High School Musical, and the Art of the Emotional Denouement

Promotional poster for High School Musical (2006).

When people talk about art, particularly popular art, it’s not uncommon to hear beleaguered complaints about “tropes,” or recurring elements of a piece that are derivative of another work. These complaints are often lumped into a blanket moral statement about the quality of the art itself, as if to suggest that a piece of art having even one “trope” makes it somehow holistically terrible.

In hearing this type of argument, I’m often reminded of middle-aged suburbanites who vent unbridledly about how much they dislike tattoos or piercings.

Tattoos, piercings, and tropes all have one thing in common: none of them are inherently bad. Just like most things in life, there’s good and bad in everything. Personally, I’m not a fan of sleeve tattoos, but that doesn’t mean I’m cornering people at parties and accusing them of moral depravity just because they have an arms-length tattoo of The Joker!

That’s for God and His Angels to decide!

In the same way many of us believe it’s up to a higher power to decide who’s good and who’s bad, I’d like to think it’s up to each of us to decide which tropes are good and which are bad. But, blasphemous and secular metaphors aside, in my opinion, it’s in bad faith to judge a piece of art simply because it utilizes, or even relies on tropes.

That said, there’s one trope that’s been permeating the cinemascape over the past few years that I’d like to officially denounce as lackluster, uninspired, and potentially damaging to our collective artistic imaginations. It’s the trope of the violent climax, or action-packed denouement.

Obviously, an action movie or a superhero franchise is going to rely on this trope in the film’s third act; it’s part of the genre. And that’s what makes tropes work: using them in the appropriate manner in the appropriate medium. Using tropes in the right place is what makes them tropes in the first place; tropes are plot or character elements that work over and over again when used in the same way.

However, what I can’t stomach is a trope in the wrong place, namely, when a nonsensical, violent climax makes appearances in family entertainment films, or other non-action movies. An example: Finding Dory, an admittedly average sequel to a film about parents reuniting with their children. Despite attempts at thematic maturity, in this unwittingly convoluted sequel, the film’s climax bewilderingly revolves around a truck hijacking/high speed car chase for some reason.

At least in the tentpole film space, it’s pretty challenging these days to find a movie that doesn’t have some kind of action sequence driving its third act, or even defining its climax. This seems to be a particularly perplexing trend for the Walt Disney Company. Even in its recent Cruella retelling, part of the climax involves an attempted murder between fashionistas, which is not necessarily poor writing so much as it is somewhat limited in scope when it comes to designing an emotionally intense climax. Just like any trope, the violent climax is not inherently bad. My qualm has more to do with the fact that less and less films seem to be made without them.

I used Disney as an example of this trend, but in this case, it’s also my counterpoint. And yes, I am about to launch into an obsessively pedantic take on one of the campiest, most nostalgic pieces of Walt Disney intellectual property, so hold on to your hat I guess. I am indeed talking about High School Musical, the Made-For-TV movie musical about a high school social hierarchy stuck in its ways, unable to bend, and the two students who change all that for love.

The cast of High School Musical, from left to right, Corbin Bleu, Monique Coleman, Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, and Lucas Grabeel.

There’s a lot to talk about with High School Musical (directed by Kenny Ortega). There’s its role as a star-making apparatus for Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, its reboot of the Disney Channel Original Movie genre, and even its cultural relevance all these years later, as it has recently taken on new life as an ongoing series that continues to launch careers.

However, today, I’d like to offer it up for dissection for one quality and one quality only: its dedication and commitment to the art of the nonviolent climax; one that’s driven solely by emotion, character, and catharsis.

If you’ve never seen High School Musical, either because you were not a tweenager in the early 2000s or because you were not a parent to a tweenager in the early 2000s, here’s a brief crash course in the film (not movie, film) and its endearing, nostalgic charms.

On New Years Eve, Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) and Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens), two Juniors in high school, are coerced into singing a karaoke duet at a party. At first shy and nervous, Troy and Gabriella barely make out a few syllables. But slowly, their voices unfurl, and they each discover a newfound passion and talent for singing they never knew they had. Afterwards, they exchange numbers, and subsequently lose each other in the crowd of the party.

Troy Bolton (Efron) and Gabriella Montez (Hudgens) sing “Start of Something New.”

Spring Semester resumes, and Gabriella has been transferred to East High, Troy’s school and stomping ground. Popular and athletic, Troy is celebrated by the student body for leading the Wildcats’ basketball team to the championship game, which is coming up in two weeks. Meanwhile, Gabriella is enlisted in the school’s math and science decathlon group after the team discovers her high academic placement at her last school. But all the while, both Troy and Gabriella secretly yearn to sing together again, and find their opportunity after stumbling into an audition for the school’s Spring Musical.

Troy and Gabriella’s audition sends shockwaves through the school, disrupting the status quo and popularity hierarchy. Their parents doubt their decision, their classmates try to convince them to focus on what they’re good at, and friends ask them to stick to the stuff they know. No matter where they turn, Troy and Gabriella are implored to stay within the confines of their diametrically opposed worlds.

For the record, if in reading this synopsis you mumbled to yourself, “That just sounds like Grease?” it’s because it is and you’re right, dear reader. Ultimately, Troy and Gabriella recommit to auditioning for the musical, with their final callback inadvertently taking place in front of the entire school.

This callback is the nonviolent, emotional climax of High School Musical I alluded to; its greatest, most unique asset in an overly saturated, violent marketplace. After earning their friends' support, Troy and Gabriella conspire with their peers to shirk their athletic and academic pursuits temporarily in order to make their callback for the Spring Musical.

Once in the auditorium, all they have left to do is sing. But, they first have to overcome a brief stumbling block. Troy and Gabriella had rehearsed their callback in private, but now, due to the machinations of their friends, they’re performing their callback in front of the entire student body. Gabriella starts to open her mouth to sing, but can’t.

“Not with all these people staring at me,” she whispers to Troy. He convinces her to look right at him. Only at him. He says, “Like the first time we sang together.” Faith restored, Gabriella’s confidence growing, we enter the film’s climax. I’ll link the scene below for reference, however, if you haven’t seen High School Musical, spoilers ahead!

I’d like to first generalize with complete abandon and say that the callback song, “Breaking Free,” is an undeniable bop for the ages. Poppy, dripping with that early 2000s charm, nearly nonsensical lyricism; it all just works for the emotions of the scene. The song evokes a sense of personal triumph, and that feeling of overcoming the odds.

After the song ends, there is no dialogue to suggest overtly that their plan has worked, or that their callback will eventually win them parts in the musical. In fact, it’s not until a few scenes later when Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale), the film’s villain and fellow auditionee, tells Gabriella she’ll be her understudy that we learn they’ve gotten the parts.

The song, and the climax, speaks for itself. Even without explicit dialogue, we, the audience, feel the film reach its emotional peak, and identify with the accomplishment and catharsis of the characters. This is something only the emotional, nonviolent climax can do. Unlike a violent or action-driven climax, which needs to tell us either with visual cues, dialogue, or a combination of both that our heroes or protagonists were successful, in High School Musical, we feel that the characters are successful; we know it for ourselves.

This is a language of subtlety that, to me, seems harder and harder to come by these days. Even when certain films use it, they often couple it with an action sequence or violent battle to create a higher sense of stakes. It’s rare to see the art of the emotional climax executed seamlessly and solitarily. Obviously, this is also a trope that works best in musicals, as music can provide some of the heavy lifting tonally, shepherding the audience to an emotional denouement.

The finale of High School Musical, “We’re All In This Together.”

I said before that tropes work best when they’re utilized in the right place, and in the right genre. The emotional climax works well in the musical genre, and in the movie musical form as we can see in High School Musical (caution: don’t say “musical” three times aloud in front of a mirror or you’ll summon Lea Michele). But, in singing the praises of the emotional denouement, and its use in the musical genre, I can’t help but wonder: is it possible to apply this trope to other types of films?

Is there a world where an action film can have a solely emotional denouement? Can even a superhero film have its own “Breaking Free?” Perhaps some tropes can work for all genres, or at the very least, perhaps there are lessons we can learn from each type of climax that can apply to the other? And, I personally would much rather see one of the Marvel Chrises power ballad with Zoe Saldana in order to save Earth instead of knocking down a building.

Even if this type of denouement can’t truly work for an action movie, I encourage my fellow writers to try, if only to see what kind of madcap results the effort might yield. Until then, we’ll always have East High to return to.

High School Musical is available to stream on Disney+.