Since I am the father of two members of the target demographic, I have just been to the cinema in Manhattan to see Walt Disney’s High School Musical 3. I quite enjoyed it (as did the demo) but the main thing that struck me as was how apposite it was to Barack Obama’s election.
A summary of the plot: a multi-racial bunch of kids at a high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, put on a musical, indulge in innocent romance and plan to go off to college. The end.
Troy Bolton, the basketball-playing hero, is white. Gabriella Montez, his girlfriend and the leading lady, is Hispanic. His best friend, Chad Danforth, is black, as is Chad’s girlfriend Taylor McKessie, who is going to Yale to study political science and intends to become the US president.
They are, in other words, a perfect representation of the amiable multi-racial fantasy of many youth films in which the realities of discrimination do not intrude. They make the audience feel good about itself by presenting a sanitised version of reality.
But hold on. For the first time this week, Taylor McKessie’s vow to become president suddenly seems like a plausible ambition for a young black woman, particularly one who is going to an Ivy League university – Michelle Obama went to Princeton.
More to the point, the action takes place in New Mexico, which is one of the trio of south-western states that Mr Obama captured to add to “blue states” in the east and west. He plucked New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada out of the “red state” middle of the US.
Mr Obama actually won Albuquerque pretty easily, as these election results from Bernalillo County, which includes the city, show.
It is particularly significant because New Mexico is among the “sunbelt” states that have experienced rapid population growth compared with “rustbelt” states such as Ohio and Indiana. Indeed, Albuquerque ranks as one of fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the US.
Albuquerque is also a young city – 66 per cent of the population was under the age of 44 in the 2000 census – and is racially mixed. Although relatively few African-Americans live there – about three per cent of the population is black – there is a large Latino community. Just under 40 per cent of the population was Latino or Hispanic in 2000.
Disney has a tradition of mythologising America in its theme parks and films – from the “Main Street USA” section of Disneyland to High School Musical itself. By setting High School Musical in Albuquerque, it has updated the image of the typical US high school.
Some Republicans unwisely talked during the election about the “real America” – referring to small towns in states such as Pennsylvania full of middle-aged white voters. But Mr Obama won by not only capturing that state but by appealing to the younger multi-racial voters of New Mexico.
It seems that Disney is better at defining “real America” than the Republican party.
