For me the plot was totally realistic but the dancing wasn't. I relate to this film One) I used to dance ballet for years. And I auditioned for Julliard, just not for dance. and Two) And this is why the plot is totally realistic to me. When my parents got divorced, and I decided (for reasons at the time) I wanted to go live with my dad instead of my mom, he had moved into a different neighborhood which wasn't a suburb and wasn't right in the city either. Not even a "ghetto" neighborhood. Literally just a different neighborhood much closer to the city..like a bridge away into the city....and not the rich mostly white surbub I grew up in. But because he was in the area it was in had a High School that was an rough, mostly black people and white people were the minority school. And all the areas it encompassed, were basically kind of rougher neighborhoods that weren't even in the city. You had to walk through metal detectors, and there were far more black kids than white. But all the white kids were in "AP" classes or all together in most of the core studies, and only mixed usually when in gym, choir, band, etc etc. But there def were black kids in my history class and math class (I was in special ED for math) and science class. But my English class was all white kids. And sometimes white kids got taunted, but if there were any fights I ever witnessed, it wasnt some dumb racial white kid on black kid fight.. it was more just black people fighting. I think most of the white kids kept to themselves to not bring attention to themselves, or they just had friends who aren't all white and they acted kind of black. This is literally a school that was 15 mins at most away from my far too privileged suburban school in a rich neighborhood. So if in this film her dad moved to a crappy part of Chicago she'd absolutely be going to a school far more racially one sided than mine was. And definitely rougher in terms of shootings, fights, attitudes, etc. It made total sense to me. Her dancing on the other hand was not good enough at all to get into Julliard.
But it did get so hard for me, I eventually moved back with my mom to finish up school somewhere different. It severely humbled me. And made me realize just how difficult it can be to feel like the minority that doesn't quite "make sense" being there just because you're out numbered or expected to be something you're not. Everyone assumed any of white kids who went there would be rich or thought we were better? Not at all the case. The rules were definitely more strict too because of more conflict and issues which I wasn't used to and could not stand. But making friends was pretty difficult. I was lucky to have made the friends I did but literally didn't feel like I could finish out going to school there. That is what is so crazy about literally just growing up in very different areas. I wasn't racist then and I am not now. But because of what I was used to, and how I grew up in such a privlidged way, it was too difficult for me to be in that type of environment. Maybe one thing that seemed unrealistic was how easy it seemed to be for her--- to just move to a new school, after losing her mom, and the school being so different to what she was used to. It is sort of improbable a black girl would just take her under her wing, and she'd get a super hot new BF, and her life would be dandy and she was tough enough to make the rest work. Although I guess she was just going there for senior year (I had two more years left) And everyone is different. Maybe I wasn't "tough" enough or resilient enough but I fee like 4 out of 5 privileged white girls who grow up from a baby that way and are thrown into a inner city school like that would be culture shocked and terrified. And not handle it as well as she did.
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