RANKED: A Retrospective
On City Hall, the myth of meritocracy, and the ethics of crushing turts
Written by Davina J
Production Photos by Mr. R
Including comments from Mr A.F.
With assistance from Sora I and Ms J.H.
Listen to a song as you read the writing!
Song | RANKED Preshow Music
Provided by our local high school
The year is 2019. The Varsity Blues college admissions scandal had just broken weeks prior. Thirty-three parents of college applicants were accused of paying more than $25 million to William Rick Singer, who used the money to inflate entrance exam test scores and bribe college officials. Meanwhile, small up-and-coming musical duo Kyle Holmes (script) and David Taylor Gomes (musician/lyricist), known as “Holmes & Gomes” are debuting their first-ever musical at Granite Bay High School. A musical focused on how academic competition defines a student’s worth, leading to students doing whatever it takes to get to the top, including paying for their grades. A coincidence? Maybe, but an accurate one. Before they know it, Holmes & Gomes’s small musical will be launched into the national spotlight.
In contrast to its other high school-centred musical counterparts (Be More Chill, Heathers, and of course, High School Musical), which all endeavour to showcase the trials and tribulations of the high school social life experience, this year's local high school annual musical, RANKED, chose to shine a light on the festering cesspit known as academic competition. As someone who has not had the privilege of experiencing the epic highs and lows of high school socialisation and has thus spent the last three years fermenting in front of my desk, this choice delighted me. And as an actor who performed in the aforementioned local-high-school-play it was refreshingly easy to slip into the mind of a fellow high schooler panicking over not getting into college.
Additionally, RANKED is simply upbeat and fun. “So much of the music is tap-your-feet and clap-your-hands good, so… I hope our community {can} have fun in that sense,” our director, Mr. F, writes. Ultimately, musicals – and all theatre, really – are meant to share good experiences. For all the hard work, dancing, singing, and acting to come together in a perfect impressive storm – that is what RANKED is, and that is all it really needs to be.
However, despite the certified Good Time™ RANKED is, I was conflicted on the musical’s narrative for a long time. While I appreciated the spotlight on a student’s fraying psyche, after several readings of the musical I still found myself strangely dissatisfied. Below is an essay, or an essai – as in, to attempt, to find, to discover – where I try to find out why. Where is this frustration coming from? And is it even warranted?
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I identified two points in which my dissatisfaction is most apparent: firstly, the downer of an ending, where it seems little to nothing has changed since the beginning. Mr F has noted the almost hopeless nature of the ending: that despite resolved conflicts, mended fissures, and developing relationships, the fundamental structures ultimately win out. “You can’t fight City Hall, as they say,” he writes, as I nod along solemnly, even as I daydream the multitudes of ways one can fight City Hall. With a few well-thrown molotov cocktails, for example.
Secondly, the song Someone Always Bleeds, where I think my frustration reared its head most. And along the way, we shall stumble past attempts at literary analysis, the legitimacy of in-app purchases, and an accidental foray into the myth of meritocracy.
We start with Someone Always Bleeds, the song that has stood out to me since the first time I listened to the album. The players: Alexis – someone who is simultaneously oppressed and yet sustains the status quo – and Jordan – who vehemently opposes the system, regardless of the social retribution.
The dramatic irony in this scene is that Jordan is unaware of Alexis’s economic situation, calling her a “rich girl” despite Alexis being the furthest thing from that. Only the audience realises that Alexis, unlike Jordan, does not have the luxury of not caring. Not caring means being trapped in the trailer park, trapped in poverty.
Someone Always Bleeds seemingly presents Alexis a choice: Alexis’s status quo, or Jordan’s pessimism, when in reality she is in a no-win situation. By continuing the way she is, the toxic competition means Alexis is making herself miserable, perpetuating a system that is neither fair nor kind. Choosing not to care about her grades means she is condemning herself to the cycle of poverty that her family has found herself in. At this moment, no matter what Alexis does, she will still suffer. The individual is not at fault here — the system is.
So the only way for Alexis to win is to reshape the system. But is that the right move? The RANKED universe supposedly operates under a meritocracy, and there is something comforting about meritocracy. Hypothetically, students work hard, achieve good marks, get into a good college, and can then reap the fruits of their labour. Which sounds logical, most of all to Alexis. “My rank is all I have,” she says, indicating that she, at least, believes that all her success is owed to the strict meritocracy of ranks. Frankly, why shouldn’t the hard-working students be rewarded for their nights of studying and sleeplessness? Like the workers in the Market Revolution, like the revivalists in the Second Great Awakening – these people have worked hard. Why should they not receive their salvation? Do they not deserve it? Should Alexis not do as Jeffrey Bezos did, be a good little girl and play the system, and not only that, but play the system and win?
At that moment, I realised my mistake. See, the RANKED universe doesn’t actually operate under a meritocracy. A meritocracy is a system that may be uncaring, but is at least fair and impartial. This is not the case in the RANKED universe – at the end of the story, 12 students, including one of the main characters (Ryan), were proven to be paying for their grades, an act of nepotism that has pushed at least a dozen hard workers below the average and possibly ruining their life. While defending her brother, Sydney yells that Ryan was just “playing the game, like everyone else”, a claim that incites anger in all the students listening, because of course Ryan wasn’t playing the game, Ryan was cheating at the game, doing the equivalent of buying points to level up or further progress without doing the work, or buying extra lives instead of just taking the L, or buying more chances in a gacha game instead of just waiting for another turn like a good little girl, except– except–
Wait.
Just like how in-app purchases have become a common, accepted, and a feature of gaming, meritocracy is inherently unfair. Case in point, Above Average™ students are privy to discounted test prep courses and personal tutors. The rich get richer and the poor rot in pits. Meritocracy is arguably a myth because, despite supposedly being an open and accessible method of achieving upward class mobility, wealth disparity and limited class mobility will remain widespread regardless of individual work ethic. I was wrong again. RANKED does not portray a distorted meritocracy, RANKED portrays meritocracy as it is, as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as something that pretends to be fair but really isn’t, that rewards not the hard workers but those who have enough credits to blow on powerups and extra lives.
So what is Alexis meant to do? So far I have neglected to answer my first question – why is this pop-rock upbeat musical’s ending such a downer – but I believe I’ve somewhat stumbled upon the answer in my pursuit of another. To answer the question of why Someone Always Bleeds made me so upset I had to answer the question of what choice should Alexis make, which meant I too must answer the question If not meritocracy, what system should the RANKED universe exist under, and then who am I to answer that question? I have a rudimentary understanding of society at best and pure ignorance paired with dangerous confidence at worst. In my simpleton of a brain, I halfway believe that perhaps returning to monkey is the best move – dial evolution back to when we were cavemen, bashing rocks against walls, making art with no intention of selling them, singing with no intention of monetisation. And yet I understand that system is not perfect, either. I would be one example of someone left behind by such a system – my spine is twisted, my stomach is weak, and my heart aches when I run for too long. I would be dead or left for dead or worse, much less respected or held in any high regard. And that’s incredibly unfair. Hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people would be unable to reach their true potential or change the world as much as they could have.
And so perhaps we’re not as different from our animal counterparts as we presumed. Perhaps we too are victims of the same cycles of natural selection and evolution. Those who can keep up do and those who can’t are left behind and naturally eliminated. And perhaps there’s nothing more to do except continue to climb this eternal stairmaster of an existence, until we’re ultimately replaced with artificial intelligence and humanity is left behind as a stepping stone in the path towards a more divine consciousness.
So maybe it’s all futile. And maybe it’s all pointless. And still, we return to what is Alexis meant to do? Change the system? Or perhaps carve within it, just a little. John Patrick Stanley once said that the first step to change is doubt. And if nothing else, Alexis now doubts. She is aware of the unfairness of the world. That it is cruelly and painfully biassed. And it is, also, cruel and painfully unfair to expect Alexis to reshape the system of her school – and as the school is the entire universe of RANKED– expect her to change the world. But perhaps she could help in making sure no one cheats for their rank again. Perhaps she can provide more alleyways for those in her trailer park to escape. Perhaps she can make life a little better for the next generation, and tip the cards a little more in their favour.
And so we end, an unreturned-high-five of an ending. The characters of RANKED look out onto the audience, asking when will this change? I do not have an answer for them. RANKED doesn’t, either. The question is left dangling, lingering, unanswered, and at the beginning of the essay, I thought that hopeless and depressing. And perhaps it is. Perhaps the world of RANKED will never change. Perhaps it will change, but for the worse. Or maybe it will change, but for the better, in ways we can’t even imagine. RANKED is a humble musical, in a way. It does not presume to know the answer to these big questions, only to ask them, to an audience of stressed-out teenagers and past-stressed-out-teenagers that have now become stressed-out-adults, and other people that care about the answers to these questions. And hey, maybe one of those people, out of the hundred, or the dozen, or the thousands, would have an answer.
And that’s the funny thing about hope. That it’s still there, even if all that’s there is a crumb, or a splatter of dust, or the tip of a finger. Maybe there’s comfort in that, instead of sadness. Holmes and Gomes said they were proud of how RANKED allowed people to question what it means to be "successful" and what achieving that success should cost. “Perhaps it is finally time for institutions to profoundly revisit what the student experience truly is; what stories we are creating for ourselves and one another, what matters for ourselves and one another, who we are living for, and for what vague vision of the future do we aspire?” Mr F writes, on what universal message RANKED could possess. And maybe that’s all RANKED needs to be. Not a solution, but a question. A question that anyone can answer.
Will you?
