21 Jump Street

 How They Were In High School

How They Were in High School Undercover

TITLE: Watching a Movie Because it Starred Channing "Sex God" Tatum  
 
TOPIC: Interpretive Drift

SOURCE: Yesterday at 9pm at the Broadway Cinema in Eureka, I and three friends watched this hilarious movie. Laughter rang through out the relatively packed theater as the audience identified with the story which ironically details two men as they undergo interpretive drift and come to realize the affects of it is messing with their friendship.

RELATION: The movie synopsis is
"In the action-comedy 21 Jump Street, Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) are more than ready to leave their adolescent problems behind. Joining the police force and the secret Jump Street unit, they use their youthful appearances to go undercover in a local high school. As they trade in their guns and badges for backpacks, Schmidt and Jenko risk their lives to investigate a violent and dangerous drug ring. But they find that high school is nothing like they left it just a few years earlier - and neither expects that they will have to confront the terror and anxiety of being a teenager again and all the issues they thought they had left behind."
The movie is about them adjusting to the new culture of high schoolers which demonstrates “the slow, often unacknowledged shift in someone’s manner of interpreting events as he or she becomes involved with a particular activity.” RR Chapter 4 p. 94-95


DESCRIPTION: My friend Monica had been begging me to go see the movie Mirror Mirror for a couple of weeks now and I was pretty game to watch it. However, my boyfriend and our friend Tyler didn't share Monica's sentiments and we ended up seeing 21 Jump Street instead. I was looking forward to it because I love Channing Tatum and I have been itching to see a good comedy. We got our tickets, popcorn, and extra large ICEE and hightailed it to the theater where there was a bit of a crowd already. We sat near the front and waited for the Previews to come on. I have often found that Previews are more entertaining than movies, and more often than not better than the actual movies they advertise. The Previews were so good it got me pumped for the movie and I was not disappointed. The movie was amazing. Channing Tatum was ever handsome but Dave Franco even gave him a run for my heart. But what bugged me was how during the entire movie I would recognize cultural anthropology terms. One that kept coming up for this movie was "interpretive drift". As the movie progressed, the characters played by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill begin morphing into high school stereotypes to match their respective classes and social circles.This goes unacknowledged until the climatic point of the movie where it causes severe conflict in their relationship.


COMMENTARY/ANALYSIS: The movie was a classic case study of interpretive drift used for entertainment purposes. Through my experience in Cultural Anthropology I can now identify this. As a result of this movie, I can see how this applies in my life as well. In high school I underwent interpretive drift. I started out a little book worm. Then I joined Color Guard and became a bit of a band geek. I began to observe the world differently and act differently. I like to think for the better because I gained a lot of confidence and interpersonal skills. But then college created an entirely new view of the world for me and I underwent interpretive drift again.