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Don't you see, Rafe? MY SCHOOL, MY RULES!
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~ Zombie Dwight in Rafe's imagination.
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Principal Kenneth "Ken" Dwight, simply known as Ken Dwight, Principal Dwight, or just Dwight, is the main antagonist of the 2016 comedy film Middle School: The Worst Years Of My Life. He was the former principal of Hills Village Middle School, and the archenemy of Rafe Khatchadorian.
He was portrayed by Andy Daly, who also played Mayor Brown in Yogi Bear and Two-Face in Harley Quinn.
Personality[]
Principal Dwight was shown to be a cruel, greedy, selfish, ruthless and manipulative man who likes making his students follow the rules. As the movie went on he was shown as a total hypocritical fascist with a huge ego for making the students follow the rules and goes on about how people should always follow the rules, yet he never actually follows the rules himself, believing that since he is the principal he does not need to follow the rules.
Biography[]
Ken Dwight is the uncaring, tyrannical and deceptive principal of Hills Village Middle School, who runs the school as if it were a prison. He is aided by his right-hand Vice Principal Ida Stricker, who is in alignment with his bullying tactics. He makes all of his students follow his code of conduct; it is filled with rules that are mostly unjustified and unlawful. A new student named Rafe Khatchadorian (the protagonist of the film) already gets on Dwight's bad side when he draws an insulting picture of Dwight as a blabbering zombie in his notebook during an assembly that gets seen by other students. As stated in the school's code of conduct, any reading material deemed inappropriate would be destroyed, so Dwight destroys Rafe's notebook containing all of Rafe's old drawings by dumping it into a bucket of acid, which totally devastates Rafe afterwards.
Upset by this, Rafe decides to get even by breaking the rules of Dwight's code of conduct in retaliation. During the time, Dwight notices that ever since the rule breaking started the test scores started slipping, so he tries to do whatever he can to find the culprit and punish him. Dwight tried to handle all the rule breaking, but after the trophy case was turned into an aquarium it drove him off the deep end, deciding to expand the rules. Dwight then notices that the students that have low test scores are from the remedial class, so Dwight plans on illegally cutting off the remedial class (led by Rafe's favorite teacher Mr. Teller) from the upcoming test called B.L.A.A.R., as he wants to improve the average test scores. To that end, he frames the students of the remedial class for the pranks before suspending them.
An outraged Mr. Teller objects to this by stating that this is a setup, but this only leads Dwight to personally fire Mr. Teller after falsely speculating that he may be involved with the pranks. Unwilling to let Mr. Teller and the remedial class take the fall, Rafe heads over to Dwight's office and confesses that he's the one responsible for the pranks. However, Dwight did not seem to care and he offers a deal with Rafe to uplift his suspension in exchange for his silence, but Rafe refuses and demands Dwight to un-suspend the students and give Mr. Teller his job back or he was "gonna make it rain". Rafe then sets off a false fire alarm to prove his point, but this resulted an angry Dwight to expel Rafe for his actions. Rafe's mom Jules is very upset at her son for getting kicked out of at least 3 schools and for not telling her that he had problems with Dwight.
Jules's boyfriend Carl found a boarding school with some military aspects and Jules decides to send Rafe there since Hills Village Middle School was the last school that would accept Rafe, leaving Jules out of options. Eventually, Rafe's girlfriend Jeanne Galletta found out that this whole turn of events was to cover up Dwight's actions of cutting off the remedial class from taking B.L.A.A.R. this whole time, having secretly recorded Dwight coercing the local janitor Gus into putting the evidence in the students' lockers to frame them for the pranks. Jeanne then points out the B.L.A.A.R. testing not only gives the school bragging rights, but it also gives Dwight a significant bonus if the scores are good enough, which is the main reason Dwight loves the B.L.A.A.R. so much. As such, the other suspended students agree to help Rafe expose Dwight's crimes, even Gus is willing to tag along as he's had enough of Dwight's behavior.
The next day, as the entire school is about to take the B.L.A.A.R. outside, Rafe and his classmates reveal to have shredded the real tests and replaced them with obscure questions. Rafe tells all the students that Dwight is nothing but a hypocrite who likes to make the rules, but he thinks that since he's the Principal he's doesn't have to follow the rules himself, and claims they have evidence that he framed students. Finally fed up with Rafe's actions, Dwight begins to chase Rafe, only to be tripped by one of the students. With Stricker failing to catch Rafe as he jumps into a cart with Gus and drives off, Dwight snatches a student's bike and tries to catch up to them. An animated chase sequence ensues, where zombie Dwight chases, on motorcycle, Rafe and Gus, who are in a sports car. Rafe throws Gus' lunch at Dwight, to no avail.
Rafe then summons his artwork to life from his sketch book, from an ape to a shark, to a kitchen sink. When the car breaks down and Dwight finally catches up to them, Gus launches a pile of manure on Dwight. Before the revolted principal can confront them, Mr. Teller arrives with the school superintendent Hwang, who received a formal complaint from Mr. Teller about the events. Rafe offers the tape to Hwang, but Dwight tries to deny everything by stating that Rafe is a dumb jerk and that nobody cares what Mr. Teller thinks. However, Hwang isn't fooled by this and takes the tape from Rafe. After viewing the tape detailing both Dwight and Stricker's crimes, Hwang furiously terminates both Dwight and Stricker from their respective positions and orders them to leave the school.
Dwight is last seen packing up his things as he demands for a full hearing, to which Hwang assures that he'll get one in court. As Dwight leaves with Stricker, he is pranked one last time with green dye in his hat, but decides to take a joke for once since he can't do anything about it. Rafe is then re-enrolled back into the school and praised as a hero for exposing Dwight's true colors, and it is implied that Dwight and Stricker will face legal consequences for rigging the state test results.
Quotes[]
Gallery[]
Dwight telling Rafe that on the campus he must follow the rules.
Dwight throws Rafe's notebook into a bucket of acid.
Dwight witnessing Rafe's first prank of putting sticky notes everywhere in the school, including his office.
Dwight looking on as Vice Principal
Ida Stricker falls victim to Rafe's second prank of putting plastic balls in the one of the school's closets.
Zombie Dwight in one of Rafe's fantasy sequences.
Dwight covered in manure before Superintendent Hwang's arrival.
Trivia[]
- Before illegally rigging the B.L.A.A.R. and unlawfully firing Mr Teller, in a typical school district in the U.S, Dwight would have been breaking the rules. The principal does not make the rules for the school to follow, they enforce the rules of the Code of Conduct formulated by the Board of Education. Furthermore, some of these rules he wrote were highly unlawful, like destroying notebooks, banning students from using the bathroom and suspending or expelling students for petty reasons.
- It is highly illegal for a principal to personally destroy a student's personal belongings (they can instead keep a student’s prohibited items in their office) as well ban them from using the bathroom (rather, restrictions can be set).
- The school principal also has no authority to expel a student without requesting a hearing from the school board.
- Dwight had a wife before she left him because he paid more attention to the B.L.A.A.R. than to her.
- It is revealed in the movie's climax that Dwight takes spin class.
- Dwigh likes the song "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer.
- In the reoccurring cartoon-fantasy scenes, Dwight is portrayed as a zombie who constantly dances and yells out "BLAAR!".
- In the book that the movie was originally based on, Dwight was very different from his movie counterpart, being a minor character with only a few short appearances, rather than being the main antagonist like in the movie. He didn't show an abusive tyrannical side like in the movie nor was he shown doing anything illegal or even dodgy, acting more or less like a normal school principal. He even sympathized with the Khatchadorians after learning about Leo's passing and was one of the only faculty members to not have an open bias against Georgia when she first came to HVMS. Like many characters, Dwight's physical appearance is quite different in the books than it is in the movie, having a balding head and dark hair. He is also depicted by Rafe as "The Lizard King", instead of a zombie. As well as that, later on, he leaves the school and moves far away, while Stricker takes his place as principal.