Mary Jane and the Movies

I am not breaking new ground when I say that, generally speaking, high school students have always been fond of marijuana. As a high school teacher, I overhear many conversations, and, lest anyone doubt, I can attest that Mary Jane remains the same temptress to teens today that she has been to all generations previous.

That said, I have learned something new this year regarding teens and toking, and it’s a lesson to which Hollywood executives ought to pay attention.

I began this school year by asking my students to tell me their favorite books and movies. Unsurprisingly, 90 percent of the students said they didn’t like to read and, therefore, didn’t have a favorite book.

However, when it came time to cite their favorite movies, they became energized, and they began naming titles that ranged across all genres and went as far back as, oh, about 2002.

Of the movies cited by my 140 students, only two movies from the 90s were mentioned. Ironically though, those two movies were cited more than any other.

I suppose at first glance this shouldn’t be shocking– the 90s saw the release of some truly great films. That said, the two films in question are not films like Forrest Gump or Braveheart or Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption.

Instead, the two films mentioned– and, lest you forget: the two films most cited– were Friday and Half Baked.

In fact, 13 of my 140 students told me that Friday was their favorite film.

I mean, really? Friday? Friday would have barely made my own top twenty list as a high school freshman when it came out, let alone would I have expected it to resonate with kids twenty years later.

But, it has.

This week alone, while teaching, I have referenced and/or quoted Jerry Maguire, A Few Good Men, Goodwill Hunting, and A River Runs Through It, and not one of them has known what I was talking about.

These were hugely popular movies from the exact same era, and yet… nothing.

However, if I mention Chris Tucker and Ice Cube in Friday, or Dave Chappelle in Half Baked, all the heads pop up and smiles stretch across their faces.

This, of course, adds further evidence to the already solid thesis that teenagers like pot, but it also proves something that, as far as I know, has not yet been considered and is something Hollywood should take note of:

When it comes to movie immortality, pot is posterity.

(Note: This is not an endorsement of marijuana or of movies about marijuana. Rather, it is simply a strange observation based on my experience with today’s teenagers.)