relationships in children's movies, especially on the Disney Chanel.
4) More enthralling about Mo's story line is her not-relationship with Charlie. Charlie has a crush on Mo. He is sweet to her. He listens to her when she needs it, fights for her when she needs it, and shows remarkable respect for her boundaries as she navigates a confusing, and briefly failing, relationship. In any of a number of different movies, Charlie-- sweet, loving, right-in-front-of-her-eyes Charlie-- would have gotten the girl because of his patience and friendliness. One can imagine a scenario where Charlie feels entitled to her after all he's been through for her. But ultimately, he professes his crush, she tells him she only sees him as a friend, and Charlie manages to move on and maintain his friendship with Mo. Guys, THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN EVEN IN GROWN-UP FILMS. Men still bitch about being friend-zoned and assume being nice to a girl entitles them to romance and sex. What an awesome message to send to boys and girls alike. That you might have a crush on someone, and they might not like you back, and you have to move on. That being a good friend should be about being a good friend, not about you trying to get something out of the other person. That you don't owe anyone anything just because they're kind to you. MIND BLOWN, Y'ALL.
5) The movie just hits me in a sweet spot with all its simple truths and complicated lessons. Do you remember how friends were everything in high school? How they were your 3rd and 8th arms, how they spent their hours protecting and warming your heart? That's in the Lemonade Mouth recipe. Or remember what it feels like when you think you've just miserably failed and your mom tells you she loves you and she's proud of you? TEARS FOR DAYS. And do you remember how scary it was to stand up to dad? Or to your best friend? Or to your boyfriend? Or to your past? The kids here develop the capacity to face those closest to them, a skill we're all still trying to hone. And I'm glad there's a movie out there that tells kids to love themselves, to speak their minds, to fight for what they believe in, but to be kind along the way. All things I'm still learning, too.
6) The film was an adaptation of a young-adult novel by Mark Peter Hughes that seems to have contained more reality and grittiness. Hughes characters' struggle with body image, death, sex, and abandonment, and in more visceral ways than the film's characters navigate their problems. A more literal adaptation by a different company might have packed a greater, more honest, more relevant punch. Still, there is something moving about the Disneyization of life, not so much in its erasure of social problems and structural barriers, but in its earnest insistence that if you put your mind to it, you and your 4 closest friends might be playing at Madison Square Garden in the near future. Isn't that something we all need to believe?
And, for good measure, one last look at Charlie (Blake Michael):
SWOOOOOOOOOON!
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