Abstract

Television

This article discusses the television program "American High," by R.J. Cutler. American High is an obsessive chronicle of the lives of fourteen upperclassmen, mostly seniors, jocks and band geeks, a pierced punk rocker, a couple of delinquents by default, no cheerleaders, at suburban Chicago's Highland Park High School. Executive producer Cutler chose Highland Park for its receptivity to his vision for the project. It's hard to imagine the blood, sweat and tears it must have taken to cut this quantity of tape into thirteen twenty-two minute episodes. But Cutler managed it. The end result is a multifarious collection of coming-into-adulthood stories that rub shoulders with one another and trip gamely over one another's limbs as they unfold side by side, week after week.