Up in smoke...[Parental Discresion].

Disclaimer: This post contains content related to Marijuana and other paraphernalia as well as explicit lyrical content and a movie containing content that is rated by some organization with more morals than I as being for mature audiences only.  You have to purchase the movie to watch it, so I am not responsible for your viewing anything other than the preview.  Should the preview offend you, I guess I will care if Hinduism is right and I am reincarnated as a fruit fly in Hays Hall.....I probably still won't care...  

Do you all remember the Cheech and Chong movies?  Quite the comics back in their day.  Recently, rappers Snoop Dogg (now Snoop Lion) and Wiz Khalifa starred in a movie called Mac and Devin go to High School.  The movie can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube, for a fee of course.  Mac and Devin go to High School is a movie which is promoting, arguably, four things: marijuana acceptance, acceptance of the culture of the modern younger generations or at least a major sect of it, as well as unity, and it also might be critiquing the American Educational System.

These four constructs can, I am claiming, be best explained if we accept Foucault's analysis of the author in his work, What is an  Author?.  In this work, Foucault claims that the author is dead as we only refer to the author and do so in various and important ways and ultimately, as Michael Mancher puts it (sorry, it only gives the abstract when I try to link it),

 "Foucault sees the author-function as one which reveals the convergence of a complex web of discursive practices. As these practices change or disappear and as new practices appear, the author-function will necessarily reflect those changes. Thus, the author-function can be described in sociohistorical terms as a practice or group of practices."

Keeping these things in mind, the intention of this movie can be seen best, which is not to say that this movie's philosophies are the best, if we accept Foucault's analysis.  The "practices that change or disappear" that Foucault talks about are the category that the works of the author fall under and are referred to by the name of the author, the author being a standard of comparison that other works are measured, and the actual person that the author is and that his/her text(s) (works) refer(s) to (Mancher, 1995).

This film falls under a couple of categories.  First, the "stoner movie" category, the archetype for which might arguably be any of Cheech and Chong's films.  This is not to say that this movie ought to be measured against any of Cheech and Chong's movies as I am sure that there are many stoner movie-connoisseurs that can find all of the finer tones of the classics that make the old better than the new.  This  is to say, however, that this movie is intended to be viewed in an altered state, namely, while under the influence of marijuana.  Though I am in no way a legalist I do not condone illegal acts.  Enough said.  The second category that this movie falls under, and the more important one, is the "Snoop and Wiz" category.  These two rappers are known for their less violent (especially now for Snoop) approach to hip-hop.  Their lyrics focus less on the violent side of gangster rap and more on the creature-comforts, namely getting high and copulating.  This movie focuses mainly on the former but still has some rather explicit inclusions of the latter.  This is, arguably, very telling of a very significant sect of today's youth, good or bad -- take that as you may.



As far as a standard of comparison is concerned, this movie can have two directions of comparison.  One to Snoop's past lyrics and the other to Wiz's.  As I have already mentioned, they like smoking weed and having sex.  These themes are consistent across both of their portfolios in their raps as well as their cinema.

The third facet of this Foucaultic analysis of authorial intent is the reference to the actual characters themselves as authors.  I think that it helps here to consider Snoop and Wiz more in terms of the characters that they play as well as their real-life selves.  The characters that the two are playing are in high school.  Spoiler alert, Mac (Snoop) is a repeat failure, held back academically for fifteen years or so and a daily stoner, enjoying the finer things in life which is the supposed reason he has yet to graduate.  Devin (Wiz) plays the reigning valedictorian at N. Hale High School who is struggling to keep his spot at valedictorian and get his scholarship to Yale with his overbearing girlfriend.  To make a long and very entertaining story short, the film depicts the wonderful life of being a kid in today's school system and does so by depicting said life in a high school centered around the consumption of cannabis.



Are Snoop and Wiz and the producers, themselves, making a claim about American education, or lack thereof? Whatever the case may be, two pop-culture icons have made a rather successful movie, and may have tried to provide a little insight into the phenomenon of American schooling which is seemingly lacking in terms of the claim of education.  This movie pushes the themes of marijuana awareness and acceptance, draws attention to the culture of a large part of our modern-day youth, and speaks to the unity that can be had, even if it is mediated by a scheduled substance.  The meaning of this film, again, take it as you will, can be, in my opinion, best understood by a careful inspection in the fashion of Michel Foucault's work What is an Author.  Also, as a final point, I think more attention should be spent questioning what is acceptable as education.  If what we are doing today is so off-putting that youth are turning to drugs instead of "education", which I am not claiming that marijuana is itself good or bad, but if weed is the magical ingredient, then perhaps we have cause for questioning.