{"id":6647,"date":"2026-03-20T09:20:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T09:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=6647"},"modified":"2026-03-20T09:20:03","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T09:20:03","slug":"i-showed-my-gen-z-kids-dead-poets-society-and-their-angry-reactions-to-it-floored-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=6647","title":{"rendered":"I showed my Gen Z kids \u2018Dead Poets Society\u2019 and their angry reactions to it floored me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cInspiring\u201d apparently means different things to Gen X and Gen Z.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a Gen X parent<\/a> of Gen Z teens and young adults<\/a>, I\u2019m used to cringing at things from 80s and 90s movies<\/a> that haven\u2019t aged well. However, a beloved film from my youth that I thought they\u2019d love, \u201cDead Poets Society,\u201d sparked some unexpectedly negative responses in my kids, shining a spotlight on generational differences<\/a> I didn\u2019t even know existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I probably watched \u201cDead Poets Society\u201d a dozen or more times as a teen and young adult, always finding it aesthetically beautiful, tragically sad, and profoundly inspiring. That film was one of the reasons I decided to become an English teacher, inspired as I was by Robin Williams\u2019<\/a> portrayal of the passionately unconventional English teacher, John Keating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The way Mr. Keating shared his love of beauty and poetry with a class of high school boys at a stuffy prep school, encouraging them to \u201cseize the day\u201d and \u201csuck all the marrow out of life,\u201d hit me right in my idealistic youthful heart. And when those boys stood up on their desks for him at the end of the film, defying the headmaster who held their futures in his hands? What a moving moment of triumph and support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Gen Z kids, however, saw the ending differently. They did love the feel of the film, which I expected with its warm, cozy, comforting vibe (at least up until the last 20 minutes or so). They loved Mr. Keating, because how can you not? But when the movie ended, I was taken aback hearing \u201cThat was terrible<\/em>!\u201d and \u201cWhy would you traumatize me like that?\u201d before they also admitted, \u201cBut it was so gooood!<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The traumatize part I actually get\u2014I\u2019d forgotten just how incredibly heavy the film gets all of a sudden. (A caveat I feel the need to add here: Gen Z uses the word \u201ctraumatize\u201d not in a clinical sense but as an exaggerative term for being hit unexpectedly by something sad or disturbing. They know they weren\u2019t literally traumatized by the movie.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in discussing it further, I discovered three main generational differences that impacted my kids\u2019 \u201cDead Poets Society\u201d viewing experience and what they took away from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1) Gen Z sees inspiring change through a systemic lens, not an individual one<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first thing my 20-year-old said when the credits rolled was, \u201cWhat<\/em>? That\u2019s terrible! Nothing changed! He got fired and the school is still run by a bunch of stodgy old white men forcing everyone to conform!\u201d My immediate response was, \u201cYeah, but he changed those boys\u2019 individual<\/em> lives, didn\u2019t he? He helped broaden their minds and see the world differently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I realized that Gen X youth valued individuals going against the old, outdated system and doing their own thing, whereas Gen Z values the dismantling of the system itself. For Gen X, Mr. Keating and the boys taking a stand was inspiring, but the fact that it didn\u2019t actually change anything outside of their own individual experiences stuck like a needle in my Gen Z kids\u2019 craw.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2) Gen Z isn\u2019t accustomed to being blindsided by tragic storylines with no warning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To be fair, I did tell them there was \u201ca sad part\u201d before the movie started. But I\u2019d forgotten how deeply devastating the last part of the movie was, so my daughter\u2019s \u201cWhy would you do<\/em> that to me?!\u201d was somewhat warranted. \u201cI thought maybe a dog<\/em> would die or something!\u201d she said. No one really expected one of the main characters to die by suicide and the beloved teacher protagonist to be blamed for his death, but I\u2019d somehow minimized the tragedy of it all in my memory so my \u201csad part\u201d warning was a little insufficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But also to be fair, Gen X youth never got any such warnings\u2014we were just blindsided by tragic plot twists all the time. As kids, we cheered on Atreyu trying to save his horse from the swamp in \u201cThe Neverending Story\u201d only to watch him drown. Adults showed us \u201cWatership Down\u201d thinking it would be a cute little animated film about bunnies. We were slapped in the face by the tragic child death in \u201cMy Girl,\u201d which was marketed as a sweet coming of age movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gen Z was raised in the era of trigger warnings and trauma-informed practices, while Gen X kids watched a teacher die on live TV in our classrooms<\/a> with zero follow-up on how we were processing it. Those differences became apparent real quick at the end of this movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3) Gen Z fixates on boundary-crossing behavior that Gen X either overlooked or saw as more nuanced<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The other reaction I wasn\u2019t expecting was the utter disdain my girls showed for Knox Overstreet, the sweet-but-over-eager character who fell for the football player\u2019s cheerleader girlfriend. His boundary-crossing attempts to woo her were always cringe, but for Gen X, cringe behavior in the name of love was generally either overlooked, tolerated, or sometimes even celebrated. (Standing on a girl\u2019s lawn in the middle of the night holding a full-volume stereo over your head was peak romance for Gen X, remember.) For Gen Z, the only thing worse than cringe is predatory behavior, which Knox\u2019s obsessiveness and pushiness could arguably be seen as. My own young Gen X lens saw Knox and said, \u201cThat\u2019s a bit much, dude. Take it down a notch or three.\u201d My Gen Z daughters\u2019 lens said, \u201cThat guy\u2019s a total creepo. She needs to run far the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"run,<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On one hand, I was proud of them for recognizing red flag behaviors and calling them out. On the other hand, I saw how little room there is for nuance in their perceptions, which was\u2026interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be clear, I don\u2019t think my Gen Z kids\u2019 reactions to \u201cDead Poets Society\u201d are wrong; they\u2019re just different than mine were at their age. We\u2019re usually on the same page when it comes to these kinds of analyses, so seeing them have a drastically different reaction to something I loved at their age was really something. Now I\u2019m wondering what other favorite movies from my youth I should show them to see if they view those differently as well\u2014hopefully without \u201ctraumatizing\u201d them too much with the experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cInspiring\u201d apparently means different things to Gen X and Gen Z. As a Gen X parent of Gen Z teens and young adults, I\u2019m used to cringing at<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/651903565_1403785318449122_5486868999985002820_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6647"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6649,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6647\/revisions\/6649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}