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deanismysavior · 2 years

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The Byler x High School Musical Parallel Breakdown

It has shocked me to my core, but there is actually more to this parallel than just the funky little video that blew up on TikTok, and I'm honestly still not sure how to feel about it given that there's a substantial amount of narrative overlap, particularly between Byler s4 and HSM 2, so without further ado, let's get into it brochachos.

Like Kindergarten

Now the first thing I want to talk about here you may have already seen in a recent post of mine, but I think it deserves more attention and analysis, so let's talk about the use of "kindergarten" references in both High School Musical and Stranger Things.

In the first High School Musical movie, Troy takes Gabriella up to the rooftop garden space, which Gabriella refers to as his "private hideout," so that they can talk and be alone. (I want to put a pin in this and talk about the concept of private hideouts parallelism in a bit, but for now let's move forward).

They start to talk about how it's hard to be their respective authentic selves and constantly feel like they're being forced into these archetypal molds, but Gabriella says that when she was singing with Troy, she felt like she was "just a girl," meaning that she didn't have to be anything else in that moment but just herself.

She then sits down on the bench with Troy and asks, "Do you remember in kindergarten how you'd meet a kid and know nothing about them, then ten seconds later you're playing like you're best friends, because you didn't have to be anything but yourself?"

And Troy responds, affirming her question with a "Yeah."

And Gabriella says, "Singing with you felt like that."

Here, it's very clear that Gabriella is being vulnerable with Troy, she's telling him that singing with him made her feel safe and more like herself than she has felt in any of her other schools; she doesn't feel alone when she's singing with Troy, she feels seen.

Now there's a couple places in Stranger Things that I think parallel this conversation, and the most obvious one is Mike's S2x08 monologue recalling his memory of meeting Will.

Here, we get Mike saying, "Do you remember the first day that we met? It was...It was the first day of kindergarten. I knew nobody. I had no friends, and...I just felt so alone and so scared, but...I saw you on the swings, and you were alone too. You were just swinging by yourself. And I just walked up to you and...I asked. I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said 'Yes.' You said 'Yes.' It was the best thing I've ever done."

Now, although the tone of these reads somewhat differently, where Gabriella is reminiscing in a nostalgic way and Mike is recalling in a much more intimate and vulnerable way, we still get a strong narrative through-line here in that Mike and Gabriella are both talking about the fact that the other person made them feel seen.

While there's the obvious dialogue cue of "kindergarten" being used in both of these lines, there's a deeper implication here to being one's most authentic version of oneself. Mike was feeling scared because he believed that he would be rejected by the other kids at school until he found Will, in a very similar fashion to how Gabriella had felt shoe-boxed into being the "freaky math girl" by her peers and didn't truly feel like herself until she sang with Troy.

Here, Gabriella and Troy's refrain of "Like kindergarten" throughout the movie is meant to act as an invitation to allow the other to just be themselves.

So where else do we get a similar vulnerable scene between Will and Mike? You guessed it. It's the "crazy together" scene.

Leading into this scene, we see the party out trick or treating together, and Will gets cut off from the rest of the group and pushed over by a group of bullies, triggering an episode in which he enters the upside down. He calls out for Mike, but at first Mike can't find him, and when he finally does, he asks Will if he's okay and then says, "I'm gonna get you home, okay?"

Now, remember that I said we'd put a pin in the "private hideout" conversation? Well, this is where I want to pull that back out. Throughout the course of Stranger Things, we see two places that are predominantly coded as "private hideouts" in relation to Mike and Will, the first being Castle Byers, and the second being Mike's basement.

While Mike's basement might not at first seem like a private hideout, over the course of the show, it becomes established that this is not a part of the house that Mike's parents or his sister frequent. We mostly see the basement used as a hangout space for the party's DnD campaigns, and all throughout season 1, Mike was able to successfully hide El in the basement without her being found. Given the fact that the basement is also plastered in art Will has given to Mike, it's safe for the audience to assume this is predominantly Mike's space.

So when Mike tells Will he's taking him home, the audience assumes that he'll take Will home to Will's house, but he instead takes him down to his basement, a place that is established in the show as a private space for Mike, and we see them then engage in this intimate conversation.

Will starts to explain what it's like to be trapped in this space between Hawkins and the Upside Down. After Will explains, he asks Mike not to tell the others, so we can see them establishing a special trust with one another that doesn't include the rest of the party.

Will tells Mike that the others "Won't understand," and Mike replies by saying "Eleven would," and here is where we see Mike finally being vulnerable and opening up to Will about how he suspects she might still be out there and that he still thinks he sees her sometimes, something Mike has kept from the rest of the party.

Mike confesses by saying, "I don't know, sometimes I feel like I'm going crazy."

To which Will nods and says, "Me too."

And Mike then says, "Hey, well, if we're both going crazy, then we'll go crazy together, right?"

And Will says, "Yeah. Crazy together."

Here, Will and Mike seem to establish this mutual understanding. They have both gone through a change to themselves and their understanding of the world around them that has forever altered their perceptions, and while Mike references El here, his conversation with Will is not about El, it's about revealing himself and his own fears and insecurities, so just like in the rooftop scene from High School Musical, we get this mutual acknowledgment of each counterpart seeing the other for who they really are, and not who they are expected to be or who they were before their perspectives changed (for Troy and Gabriella, they believed they had to remain as the basketball guy and the freaky math girl, but when they sang together, it changed their perceptions of who they had to be).

The "crazy together" line here functions in tandem with the "like kindergarten" callback we see between Troy and Gabriella in High School Musical. When Troy uses this line on Gabriella towards the end of the movie, it's as a reminder to her while they are on stage together performing that she doesn't have to be self-conscious, and he invites her back into that vulnerable space of being in "kindergarten" where you could just be yourself. Similarly, "crazy together" is used as a way for Mike and Will to both know they're not alone and that they equally see each other for who they are.

Sharpay/Troy and El/Mike Conflicts

Okay, so I'm now going to jump into the second movie in the HSM franchise, because I think this is where we see the strongest narrative parallels to ST4.

The setup we get to HSM 2 is that summer is coming and the main cast of characters is looking for summer jobs. Sharpay decides that this is the perfect opportunity to shoot her shot with Troy, and we see her kind of attempt to interject herself into his relationship with Gabriella by getting Troy a job at the country club her parents run, which soon backfires because Troy convinces the hiring manager to hire practically all of East High, including the basketball team and Gabriella.

However, Sharpay, being herself, doesn't give up on Troy that easily, and schemes several times to attempt to get him alone and to get in the way of his spending time with Gabriella. While I think Sharpay's whole arc in this movie is compelling for the purposes of Byler, there are a few scenes in particular I want to take a look at.

The first is the dinner scene that takes place with Sharpay and Troy. While Troy is caddying for Sharpay and her family, Sharpay lets him know that she was able to pull a few strings to set him up at dinner with a college scout who would be looking to give out basketball scholarships and basically forces his hand into attending a dinner with her, her parents, and the college scout, all while she treats Troy like her boyfriend, and we can see he's incredibly visibly uncomfortable throughout the entire dinner.

After Sharpay talks up Troy's other talents, we see her start bragging about his singing as well and even tries to get him to sing at dinner in front of her family. After he refuses under the guise of his voice being hoarse, Sharpay says, "But you will sing some other time, with me, promise?"

Here, Sharpay is attempting to get Troy to invest in her and spend more time with her. Troy knows what she's getting at and wants to shut this down, but he feels unable to do so because her parents are right there, so he reluctantly agrees to sing with her.

And we get the poor boy looking the most uncomfortable he's looked in his entire life right here:

You can see the look of instant regret on his face after he agrees.

Of course, Sharpay doesn't give up there; she orchestrates an entire romantic music number to try to set herself and Troy up as counterparts and throws the music at him to try to get him to sing along. This is where we finally see Troy standing up for himself and asserting that he's already dating Gabriella and that nothing between he and Sharpay is going to happen.

From these moments, we can clearly see that Sharpay is trying to get Troy to see romantic potential in her and admit feelings for her, even when it's made clear to the audience that he doesn't.

So why is this relevant to Mike and El? Well, if you've stuck with me this far, this narrative should be sounding a little familiar.

Aside from the fact that the main conflicts in both of these arcs begin at an awkward dinner, we see a lot of the same dynamic playing out with Mike and El when El confronts Mike about not saying he loves her.

After El brings up the way that Mike looked at her at the roller rink, Mike says that he doesn't view her as a monster and that he was just surprised and confused, but it doesn't matter because he "care[s]" for El "so much."

El looks hurt by this and says, "Care. But you don't, you don't love me anymore?"

We can see that she's looking for reassurance in this scene. She needs to know that Mike still loves her without her powers and that she can depend on him, but all we really see back from Mike is defensiveness.

He follows up by saying, "Who said that I didn't?"

And we get the infamous:

"You never say it"

"I say it."

exchange.

When El tells him he can't even write it and brings out the letters as proof, he blame shifts and says that El shouldn't let the "Mouthbreathers" ruin their relationship.

I love seeing these gifs of Mike and Troy juxtaposed because they both look equally as uncomfortable in these shots, and you would think that a guy in an established relationship with his girlfriend would not be pulling the same facial expressions when his girlfriend is trying to affirm for herself that he loves her as a guy who is getting hit on unsolicited from a girl outside of his relationship.

While these plot lines are slightly different, El and Sharpay are playing very similar roles in both: trying to get the guy they like to reciprocate their feelings.

In drawing this parallel, it forces the viewer to see El and Mike's relationship in a different light, because El is being paralleled to Sharpay who is getting in between the relationship between Troy and Gabriella. Now, I don't support the rhetoric of El getting in between Byler outside of this post, but for narrative purposes of these parallels, this is how it's being presented.

Which, in the context of the overarching story, makes seeing this TikTok in which Byler directly visually parallels Troy and Gabriella (though now it appears Will takes the place of Troy and Mike takes the place of Gabriella) all that much funnier.

(the shots here are slightly edited, so it isn't exactly in sync, but it's pretty damn close).

And if you're thinking it might be a stretch to compare these two scenarios, this is what really did it for me:

Towards the end of the movie, Troy reconciles with the basketball team after not acting like himself and putting himself before his friendships with them, and we see Sharpay looking worried at the fact that both her brother and Troy bailed on singing with her when she brought talent scouts out to come watch her perform.

While Troy is perfectly ready to just let her perform without him, we see Ryan come up to Troy and basically convince him to get back out onstage and sing with Sharpay. Ryan tells him, "Troy listen, all these people out there, I don't really wanna see my sister crash and burn. At least I think I don't. I think you should sing with her."

Troy looks pensive, and then he breathes in like he's about to go to battle before going to Sharpay's dressing room to agree to sing with her.

Now, while this ends up just being a ruse to get he and Gabriella to sing together, the narrative device of having Ryan have to push Troy into singing with Sharpay could not be any more similar to Will's "Don't stop, okay? You're the heart."

Both Troy and Mike have to be pushed into this act with Sharpay and El respectively, as neither one of them was going to volunteer of their own accord.

Try Before You Deny

I can't believe I'm saying this, but after having watched High School Musical 2, I now believe that the fruit on pizza metaphor was, in fact, intentional queer-coding, and here's why:

The subtext in the Surfer Boy Pizza scene is the same as the subtext in the scene that occurs between Chad and Ryan in I Don't Dance.

Let's take a look:

So we have Ryan coming up to Chad after Gabriella invites Ryan to the staff baseball game. They get into a little bit of a standoff when Gabriella suggests that Ryan can save the talent show after Troy bailed on them because Ryan knows how to direct and choreograph. Chad then says to him, "If you want to play ball, then grab a mitt. But I don't dance."

Ryan comes back at him by saying, "You don't think dancing takes some game?"

And Chad asks, "You got game?"

To which Ryan responds, "A little."

Someone then passes Chad and Ryan the bat, and they put their hands one over the other until Ryan has claim over the top of the bat, signifying that he will be pitching first.

This whole song is heavily queer-coded and associates itself with playing for the other team, which way Chad "swings," and experimenting at things that aren't in your wheelhouse, but I want to talk about a few of the lyrics throughout the song as they seem particularly relevant to what's going on in the Surfer Boy Pizza scene.

The pre-chorus of this song literally goes:

"You'll never know"

"Oh, I know."

"If you never try."

"There's just one little thing that stops me every time...

Yeah, Come on! I don't dance!"

The subtext in these lines is pretty self-explanatory, but this is basically Chad saying that his pre-conceived notions about himself stop him from trying to dance. He's incredibly resistant to trying anything that would shake up his jock persona.

When we look at this in comparison to the Surfer Boy Pizza scene, a lot of this dialogue shows up the same.

In this scene, we see Mike and El about to have this meaningful discussion about the last argument they had before El left, but they get interrupted by Argyle dropping a pineapple pizza in front of them.

Mike then says, "Dude, this is pineapple on pizza"

And Argyle says, "Try before you deny."

El then tries the pizza and says, "Good."

And Mike, in disbelief asks, "It's good? What do you mean it's good?"

And El just says, "Really good."

Mike then replies, "What? That's insane! That's blasphemous! Putting fruit on pizza?"

We then see Argyle and El start trying to force-feed Mike the pizza, to which he is completely resistant, until he finally tries it and says, "No, you're right, it's good."

Just like Chad, we see Mike being encouraged into an action that's out of his comfort zone, and just like Chad, Mike is adamant about not trying it and resistant to this change.

While Mike finally lets down his resolve against the pineapple pizza and finally accepts that it's good, we see a similar acceptance between Chad and Ryan when they both partake in each other's game (Chad dancing and Ryan playing baseball), and then we see them hanging out together in the next scene having switched into each other's clothes, fully embracing both parts of themselves.

You could chalk this up to coincidence, but between the narrative similarity in how these scenes play out and the use of the word "try," but specifically it's use in the same context, "you'll never know if you never try," and "try before you deny," I think there's a good chance that they incorporated some of the queer subtext from High School Musical within this scene.

This is pretty much the bulk of what I got when looking at these two in conjunction with one another, but let me know if there's a moment I missed! Hope you enjoyed this one!

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