Frederick Wiseman High School Analysis

From the opening scene of Frederick Wiseman’s High School, the reader is drawn back

into the feelings and environment of their own high school experience. The establishing shot of

Northeast High School conjures images of schools that could easily still be in service today.

Through the cinéma vérité style used by Wiseman, we are unflinchingly shown all aspects of life

at Northeast High, both good and bad. Most striking, though, at Northeast High is the constant

oppression of students by the administration. Repetition of seemingly meaningless work, rules,

regulations, and hardened administrators all function towards keeping the students down and in

line.

This idea of authority on film is first manifest in the introduction of the disciplinarian,
She even claims that he “was not a high academic student,

(and) he was average or sub average in many ways.” However, the interventions of a few of

the school’s teachers were able to transform his life, as if to say if it weren’t for the oppressive

faculty and curriculum, this student would be a failure.

One striking aspect of this film is its timelessness. As stated earlier, Northeast High

looks exactly like a number of high schools still in function today, and the tactics of discipline

are practically unchanged. Also, many of the experiences of boredom, banality, and oppression

are universal among all high schools, even among people who had largely positive high school

experiences.

These sorts of observations about the school could quite possibly have only been

obtained through the cinéma vérité style, and Wiseman has presented an unbiased view of

high school in America. Through this direct cinema tactic, the viewer is able to draw his own

conclusions about the tactics of Northeast High: are its methods of discipline effective