School Ties

School Ties is a film that covers the complexities of both class identifictation/segregation as well as religious identification/segregation. It is a movie that outlines the lives of boys in a prestegious catholic prep school and how everythings seems to go so well until they discover that one of their teammates, their starting quarterback, is not like them. He is not only Jewish, which contradicts everything the school is about, but he is also lower to middle class which differs from the socio-economic backgrounds of the other kids around him. This bring about an interesting dilemna. We notice that once the main characters religious and economic identity is discovered, he is instantly cast out as a heretic, regardless of being the guy everyone loved before this knowledge surfaced. Even the girl he was dating, who went to a neighboring all-girl prep school nearby cast him out when she found out "who he really was". She felt betrayed and stupid for having had feelings for a poor jew. Nothing else mattered to these people excpet for class and religion. If you weren't like them, then you weren't wanted, almost as if they were afraid to confront the diversities of other people, for then they would have to look at themselves and realize how horrible they really were.

We see a few common archetypes in this film which relate to characters we see in many other films. The main character played by Brendan Fraser is a jewish athlete recruited by the prep school for his athletic ability. The school is aware of his religion and urges him to hide it, just to keep things on an even keel. He agrees, but being the good, moral character he is, he still wheres his star, and practices his customs in secret. This is so the audience respects him and therefore roots for him in the end as the common good guy who comes out on top. The antagonist is played by Matt Damon who also attends the school. He is the opposite of the main character. He is catholic, from a wealthy family, and is left in the shadow of the main characters success. One can already predict this will lead to the cliche clashing of these two characters which it inevitably does.