A huge building that looms over the land it covers, and is periodically shown as a scene transition throughout the film. As the establishment that confines all of them, all of us, the old-world society that ultimately will bring us all to rigid conformity, hence the uniforms and lack of individuality. This attitude is also shown by all the kids, they are very well behaved and socially uniform. .
Dewey decides that he will cast for his band. He picks the shy Asian for keyboards, the white boy for drums, a white girl for base, a white/Jewish boy for lead guitar, and three girls for the chorus; a white girl and two black girls. Then he assigns work positions for all of the other characters, some boys for the crew, other boys for security, a gay boy for designer, and the rest of the girls for groupies. At first glance this assignment could be totally benign. Once you analyze the power dynamics and roles that are chosen for them by the white-male teacher, it becomes a little more problematic. First, the assumption by the teacher to chose the genre of music they were going to perform and which of the children were capable to fill it. This is particularly important when examining gender dynamic. The only girl in the band is the bassist, and he makes it seem like the easiest task, every other instrument is given to the boys. Only the women sing, and of course the only black girls in the class are back up singers. As far as the technical support and security, this goes practically all to boys, and the only thing left for the girls was to be groupies. Why could not there have been boys as groupies and girls as stagehands? The film is still asserting well-established stereotypes of women and women of color in certain roles that are of lesser power and respect.
To continue with the conformity to white culture and society, Dewey starts teaching them the history of Rock and Roll, according to him, which is Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, and Yes.