The slew of high school massacres in America has provoked heavier emphasis in the public discourse on reacting to bullying in school, yet the problem has yet to be entirely understood by the greater public. The crisis is re-identified and commented on by the media every time a new national story arises, yet the true catalysts for such atrocious moments are rarely identified like they are in Mad World, a grassroots independent film that, despite its cliched flaws, offers a portrayal of these catalysts.
Will is an overweight teenager who is new to town. His abusive father torments him at home, and he is further tormented at school. He befriends three other students who are treated as outcasts and are also bullied at school and home. The four retreat to drugs as their attempts to assimilate into social spheres continuously spiral out of control.
The film is awkward, but so are teenagers. It is cold and demeaning, like high school, and distances itself from the viewer. The adult talents who make up the parents, teachers, and other school personnel are unbelievably fake and stiff. However, this stiffness works in the film’s favor because the film accuses adults of much abuse, abuse which provokes the protagonists to remain outsiders and make antisocial choices. For the parents who are not abusive and do have intentions to reach out to their children, the film portrays these interactions in a forced manner that feels inauthentic. Again, this works in the film’s favor because it distances the teenagers from their parents even further. Parents didn’t have the same liberties as today’s American teenagers and can’t deal with how quickly their children are maturing. The exponential growth of change in technology and high school in general has made the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff even more relevant: Parents just don’t understand. This is more true now than ever before.
One particular idea that the film does explore is the collective idea of “positive anger” between the friends. Unaware that their new ideology is really called civil disobedience, they strive to apply this new reasoning to their home life and school with little progress. Their new mentality is halted when their home life and the social structures in and outside of school fail to accept their new ideology.
The film does not take the risks in cinematography and editing that make other films stand out. The lack of risk in the cinematography and editing is where films with similar themes succeed. Mad Worldfails to truly represent the contradictory youthfulness that these characters exude. The locations are cold and empty, obviously limited by whatever the filmmakers could muster up on a low budget. This cold emptiness within the locations matches the suburban lives these teenagers inhabit. The film also makes use of montages that egregiously misuse dissolves in an attempt to join multiple locations and mindsets together.
It has only been eight years since I left high school, and everything has changed drastically. Cell phones might as well be attached to kids’ hands from birth, allowing technology to exponentially increase the pace of a teen’s social life or even further distance them from the social scene. There is a thin line between “boys will be boys” and horrendous bullying that spirals out of control, and rarely are those in positions to spot where that thin line lies able to do anything about it. Mad World portrays many of the issues that affect a teenager in today’s environment, and if it weren’t for its tone, the film could make a lasting impression that could allow it to break out of the ancillary markets that it will undoubtedly be trapped in.
