One little white lie? Forget it - you're in high school

Well, that didn't go so badly. Like most Swedes, I'm pretty chuffed our song made it to third place in the Eurovision Song Contest. Gone are the days when we would sulk every time we didn't win. Now we're happy to make the final in the first place, and as for becoming one of the top five - marvellous.

Mind you, I was a bit worried. The song is catchy, but the charming Finn in Swedish Television's Eurovision panel gave a word of warning. He doubted that the lyrics - about a boy who dreams of being popular so he can win the prettiest girl in school - would appeal much to the over-thirties. And he has a point, not because we don't remember what it was like in school, but because we do. Not that many people were popular in school. And while non-cool kids like me took a dim view of the popular crowd, the wannabes weren't that much better. They knew, and we knew, the surest route to popularity: picking on those lower down in the pecking order, i.e. us.

Still, who's to say: maybe dancing and breaking the odd glass wall might do the trick as well. I was prepared to think so, and so, it appears, was Europe.

In one respect, I was lucky in school experiences, at least I get that impression when I see American high school comedies. Secondary school (junior high school in America) may have been Alcatraz, but senior high school was actually all right. It was a far cry from the world of petty feuding and one-upmanship shown in the films. It varies, of course, and some Swedish high schools are rumoured to be cliquey and hard to navigate, but on balance I'd say that if you've survived Swedish secondary school, you're over the worst. Whereas, it appears, for the poor yanks, your problems are only just about to start. I remember a character in the film version of "The Jane Austen Book Club" (I don't think it was in the book) stating very emphatically, after having run into an old enemy from her school days, "High school is never over".

Boy, it's fun to watch, though, as long as you haven't lived through it yourself. High school comedies are an extremely guilty pleasure: compared to them, a Disney cartoon is an art movie. The formula, and the variations on it, are part of the fun. Of course there has to be a bitch. Of course she has to have well-groomed sidekicks. Of course the film's heroine - after really trying to keep out of trouble - will have her patience tried to such an extent by the bitch's plotting that she retaliates, quite justifiably. Cue the most enjoyable part of the film where the heroine stoops to mean tricks and we are still allowed to root for her. But then, invariably, she goes too far, becomes a bitch herself, and risks losing her Real Friends who are always profoundly uncool. Then there is a Disaster and she ends up hated by the whole school, only to make a triumphant comeback after having patched things up with her uncool pals. The bitch is defeated, and then they all go to college and live happily ever after. Sometimes it's a boy who makes this journey of discovery, as in the teen movie classic "Can't Buy Me Love", which unfortunately means less backstabbing.

What is rather tough in these films - and this is a thing they have in common with Disney cartoons - is that no deception, however minor or excusable, is tolerated in the long run. If you have any secret at all it will be all out in the open at the film's climax, and the one person you wanted to keep it from will know all about it. I'm all for the message Be Yourself and To Thine Own Self Be True, but films aimed at youngsters seem to be obsessed about it. To name but two examples, Mulan must be unmasked as a woman and the "warrior" insects in "A Bug's Life" must be revealed to be failed circus artists, because only by being themselves can they triumph - in the films, that is. Being Yourself in the real world isn't always that rewarding, especially not for a kid or a teenager. Still, there's self-respect to consider, so in the long run the moral message is the correct one, if only it weren't hammered in quite so incessantly. Once in a while, I would like to see a hero or heroine of a high school comedy - or a Disney film - get away with a lie.

One shouldn't get too sniffy about the To Thine Own Self Be True story arc, though. Dickens used it brilliantly in "Great Expectations". Maybe it's his turn to get the high school comedy treatment after Shakespeare ("10 Things I Hate About You" etc.) and Austen ("Clueless")? Estella would make a first-class high school bitch.