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American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

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 Dossiers

American teen pics: movies for teenagers,

movies about teenagers

Luciano Mariani [email protected]

Contents

Part 1: The crucial turning point - the 1950s - online version

Part 2: Rebels with a cause - from the '50s into the '60s and '70s - online version

Part 3: Revamping teen pics – the ‘80s - online version

Part 4: From the ‘90s into the new century - online version

Part 5: Some trends in the new century - online version

American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers filmstudies.it

Part 1: The crucial turning point - the 1950s

1. Introduction: Films for or about teens?

Although "teen films" is often considered as a particular film genre, its name is fraught with
ambiguities. What exactly are we referring to when we talk about this kind of movies? Teen films
are certainly targeted at teenagers, but this does not imply that teenagers are supposed to be the
only expected audience - other age groups may be interested as well. Teen films obviously
involve teenagers as characters, but this does not necessarily mean that they appeal to a teenage
audience: documentaries or semi-fictional films can be made (as they actually have been) with an
adult audience in mind, for example to portray adolescents and their problems and maybe to
provide suggestions on how to deal with them. Finally, teen films are seldom, if ever, written,
produced and/or directed by teenagers: as a rule, adults make them, which means that the point
of view embodied in the films is an adult one, although screenwriters and directors may
consciously try to adopt teen views, and there are certainly cases where (very) young directors
are in a position to portray characters who are closer to their own age, and thus (presumably)
more "authentic" or "real". All in all, however, teenagers must be satisfied with the teen images
that adult screenwriters, directors and producers have chosen to produce in their films.

It should be stressed that teenagers do not just feature prominently in many movies, but have
been (and still are) the object of a sometimes ruthless exploitation -movies for/about teenagers
are often produced with the deliberate intent to attract audiences no matter what the social,
cultural or political viewpoint involved, making teenagers both the objects of (not necessarily
honest and disinterested) portrayals and the subjects of mass consumption of those very films
which feature them as characters.

2. Hollywood and beyond

Another important series of considerations has to do with the geo-cultural origin of teen films.
Throughout this Dossier, we will deal with American cinema, since the vast majority of teen films
has been or is still produced in the US, and, what is perhaps more important, such films have
been marketed worldwide and are often well-known, at least to Western audiences - which also
means that the typical conventions of this genre, after being forged in Hollywood, have reached
worldwide popularity. Besides, and increasingly so in the past few decades, cinema, just like so
many other sociocultural aspects, has grown "global", and Western audiences can usually
appreciate, if not identify with, the characters and situations portrayed in American films (which,
it goes without saying, have often set trends and even inspired "film cycles" or "subgenres"
worldwide). This is not to say that Italian or French teenagers are able to fully understand the
sociocultural dimensions of an American teen film, but the process of globalization has somewhat
reduced, although by no means cancelled, the risks of misunderstanding or simply not
understanding country-specific cultural references. For example, as we shall see, a great many
American films include references to the "prom", i.e. the rather formal dance party often held at
the end of the (final) school year: foreign teenagers can certainly catch the general meaning of
this event, but they will not be able to capture its full cultural implications for American
teenagers. Dubbing and/or subtitles can help, but subtle cultural references will be missed by
most viewers. Besides, as in all (inter)cultural matters, one must beware of hasty interpretations,
not to mention undue generalizations and even stereotypes.

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A truly representative study of non-American films is outside the scope of this Dossier. Film
studies focusing on non-American teen films are scarce, at least by comparison with the vast
literature concerned with US cinema, and even more so if we turn to non-Western cinemas. As
can easily be predicted, the overall influence of American (particularly Hollywood) cinema is
still going strong, but as we advance into the 21st century, this sort of "cultural imperialism" (to
use a strong but perhaps unavoidable catchphrase) is bound to gradually weaken as other,
especially non-Western, cultures develop their own cinemas, including teen films.

3. Who are "teens"?

Although the English language has coined the word "teenagers" to refer to the 13-to-19
population, and despite that fact that this age group is also identified with "adolescents", so that
the two terms are often used interchangeably, their true referents are far from having clear-cut
definitions.

Of course, teenagers, or adolescents, have always been around. However, it was not until the
early 20th century that the term "adolescence" started to be used to refer to a specific age or
period in human development, with the publication, in 1904, of psychologist G. Stanley Hall's
Adolescence: its psychology, and its relations to physiology, anthropology, sociology, sex, crime,
religion, and education. As the title very clearly suggests, this was an all-compassing study of
adolescence at most, if not all, levels of social interest - but, above all, it established adolescents
as a distinct, identifiable age group with its own features and problems, not least their difference
from childhood, on the one hand, and adulthood, on the other.

Teenagers have featured in the movies, and have been part of cinema audiences, since the early
days of this art from - and the relation between teenagers and cinema then steadily grew, as
movie theatres soon became one of young people's favourite meeting points. Meanwhile, as the
new century unfolded, great social changes were on their way, particularly during the World
War II years and since the end of this war. Teenagers as a particular social group grew in
visibility thanks, first and foremost, to their steadily growing number, which, as we shall soon
see, meant that they would soon acquire an independent social status and start creating their own
culture.

In the second half of the century, and increasingly more so in the 21st century, it has become
more and more difficult to define who teenagers really are, not to mention the difficulty (or
impossibility) to use the terms "teenagers" and "adolescents" interchangeably. As young people
spend more and more time at school and in higher education, they have started meeting problems
in finding jobs and, more generally, "settling down", their "independence" from families and
adults has been postponed, and with this, generations who once entered the labour market and
started a family at the end of their "teens", are now lingering on, financially but above all
psychologically, in that hazy condition which now extends from the end of childhood to ... an
indefinite age (with corresponding definitions of "adolescence" reaching the early or middle
twenties, and sometimes even well into the thirties. This, of course, does not mean that a sixteen-
year-old can be equated with a much older youth.)

From the "film studies" point of view, there is no generalised agreement about who we should
consider as "teens" when we talk about "teen movies". Most American studies tend to consider
"teen films" those that feature middle to high schools youths, i.e. in the 12-18 age group.
However, and in line with what we have just said about the fuzzy limits of adolescence, some
critics are willing to also consider films featuring college-level (i.e. early university years)
students, thus portraying characters who are still struggling with the typical problems of youths
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before "settling down" (i.e. before finding a job and a partner, starting a family, entering full
adulthood).

"There are certainly narrative conventions that help define teen film: the youthfulness of central
characters; content usually centred on young heterosexuality, frequently with a romance plot;
intense age-based peer relationships and conflict either within those relationships or with an
older generation; the institutional management of adolescence by families, schools, and other
institutions; and coming-of-age plots focused on motifs like virginity, graduation, and the
makeover." (Note 1)

4. Teenagers in films before the 1950s

Teenagers have of course featured in American movies since the early days of cinema, and
sometimes they were even the main characters, but the crucial point to consider is that such films
(indeed, all films) produced before the 1950s were aimed at families, implying that they could be
seen (as indeed they were) by all members of a family group. The Hollywood industry never
cared to differentiate its products according to age groups, and very rarely, if ever, carried out
what would later be called "market research" to establish the potential audience for a particular
movie.

Attention paid to teenagers, or rather, using a more general term, "minors", was mainly directed
at checking that movies should not show excess sexual or violent content - the Production Code,
later known as Hays Code, implemented in 1934, which weakened in the '50s but remained
formally operative until 1967, was at first designed to limit the exhibition (and exploitation) of
violence as shown in early '30s gangster films like Scarface, The public enemy or Little Caesar.
Minors were also the subject of hot debates on their supposed vulnerability when exposed to
movies, and the Catholic Legion of Decency was always strong and remarkably powerful in
checking the limits of what could be shown. The well-known Payne Fund studies in the '20s and
'30s were not concerned with the image of youths on the screen, but only with the public concern
that they could emulate the morally unacceptable behaviours that movies could portray. In other
words, such studies were a response to a wave of moral panic that shook American society, soon
realizing the huge and potentially dangerous power of movies, especially where young people
were concerned.

Thus the teenage characters that featured in the first half of last century, and the young
actors/actresses that played them, would always be featured in settings and situations that would
be acceptable to family viewing. Such "stars" did indeed achieve great success and popularity but
usually their career came to a halt as they grew into adult players. This is what happened to, e.g.
Deanna Durbin (see video below), best appreciated for her singing talent, Jackie Cooper (who
played "the Kid" in Chaplin's 1921 movie of the same name), or the "child prodigy" Shirley
Temple (see video below).

One hundred men and a girl (by Henry Koster, USA 1937)
A girl persuades a famous conductor (Leopold Stokowski) to conduct an orchestra of unemployed
friends. Academy Award for André Previn's musical score.

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Bright eyes (by David Butler, USA 1934)

Between 1935 and 1938 Shirley Temple was the No.1 box office hit.

A longer career awaited Mickey Rooney, who, in his own words, "played a teenager for almost
thirty years", his most famous role being that of "Andy Hardy" in a long series of films, in three
of which he had Judy Garland as a partner (see video below left). Such films showed groups of
young boys and girls addressing the problems of adolescence with an optimism, exuberance and
energy (hand in hand with the classical American values of hard work and determination) which
were the right antidote for a post-Depression America. This depiction of American adolescents
was so popular and well-received (although surely not realistically representing the life and
troubles of teenagers) that the character of Andy Hardy was awarded a special Academy Award
in 1943 "for its achievement in representing the American Way of Life in the production of the
Andy Hardy series of films". His partner Judy Garland was one of the few players who went on
making movies as an adult (while also performing as a singer) - although her most successful
role still remains the one in The Wizard of Oz (see video below right). Other young stars went on
to even more successful careers in adult roles, like Elizabeth Taylor and Humphrey Bogart.

Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Love finds Judy Garland in The wizard of Oz (by Victor
Andy Hardy (by George B. Seitz, USA 1938) Fleming, USA 1939)

Alongside with these "clean teen" (as they have sometimes been called) pictures, there was
another group of movies who were more concerned with the social problems represented by
teenagers (especially in the years after the 1929 Great Depression), which were soon termed
"juvenile delinquency". It was in this kind of films that Bogart actually began playing in a leading
role: in Dead End (see video below left; watch the full film here) he plays a gangster who comes
back to his home in New York's East Side and finds that the "Dead End Kids", a local gang of
youths, are the only people who consider and even admire him as a hero. This group of boys,
living in the slums on the East River, which works for them as a symbolic "dead end" which
prevents them from hoping for a better life, was so successfully portrayed in this movie that the
"Dead End Kids" continued to feature in similar films in the following years. (A similar role - a
gangster who accepts to pose as a coward in order not to appear as a hero for the local boys'
gang - was played by James Cagney in the more famous Angels with dirty faces (see video below
right).

Dead end (by William Wyler, USA 1937) Angels with dirty faces (by Michael Curtiz,
USA 1938)

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After the war, the theme of "juvenile delinquency" became once more interesting for Hollywood,
now ready to produce movies that showed how young boys, living in poor, often dilapidated
slums in big cities, would easily be prey to gangs and thus brought to crime. The very explicit
message was that such "rebellious" kids needed to be taken care of in order to keep them out of
crime, but also needed to be duly punished if necessary - a moral choice aimed at defending
society from what appeared to be a common, often devastating social problem, and a passionate
call to parents, teachers and institutions to face the environmental and socialization emergency.
This was a rather realistic view of current social issues so far from the "clean teen" world
pictured in the Andy Hardy films.

Two films, both released in 1949, can be considered as representative samples of this new wave
of teen films. In City across the river (see video below left), the main character, who gradually
isolates himself from his family, the community centre and even his gang, is witness to the murder
of a teacher by a friend - and both kids face dramatic consequences, as the former is arrested and
the latter is killed in a fight - a customary sad ending in this kind of films. The attitude underlying
such films is made very explicit at the start, when we are told by an officer that "The city where
crime flourishes always seems to be the "city across the river" - but don't kid yourself - it could
be your city, your street, your house ... where slums conditions undermine personal security and
take their toll in juvenile delinquency ...".

In Knock on any door (see video below right) Humphrey Bogart stars once again, but this time as
a lawyer who, having been a street kid himself, is well prepared to understand and defend a boy
accused of murdering a policeman. And, once again, the film sets out to expose the reasons
behind juvenile delinquency: a poor family background, the corruption by street gangs, a reform
school which can make things even worse - which also lead the main character to voice his
philosophy: "Live fast, die young and leave a good-looking corpse". However, the message is
clear for the audience: don't think that such cases are far from your own experience - "Knock on
any door, and chances are you will find delinquency". Director Nicholas Ray seems to try his
hand at a topic which will be more fully and powerfully explored in his later Rebel without a
cause (1955), thus opening the way to the "rebellion" films of the 1950s.

City across the river (by Maxwell Shane, USA Knock on any door (by Nicholas Ray, USA
1949) - full film 1949)

5. Dramatic changes in American society - and in Hollywood

The late '40s and early '50s witnessed a series of economic and socio-cultural changes which,
within just a few years, were destined to impact on film production and consumption in an
unprecedented way.

Men coming home from the war found a very different society from the one they had left a few
years before: in their absence, women had taken up quite a lot of their jobs in a variety of
settings, showing they were just as able as men to work and raise a family. Although men were
soon to regain their previous job positions, the changing role of women could not be dismissed -
which men found difficult, if not impossible, to accept. This was bound to be reflected well
beyond the immediate socio-economic level, involving more profound insecurities affecting
sexual and gender role, starting from the immediate family environment.

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The new prosperity after the war economy years also changed the American way of life in other,
no less important, ways. Housing development started to move from the city centres to the
suburbs, where single-family units could be afforded by middle classes. Living in the suburbs
meant enjoying private and public green spaces, suitable schools and social services, and the
possibility for husbands to commute to the city every day, leaving their wives back to care about
home and children. Soon shopping malls, and later multiplex centres, would provide a venue for
a more affluent society to boost consumption, as well as acting as new gathering spots for
teenagers.

The rapid spread of television was perhaps the most important single event that affected its direct
competitor, i.e. cinema. Living in the suburbs meant that most families could now enjoy TV
programmes, including movies, sitting comfortably at home rather than wasting time and money
to get to the city centre theatres. Hollywood tried hard to face this unwelcome competition in
several ways. First of all, by introducing new cinematic experiences that TV could not provide
(like larger and larger screens allowed by Cinemascope and other formats, stereo sound, big full
colour productions, as well as other short-lived novelties such as 3D cinema and even
"Odorama", a system which diffused smells in the theatre at appropriate moments during a
movie). Secondly, by dealing with topics and showing content that television would not (yet)
allow, aided in this by a very gradual, though steady, relaxation of the Motion Picture
Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, rigidly enforced since 1934. Although the Code
would officially be operative until 1967 (when it was replaced by a rating system), its
enforcement was weakened starting from the '50s, due, in addition to television, to the import of
foreign films, the determination of some directors (like Billy Wilder and Otto Preminger, among
others) and court interventions.

A court intervention was also responsible for the so-called "Paramount decision" or "Antitrust
Case" of 1948, whereby film studios were prohibited from owning movie theatres and thus from
controlling every stage of film-making, from production to distribution to exhibition, thus ending
their "vertical" integration and effectively bringing Hollywood's studio system to an end. This
had huge consequences for the film industry: new independent companies could now produce and
distribute smaller-budget films aimed at specific audiences (teenage audiences in the first place),
depicting more "adult" issues which could not be shown on television.

Another factor which had a strong impact on American society, as well as on Hollywood and the
teen films in particular, was the demographic trend. The so-called "baby boomers", i.e. the
babies born in the first "baby boom" of the war and post-war years, became the adolescents of
the mid-'50s (and beyond), going on to represent an age group which was not just increasingly
bigger, but started to be recognised, not least by teenagers themselves, as a portion of society
with its own particular features, and soon with a "culture" of its own. Enrolment in high schools
boosted, as young people could now avoid early entry into the labour market and aim at high
school graduation and, for many of them, college and university courses. However, teenagers
were soon, and most importantly, appreciated for their spending capacity, or, in other words,
quickly became a new, extremely profitable consumer market. This extended from cars (the
driving age being fixed at sixteen) to fashion and, most notably, to the entertainment industry,
with music and movies at the forefront. As the traditional family started to experience an
irreversible crisis, teenagers increasingly showed that they had the time and money to attract
new models of consumption, to attend new community places like shopping malls and drive-in
theatres, and thus to become a recognizable target for new kinds of movies, breaking the old-

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standing tradition that a film could provide fun for the whole family. Hollywood was very quick
at picking up this trend, now starting to rely on market research to tailor productions to different
age groups - and this partly explains why "teen films" emerged as a new "genre" (or rather, a
range of sub-genres) in a way and on a scale which was unknown to previous decades. Teenagers
had become the most important - and profitable - movie audience.

4. Rebels and rock'n'roll

The 1950s, which would be remembered with nostalgia in the following decades, and up to this
very day, were not, in reality, a peaceful, happy-go-lucky period - far from it. While the economy
quickly recovered from the war damages and consumption soared, the socio-cultural context was
one of widespread anxiety and unrest: the Korean War, the Cold War, the nuclear threat, the
ever-present racial conflicts were, among other issues, responsible for the dark, foreboding tones
that several movies had started to display since the '40s (most notably with the success of film
noir - see the relevant Interactive workshop). Fear for the future was bound to go hand in hand
with a concern for the generation that was a symbol of the future - teenagers. Juvenile
delinquency, which we have mentioned in the previous sections, was now once again at the centre
of public debate, as families, schools and institutions sensed the unrest that swept across younger
generations. The media (and, of course, Hollywood in the front line) were quick to capture both
the widespread concern for threat represented by teen life and the opportunities this same
situation offered to exploit it in movies targeted at that same teenage market.

And yet the teen restlessness and violence that were so often portrayed in "teenage rebel" movies
often included elements that went beyond the economic and sociocultural causes that were shown
to be clearly responsible for so much "juvenile delinquency", as depicted in late '40s films like
City across the river and Knock on any door. The troubled young characters in the new movies
showed a level of restlessness and anxiety which was hard to define, and might well be termed as
"existential". The first classic example of a tormented rebel is Marlon Brando in The wild one
(see video below left), which was not really, and formally, a "teenage film" (Brando was nearly
30 then, and the other characters not much younger), but offered what would become an
archetype of many rebels to come - not least for the important fact that such rebels could not
explain or describe their discomfort and unrest: when asked, "What are you rebelling against?",
Brando's famous answer was "What have you got?". And at the end of the film (see video below
right), he hands over his motorcycle racing trophy to a girl, but then leaves town, heading
nowhere.

On the one hand, Brando's character shows that kind of masculinity that his generation of fathers
clearly lacked; on the other hand, that same power is just as clearly perceived as a social threat,
as the pre-title warning says: "It's up to you to prevent this from happening elsewhere". Thus the
teenage film already shows its often ambivalent nature: "providing a reassuring or alarming, or
reassuring and alarming message to adults while at the same time providing an irresistible and
charismatic, anti-social rebel hero for its young (at heart) audience." (Note 2).

The wild one (by Laslo Benedek, USA 1954)

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filmstudies.it American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

"If I only had one day when I didn't have to be all confused - if I felt like I belonged someplace" -
Jim Stark

Jim: "You live here?"

Judy: "Who lives?"

from Rebel without a cause

Just a year later two movies marked the history of teen film, although for very different reasons,
and established an influence, not just on subsequent movies, but on youth culture in general,
which can hardly be underestimated. One was Rebel without a cause, which soon became a cult
movie, not least for the fact that James Dean, in the main role, died in a car accident just days
before the film was released, having appeared in just three feature-length films (the other two
being East of Eden and The Giant). Director Nicholas Ray had always been particularly
interested in portraying troubled (and troublesome) youths, but this film seemed to capture a kind
of unrest and ambiguity that had deep psychological, and not just socio-economic, sources. The
title clearly points to the difficulty - if not impossibility - of labelling the acute sense of existential
pain and deep anxiety shown by the protagonist Jim Stark, who seems to echo Brando's lament
("What have you got?"). This time the rebellion (if not straightforward delinquency) is not easily
referred to socio-economic deprivation, and thus Jim's unease takes up subtler, more disturbing
tones. Before Jim and his friend Buzz start a dangerous (and deadly) car race, Jim asks, "Why do
we do this?" and Buzz answers, "You gotta do something, doncha?".

However, there is one clear source of discomfort in Jim's life, and that is his family. In one
memorable scene (see video below left), Jim faces his parents after getting involved with the
police, and his father uselessly tries to understand the reasons for his behaviour, while Jim is
getting increasingly alienated and tense: "Have you got to say anything for yourself?... Can't you
answer? What's the matter with you anyhow? ... We've just moved here and the kid hasn't got any
friends ... Don't I buy you everything you want? You want a bicycle you get a bicycle, a car ... We
give you love and affection, don’t we? Was it because you went to that party .. well you know
what kind of drunken brawls those kind of parties turn into ... it's not a place for kids" ... and
when his mother interrupts to tell her husband, "A minute ago you said you didn't care if he
drinks", thus contradicting him, Jim bursts out, "You're tearing me apart! You say one thing, he
says another ... and everybody changes back again!".

So Jim clearly becomes a symbol of a generation which can now enjoy better economic
conditions, but that obviously is not enough, and the same goes for his father's claim that he gives
his son love and affection. Jim's angst has deeper, more ambiguous implications - he rebels
against private and public authorities, but he is really, desperately searching for a model to refer
to, especially for a "father-image" that no longer seems to exist. No wonder, then, that he tries to
find meaning for his life and a sense of belonging outside his family, living dangerous
experiences (like death-defying car races) and trying to find solace in his friends - especially
Judy (Natalie Wood), the girl he feels attracted to, and Plato, a younger boy (all of them bearing
the signs of hard family contexts). Together, these three youths seem to build up a sort of
alternative family, where traditional virility is replaced by a new, more vulnerable and confused
sense of manhood (Jim's question echoes this: "What do you do when you have to be a man?"),
and Plato's attachment to Jim can easily be taken as a sign of (latent) homosexuality.

When Plato is eventually killed by the police, Jim, in desperation, literally clings to his father,
who tries to reassure him (see video below right) - Judy can only watch as Jim is carried away by
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his father - but, despite the father's assurance that "I'll try to be strong", there seems little that
Jim can look forward to in his quest for a "cause" that might give meaning to his "rebellion".
This ending may mark a return to adult, patriarchal society, but Jim remains a symbol of the
fragility of this return.

Rebel without a cause (by Nicholas Ray, USA 1955)

Compared with Jim's existential anguish, which Rebel without a cause portrays from the teens'
viewpoint, the other 1955 movie that marked a turning point in teen film, Blackboard jungle,
seems to go back to contexts that so many "juvenile delinquent" movies had previously widely
dealt with: Glenn Ford plays Mr Dadier, an English teacher facing a rebellious, violent class of
teenagers in an inner-city school - and we see all action practically from his (i.e. an adult's)
viewpoint. The levels of violence and aggression, together with a reference to race issues, shown
in the movie (the boys do not just misbehave in class, but actually attack their teacher in the
street, and are even a threat to his pregnant wife) had previously been seen only in gangster
films, and were a shock to the audiences (while becoming a welcome inspiration for further
Hollywood movies). This, despite the fact that the film starts with a warning statement (which
was not unusual in films depicting teenage delinquency, with drums playing in the background
(see video below left), which reads: "We, in the United States, are fortunate to have a school
system that is a tribute to our communities and to our faith in American youth. Today we are
concerned with juvenile delinquency - its causes - and its effects. We are especially concerned
when this delinquency boils over into our schools. The scenes and incidents depicted here are
fictional. However, we believe that public awareness is a first step toward a remedy for any
problem. It is in this spirit and with this faith that BLACKBOARD JUNGLE was produced".

Again, nobody would have expected what immediately followed this very formal statement - a
sudden, explosive outburst of rock'n'roll ... Bill Haley and the Comets playing "Rock around the
clock". What's more, the initial scenes established a clear link between this new kind of music
and the teenage rebels, as if that was the soundtrack that accompanied their lives. Besides being
extremely successful, the film generated huge controversy - suffice it to say that the American
ambassador to Italy was so angered at the portrait of American society in the film that she asked
(and obtained) that the film itself be withdrawn from the Venice Film Festival.

Hollywood was, as always, very quick at picking up this general feeling and soon produced Rock
around the clock (see video below right), whose plot was just a pretext for exhibiting Bill Haley
and the Comets (singing, in addition to the title song, such hits as "See you later alligator" and
"Razzle Dazzle"), and other rock'n'roll stars such as the Platters with "Only you" and "The great
pretender". Rock around the clock was the first extremely successful film specifically marketed to
teenagers with the implicit, but clear, assumption that this was not meant to be a traditional
"whole family" piece of entertainment. Although it featured nothing of the violence portrayed in
Blackboard jungle, and the teens here were shown engaging in quite acceptable "love struggles",
the film stirred harsh dispute for the supposed connection it fostered between rock'n'roll and teen
violence - and not just in the US: riots and consequents bannings were soon reported in Britain,
Norway and Belgium.

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filmstudies.it American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

While the portrayal of schools, teachers and students in Blackboard jungle would have a lasting
influence on "school films" of the next few decades, the "official" admission of rock'n'roll to the
movie world would mark a new era for youth culture in general - and would spawn new series of
movies giving renewed insights into teenagers and their world.

Blackboard Jungle (by Richard Brooks, USA Rock around the clock (by Fred S. Sears,
1955) USA 1956)

However, the problem of "juvenile delinquency" was taken up in a different way by a series of
movies that, rather than focusing on the "dreadful" effects of this phenomenon on US society,
offered an insight on its possible causes - thus indirectly referring back to such '30s-'40s movies
as City across the river or Knock on any door, which we have already examined. This time,
though, the emphasis was not on society at large, but more specifically, on parents, i.e. a home
environment where poor, jobless and sometimes violent and abusing parents were simply not up
to the job of educating their children, let alone provide them with love and support. This is the
context explored, e.g. by Crime in the streets (see video below left), where fights between street
gangs lead the main character (John Cassavetes, in his debut role) almost to the verge of murder.
The message conveyed by the film is made very clear by Wagner, a social worker talking to the
father of one of these kids: "We're not talking about wild animals. We're talking about tough,
angry kids. You can beat 'em up, they just get stronger and tougher. You send 'em to jail, maybe
you wreck 'em for good. Those aren't the answers ...". And to the father's question, "What are the
answers?", Wagner replies, "We try to understand. We try to remember that kids don't get that
way without good reason. We listen, we sympathize, and we talk. It's not easy, but it's the only
way we can work ...".

A more psychological answer to basically the same problem is offered in Dino (see video below
right), where the protagonist (Sal Mineo, by this time specializing in this kind of role), who has
just spent three and a half years in a reform school, has only learnt how to be more violent in a
violent world. This time he will find and gradually come to accept the help of a psychologist, and
will thus eventually prevent his younger brother from turning into a murderer himself. The
presence of "experts" like social workers and psychologists is a clear indication that parents are
unable to cope with the problems of their kids and need some outside help - thus these films end
up focusing on family problems just as well as on juvenile rebellion.

Crime in the streets (by Don Siegel, USA 1956) Dino (by Thomas Carr, USA 1957) - Full
film

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All in all, "juvenile delinquency" films "posed a dilemma for the [cinema] industry. On the one
hand, it was keen to target the teen audience, not least by promising apparently salacious content;
yet on the other, it needed to convince adult authority figures of its own moral legitimacy.
Anxieties about juvenile delinquency made for good box office, but they also increased the
visibility of those who criticized the industry for its irresponsibility. Placing overt moral
messages alongside sensational portrayals of deviancy was thus a risky strategy, but an
economically profitable one." (Note 3)

Notes

(1) Driscoll C, 2011. Teen Film. A critical introduction, Berg, Oxford and New york, p. 2.

(2) Lewis J. 1992. The road to romance and ruin, Routledge, New York & London, p. 30.

(3) Buckingham D. Troubling teenagers: how movies constructed the juvenile delinquency in the
1950s, p. 6.

Back to Contents

Part 2:
Rebels with a cause - from the '50s into the '60s and '70s

1. Rock'n'roll and the new movie/music industry

Beside affecting the movie industry, rock'n'roll (whose name referred to sexual intercourse, but
only in Afro.-American English slang)(Note 1) had an immediate impact on the record industry as
well, establishing a close connection between the two: now records based on film soundtracks
could make huge profits, so that sometimes they were released even before the relevant movie, and,
conversely, a film's success would lead teenagers to buy the soundtracks on the new long-playing
records, to listen to disc-jockeys on radio stations and to enjoy both film and music in the rapidly
spreading drive-in open-air theatres (which were also a convenient place for teens to meet, "date"
and engage in soft sex practices). All in all, the entertainment industry profited enormously from
the new movie/music connection and the prospect of huge profits counterbalanced the
corresponding social alarm for a kind of music that had quickly become controversial and so
easily been associated not only with rebellion and juvenile delinquency, but also with sexuality and
inter-racial exposure.

The years immediately following the release of Blackboard jungle and Rock around the clock saw
a proliferation of "rock movies", which were often cheaply and hastily made, mainly placed in
"double bills" (a ticket worth two movies) and often marketed "for teenagers only", with the not too
implicit assumption that adults were excluded. Some of these movies are remembered mainly for
the fact that they represented the debut pictures of a number of promising directors and actors,
e.g. Robert Altman's The delinquents (1957), John Frankenheimer's The young stranger (1957),
Cry baby killer (1958) with Jack Nicholson, and, of course Love me tender (1956) with Elvis

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filmstudies.it American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

Presley (see video below left). Elvis was just the most successful of a number of pop stars which
featured in rock movies, like The Platters, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Pat Boone - and the most
prolific too, with a series of movies which spanned the late '50s but whose interest and appeal
would soon be waning (see video below right).

Love me tender (by Robert D. Webb, USA 1956) Jailhouse rock (by Richard Thorpe, USA 1957)

2. New "subgenres" in teen exploitation: "hot rod" and "horror/science-fiction" movies

Among the independent production companies (later called "indies") that were ready to profit from
the new rock'n'roll wave, American International Pictures (AIP) was probably the most successful,
not least for its clear marketing strategy, which, once wiped out the traditional idea of a film "for
the whole family", was summarized as follows:

"1. A younger child will watch anything an older child will watch.
2. An older child will not watch anything a younger child will watch.
3. A girl will watch anything a boy will watch.
4. A boy will not watch anything a girl will watch.
5. Therefore, to catch your greatest audience, you zero in on a 19-year-old male." (Note 2)

This is, in almost mathematical terms, the strategy underlying much of the so-called teen
exploitation movies, i.e. films marketed for teenagers and dealing, although in often simplistic and
stereotyped ways, with typical teenage interests, which would soon include other themes besides
rock'n'roll. The years leading into the '60s actually saw the success of a varieties of "subgenres"
which aimed at quickly exploiting the new "teen wave" before it waned - such subgenres having
indeed a short life span.

Director Roger Corman, who would become well-known in later years for his horror movies, soon
joined American International Pictures in directing several so-called "hot-rod movies", like The
fast and the furious (see video below left), which banked on teens' interest for speed, car races
(which, as we saw, featured prominently in Rebel without a cause) and motorcycles.

Horror and science-fiction films were two (often mixed) other "subgenres" which exploited
teenagers as characters in genres which had been quite popular in the '50s, when the Cold War,
the nuclear threat and the Communist fear were metaphorically translated into movies which often
featured monsters and other creatures who threatened to destroy humankind, or, perhaps even
worse, to change the very human beings into unrecognizable creatures (see the relevant Dossier).
Teenagers' natural concern for bodily changes and unknown identities could well be exploited, by
making teens the object of various kinds of horrific creatures, from a variety of monsters to
zombies and werewolves, or, alternatively, by making teens themselves change into creatures
killing other teens. One of the first (and most successful) examples was I was a teenage werewolf
(see video below right).
Teen horror and science-fiction movies, however, appealed to teenagers, in part, for different
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American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers filmstudies.it

reasons, which have to do mainly with the relationship between teenagers and adults:

"In horror films, adults are the enemy: teenagers fall victim to demented, self-serving scientists
with grandiose plans for saving the world from destroying itself. In sci-fi flicks, the evil forces
teenagers battle are the product of either mankind's or nature's mistake or surprise visitors from
outer space or another dimension. Yet equally menacing are some of the adult Earthlings, namely
the authority figures who teenagers can't rely on for protection or help because they are blinded by
their irrational distrust of young people. So perhaps the true appeal of these films to a younger
audience is the way in which they confirm the existence of a generation gap." (Note 3).

One must also recognise that horror/sci-fi films provided a sort of "safety net" to the threats posed
by teenagers. For one thing, they were rarely frowned upon by censorship and concerned adults
because, as one of the managers of AIP said, "Our stories are pure fantasy with no attempt at
realism. Because of this it is difficult to see how anyone could take our pictures so seriously that
psychological damage could occur ... Teenagers ... recognise this and laugh at the caricatures we
represent, rather than shrink in terror." (Note 4). In addition, such movies could channel the
anxieties so clearly expressed in films like Rebel without a cause and Blackboard jungle, as well as
the teenage threats represented by rock'n'roll and juvenile delinquency, by sublimating them in the
more socially acceptable characters and situations typical of horror/sci-fi films. As Christopher
Lee, world-famous horror movie star, remarked, "A couple of realistic films such as On the
waterfront and Blackboard jungle can do more to incite hooliganism than a dozen horror films."
(Note 5).

Teen horror as a subgenre was destined to return again and again in the following decades, and
up to this very day, as one of the most enduring (and profitable) teen cycles, as we shall see.

The fast and the furious (by Roger Corman, USA I was a teenage werewolf (by Gene Fowler jr.,
1955) USA 1957)

3. "Clean teen" pics

However, the end of the '50 was marked by the emergence of a new trend of movies which, while
always targeted at teenagers, would meet parents' approval as well: what have been called "clean
teen pictures". These mostly featured well-behaved, middle-class youths whose main interest was
having fun, thus including dates and parties, but no rebellion, no teen conflicts and no sex
problems. Within such "clean teen pics", the "beach movie" offered music as the background for
"clean teens" having fun - foreshadowing a later interest for surfing. This cycle exploited the
popularity of pop stars like Frankie Avalon in Beach party (see video below left):

"These kids did not go to school (it was summer), did not have jobs (who needs money?) and did
not react to the slowly building national crisis after the Kennedy assassination and the war in
southeast Asia. The beach films offered - to borrow the title from a Beach Boys album - an endless
summer." (Note 6)

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filmstudies.it American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

The undisputed "queen" of the "clean teen pics" was Sandra Dee, who offered the ideal image of
the trustworthy, no-fuss girl who has the typical (but superficial) problems any teenager can
display, particularly in dealing with parents and dating - problems that she can usually solve with
a good dose of common sense and never relinquishing the social decency and moral standards you
can always expect from her. Even the most rebellious rock'n'roll youth (whom she would probably
never date) can be civilised by such a dependable character. No wonder such a girl could appeal
not just to teenagers (especially teenage boys, of course), but to their parents as well. In Gidget
(see video below right) Sandra Dee has a huge crush on a surfer, who, however, seems to like his
surfing board more than her - which will lead her to win him over by making him jealous. Notice
how the trailer boasts that this movie proves that "a teenager can be delightfully juvenile without
being delinquent" ... Notice also the musical interludes when, much as they did in the classical
musicals of the '30s and '40s (see the relevant Dossier), characters burst out singing to comment
on the action or their emotions ...

Beach party (by William Asher, USA 1963) Gidget (by Paul Wendkos, USA 1959)

One is left to wonder how, within just a few years, teenagers who had identified in "rebels without
causes" and craved for Elvis "the pelvis" could now enjoy the sanitized, reassuring love romances
portrayed by the "boy next door" Pat Boone or the "girl-next-door" Sandra Dee, who just had fun
in safe, parent-approved circumstances. The fact is that teen audiences, i.e. teen moviegoers, were
ready to enjoy a wide range of movies, with the early wave of "rebels" movies clearly appealing
mostly to boys and the later wave of "clean teens" movies mostly targeted at girls.

However, not all "the clean teen pics" were set in safe, comfortable contexts where "having fun"
was the apparent main occupation of their characters. There were also movies that set out to focus
on "adult" issues which, by now, teenagers were ready to explore - although not ready, or rather,
not (yet) allowed to explore in their own way: premarital sex, teenage marriages (which were
becoming more and more common), teenage pregnancy, abortion (and ways to avoid it). The
issues were obviously addressed from an adult point of view, according to the prevailing middle-
class standards. These were movies that all the family could safely enjoy, and even encouraged to
see: no juvenile delinquents here, but just kids that, while displaying a range of problems typical of
their age, were ready to solve them with Dad and Mum's sound, reliable advice.

Conservatism and conformity thus marked the end of the '50s and early '60s, after juvenile
delinquents were on the wane and before a more pervasive "counterculture" would set in. Elvis
Presley is often quoted as the clearest example of this change in attitudes: far from his image of
the rock'n'roll rebel of Jailhouse rock (1957 - see above), after his return home from doing his
military service in Germany, he turned into a well-behaved youngster ready to join the mainstream
world of entertainment.

4. Other genres reflect teen issues: melodrama and musical

There were other movies that seemed to offer a deeper (or at least less superficial) treatment of
teenagers' issues, although the '50s and early '60s were not yet ready to address moral or sexual
problems with the more direct and "realistic" tone that the more "revolutionary" late '60 and '70s
would allow. Straightforward depiction of issues like sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and even
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American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers filmstudies.it

homosexuality was still beyond what could reasonably be expected from a Hollywood movie
operating under the Production Code (which was formally abolished in 1968), although, as we
have already mentioned, quite a few directors had begun to address such "adult" issues, often in
defiance of official prohibitions. Such films offered more than a glimpse into teenage troubles,
even though they may appear rather conservative, or at least very cautious, by modern standards.

An early case had been East of Eden, James Dean's debut feature film, which concentrated on a
boy, Cal, trapped within a family offering him only causes for anxiety and desperation, with a very
strict father, a rival brother and a supposedly deceased mother, whom he discovers runs a brothel
- nobody, except perhaps a love story, seems to give him any solace - which makes Cal an
alternative, or rather complementary, depiction of the Jim Stark of Rebel without a cause. Cal's
appeal to his father to tell him about his mother, "Talk to me, father! I gotta know who I am, I
gotta know what I'm like ..." (see video below left) runs parallel with Cal's rejection by his mother,
when, again, he cries, "I wanna talk to you, talk to me ... please!" (see video below right), and they
both seem to echo Jim Stark's desperate cry, "You're tearing me apart!" - families do not offer any
safety net nor any emotional support to these hyper-sensitive kids desperately searching for their
own identity.

East of Eden (by Elia Kazan, USA 1955)

A rather explicit depiction of teen sexuality, or, rather of its repression by family and society, was
offered by Splendor in the grass, which, again, marked the debut of another star-to-be, Warren
Beatty, teamed with Natalie Wood (who had played Jim Stark's girlfriend in Rebel without a
cause). Set against the background of the 1929 Great Depression, the film is a powerful yet
touching story of a young couple in love, Bud and Deanie, whose sexual urge is openly, harshly
repressed by the girl's mother, obsessed with her daughter's virginity, and the boy's father, who
would rather see his son express his sexuality with a prostitute rather than allowing pre-marital
sex (see video below left). The hypocrisy, conformism and individualism of a patriarchal puritan
society are dramatically exposed as the young couple desperately try to build an identity of their
own and thus reach a maturity which is helplessly denied to them. Theirs is a tragical plight, as a
psychiatrist tells the girl (who will eventually be hospitalised), "You will need to change - you
can't expect that from your parents, since they just can't do it themselves". Family and social
failure in understanding and appreciating youth problems is thus dramatically exposed.

In one of the saddest and most touching endings in the history of Hollywood cinema (see video
below centre), after a few years Deanie goes to see Bud, who is now married and with a pregnant
wife. She asks him, "Are you happy, Bud?", and he answers, "I guess so. I don't ask myself that
question very often. How about you?" - "I'm getting married next month ... " and Bud's final
remark is, "You've got to take what comes". And when her friend asks Deanie if she still loves Bud
(see video below right), Deanie replies, "Nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the
grass", quoting William Wordsworth's "Ode on Intimations of Immortality". Bud and Deanie have
finally given up their dreams and sacrificed not just their youth, but their most intimate need for

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identity and self-actualization - a price they have to pay to forget their adolescence and enter the
conformity of adulthood.

Splendor in the grass (by Elia Kazan, USA 1961)

A new sensibility was clearly emerging, foreshadowing the "New Hollywood" which was soon to
take up a more explicit revolutionary urge. But in the '50s one still had to be careful when dealing
with adolescent issues which, rather ironically, were described as "adult" content. This happened
to director Vincent Minnelli in depicting the plight of a college boy, Tom, who is made a fool of by
his friends who question his "virility" and apparent disinterest in girls (see video below left). What
in the original play was clearly described as homosexuality, the films tones down to Tom's hyper-
sensibility - which meets the "sympathy" of the college director's wife (Deborah Kerr): she, rather
than just any girl, will introduce him to sex, but more than that, will help him regain his self-
esteem and thus advance into adulthood. The movie is very careful in portraying this rather
unconventional relationship. As the initial credits are eager to underline: "Even the most daring
story can be brought to the screen ... when done with courage, honesty and good taste", while
titillating the audience: "The love scene that will be talked about for years", and at the same time
re-valuing the woman's role in Tom's coming-of-age, in her final words to Tom: "Years from now,
when you talk about this, and you will, be kind" - a teen story which turns into a powerful
melodrama.

Other Hollywood big-budget productions, not specifically or exclusively targeted at teenagers,

explored teen themes, as the musical West Side Story (see video below right), which, in portraying
the racial and social tensions between white and Puerto Rican gangs in post-war, poverty-stricken
New York's West Side, makes this troubled context the background to the classic "Romeo and
Juliet" tale, where the two teenage lovers are divided by their belonging to two different and
competitive ethnic communities. The narrative profits most from the songs and music from
composer Leonard Bernstein, and even more from the choreography, which are powerfully
employed by director Robert Wise and choreographer Jerome Robbins to describe a social, as well
as personal, teenage drama.

Tea and sympathy (by Vincente Minnelli, USA West Side Story (by Robert Wise and Jerome
1956) Robbins, USA 1961)
All in all, the '50s provided, within just a few years, an amazing range of movies, which is witness
to the basic fact that the US (and the Western world) were changing at a unprecedented rate of
speed - the difference between the "rebels" of 1955 and the "clean teens" of 1960 does indeed
represent a generational gap. To maintain that there is a single image to represent teenage life in
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the '50 equals to oversimplifying an array of attitudes and tastes which was extremely diversified,
and even, as we have seen, often contradictory.

4. A rebellious decade: the '60s

Within a few years, the social and cultural atmosphere underwent dramatic changes, not just in the
US, but in the Western world and even elsewhere, culminating in what would remain a synonym of
rebellion and "counterculture" - the year 1968. The decade witnessed a number of crucial events,
which helped to set in motion drastic changes in youth culture in particular: the Cold War reached
its climax with the "Cuba missile crisis" (1962), the war in Vietnam sparked off increasingly
violent protests, with marches and demonstrations taking place worldwide; the assassination of
John (1963) and Robert (1968) Kennedy shook America from its very roots, and the ever-present
racial problem was given new emphasis with the assassination of Malcolm X (1965) and Martin
Luther King (1968). The election of Republican Nixon as US President for two terms (starting in
1968 and 1972) was just another step in a political crisis that would lead to the Watergate
scandal, with Nixon finally leaving office in 1974. A year later, the Vietnam war ended in what was
substantially a US defeat.

Such an impressive array of dramatic events fuelled violent reactions from young people,
especially in the growing college population, facing clear paradoxes like being drafted to fight in
Vietnam but not yet having the right to vote. What in the '50s had been a feeling of alienation and
existential anxiety, though with constant socio-cultural and economic dimensions, now assumed
clearly political connotations. Soon the protest movements ended up targeting the whole
institutional "system", giving full vent to new, alternative lifestyles. Rock'n'roll, which had
heralded youth rebellion in previous years, was now in the service of new messages from a
generation of young people, who was in the meantime also experimenting with drugs.

With the abolition of the Production Code, which, as we have already seen, worked as the main
source of censorship, and the new rating system which identified movies to be viewed by people
under 17 together with parents ("R" rating), rather than by people 17 or older ("X" rating), movies
could now deal with more "adult" issues - which, however, were also the primary concerns of
teenagers, like drugs, violence, sex, adultery, homosexuality, impotence, abortion ... exposing at
the same time their rejection of the adult world and their alternative ways of being part of society.

Teen films of the late '60s and early '70 reflected these changing cultural contexts in a variety of
ways, with Hollywood obviously, as ever, ready to exploit the full range of the new issues at stake,
from students' protests to drug experimentation to sexual freedom, "free love" and communal
living.

5. New (and recurring) film cycles

Roger Corman, who, as we have seen, had broken new ground with "hot rod" movies, further
developed this cycle a decade later, with The wild angels (see video below left). This so-called
"biker movie" once again portrayed the lifestyle of a gang of riders, who, deciding to organize the
funeral of one of their members killed on the road, end up messing it all up. The hand-held camera
closely follows the movements of these youths who do not seem to have much else to do. The movie
caused a wave of moral protest both across the US and by American and European critics when it
was chosen to officially represent US cinema at the Venice Film Festival.

The wild angels foreshadowed the success of Easy rider in 1969 (with Peter Fonda starring in both
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movies - plus director Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson)(see video below right). However, this
time the "biker movie" also dealt with the (heavy) use of drugs, which in the meantime had become
a marker of what could be called the "drug movie" cycle. Easy rider, however, is a more classical
example of movies "on the road", with its characters travelling across the US on their "choppers"
(a favourite "hippy" motorcycle), meeting people of various sorts, and ending tragically. The film
remains one of the most successful depictions of the alternative lifestyle of the '60, including, in
addition to drug use, pop and rock music (with stars such as Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendricks on the
soundtrack) and hippy pacifism, with a bitter emphasis on the decadence of the American myth.
The danger to the establishment represented by teenagers' rebellion has taken on a new dimension,
as we hear characters speaking:
- "They're scared of what you represent"
- "All that we represent to them is somebody needs haircut"
- "What you represent to them is freedom"

The wild angels /by Roger Corman, USA 1966) Easy rider (by Dennis Hopper, USA 1969)

Protests and demonstrations became the ideal background to a series of films which, with varying
degrees of realism and critical analysis, were focused on college-aged students (university
campuses being the places where such events mostly occurred), thus focusing on collective, rather
than individual, action - or, in other words, with a political/sociological rather than psychological
approach. Sometimes such movies tried to stage the protagonist's plight, caught between the lure
of the "system" (which was at the same time the main target of political protest) and his social and
individual consciousness, as in Getting straight (see video below left - Elliot Gould starring as the
main character, with Harrison Ford in his second, minor, role). In most other cases, the students'
body takes central stage, as in The strawberry statement (see video below right), which won the
Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, and which is mainly remembered for its final sequence,
with police charging as the students sing The Beatles' "Give peace a chance".

Getting straight (by Richard Rush, USA 1970) The strawberry statement (by Stuart Hagmann,
USA 1970)

Sexual liberation, together with feminist movements, was another staple of '60s movies, which
were able to deal with sex on the screen with relatively more freedom than their '50s counterparts
- a degree of freedom that could seem quite revolutionary by the time's standards. However, the
depiction of teens' sexual "coming of age" was not always as easy and straightforward as the new
standards might seem to promise. Last summer, for example (see video below left), could be seen
to start as a "beach movie", with two boys and a girl, clearly middle-class, spending some time on
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a Long Island beach, discovering and testing ideas and feelings about life, love, loyalty - and
violence. As a matter of fact, when a second girl joins the group, the apparently idyllic atmosphere
is soon disrupted, as questions of loyalty and betrayal soon emerge and turn these youths'
experience into a nightmare, with one of the girls ending up raped. Thus the films suggests that
teenagers' discovery and enjoyment of sex is by no means an easy matter and can have serious, if
not altogether tragic, consequences. As the voice-over in the trailer says, "When last summer
began they were children, when it ended they were something else - today's child dies, tomorrow's
man is born".

Another film which tackled at least partially the same themes is Carnal Knowledge (see video
below right), though with a different focus. Set, at the start, in the years immediately following the
end of World War II, it is in a way "typically '60s" in its frank, explicit portrayal of the "easy" life
of two college students (Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel of the Simon & Garfunkel duo), who
spend much of their time partying, having fun and sex, and exchanging girlfriends - only to find
themselves, some twenty years later, bitterly disappointed at how life has then evolved for both of
them.

Last summer (by Frank Perry, USA 1969) Carnal knowledge (by Mike Nichols, USA
1971)

6. End of a dream: the '70s

The documentaries witnessing the "big crowds" concerts of the early '70s, like Monterey pop,
Woodstock and Gimme Shelter (see videos below), are at the same time a celebration of the '60s
"counterculture" and the "swan song" of that same culture. On the one hand, "teen culture" could
by now be better described as "youth culture", since the crowds featured in those films were mostly
in their twenties - rock ('n'roll), in other words, was now recognised and appropriated by a
generation whose limits were quickly broadening. On the other hand, the promises and utopian
ideals of the hippy/flower children movements were already giving way to more disillusioned
attitudes and were already pointing to a new kind of youth alienation - as the "system" proved to
be much more powerful and difficult to overthrow and/or replace (not least for its tendency and
readiness to absorb and thus disarm its opponents).

This rather quick evolution is apparent in the short period within which the three major events
mentioned above were held. Monterey pop captured highlights of the Pop Festival held in
Monterey (California) on 16, 17 and 18 June 1967 - the start of the so-called "summer of love" for
"flower children" (watch the full concert here). Woodstock, which won an Academy Award for
Best Documentary, is a recreation of the Music and Art Festival held in Bethel, New York, on 15,
16 and 17 August 1969. And Gimme Shelter documented the free concert held by the Rolling
Stones in Altamont Speedway (San Francisco) in December 1969 - a concert which ended up in
violence and even a murder of an audience member - thus marking the precocious end of the
message of peace, love and hope which had been launched just a couple of years before, and, with
it, the end of a dream.

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Monterey pop (by Don Alan Pennebaker, USA Gimme shelter (by Albert and David Maysles,
1969) Charlotte Zwerin, USA 1970)

Woodstock (by Michael Wadleigh, USA 1970)

Of course, Hollywood once again played a major role in the assimilation process whereby
"counterculture" movies soon became part of the mainstream Hollywood production, which was
ready to give moviegoers (an audience which by now was now gradually including "young adults"
as well as teenagers) portraits of a full range of youth images: from the drug-prone bikers of Easy
rider (see above), succumbing to the failure of the American dream, to the romantic but doomed
rebels of Bonnie and Clyde Video 1 below, from the love-making couples in the desert of Zabriskie
Point (Video 2)(with a villa exploding in the end, sending all symbols of mass consumption into the
air - Video 3 to the alienated, confused boy of The graduate (Video 4), who eventually kidnaps his
girlfriend, who has just got married, and, after blocking the church door with a cross (an easy
metaphor), catches a bus with her, with both of them finally staring puzzled at the camera,
uncertain about their present and even more about their future ...

Video 1
Bonnie and Clyde (/by Arthur Penn, USA 1967)

Video 2
Zabriskie Point (by Michelangelo Antonioni, USA 1970)

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Video 3
Zabriskie Point (by Michelangelo Antonioni, USA 1970)

Video 4
The graduate (by Mike Nichols, USA 1967)

7. Back to the past: nostalgic films

"The main thing new about American movies in the seventies is what's old. The seventies have no
culture of their own, no style, unless it's nostalgia" - James Monaco (Note 7)

When utopias fail and disappointment sets in, creating a sort of a vacuum which can't easily be
filled, when the present is so empty of values and meaning, it is almost inevitable that one turns
back to the past, as if the past were the container of long-lost dreams - thus re-constructing an
image of the past which, though far from being true, nevertheless provides the bitter-sweet feeling
of nostalgia.

Such was the case in the '70s, when the teenagers (and, with them, their parents, the teenagers of
the '50s) had a chance to look back and find solace and enjoyment in people, places and situations
which they had not lived, but could be taken as a "lost golden age". The last picture show (see
video below left) was one of the first movies to take audiences back to the '50s, in a small town in
Texas, where Sonny, the protagonist, receives a movie theatre as a legacy, and in the meantime
has a relationship with his football coach's wife. Though focussing on a post-war context, the
movie has much to offer to a present audience, focussing as it does on issues of sex, gender and
marriage, and at the same time provides a sad picture of the end of a cinema and a portrait of a
generation which present-time viewers can identify with. A similar situation is described in
Summer of '42 (see video below right), where the action is moved further back in time, telling the
story of Armie, a teenager who has a huge crush on an older woman, who, after her husband in
killed in action, introduces him to the world of sex, although the next morning she leaves him to his
own life, to his confusion and mixed feelings. As the protagonist says, in retrospect voice-over, at
the end, "That summer I lost Armie forever", that summer marked the end of his adolescence and
the loss of its dreams.

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The last picture show (by Peter Bogdanovich, Summer of '42 (by Robert Mulligan, USA
USA 1971) 1971)

However, the most renowned movie to become the symbol of a long-lost "age of innocence" is
certainly American Graffiti, which was launched with the taglines, "Where were you in '62?" (see
video 1 below) and "You can't stay seventeen forever", thus clearly appealing not just to actual
teenagers, but also to the people who were teenagers then, i.e. roughly a decade earlier. The movie
recalls one night in the summer of '62 - not just any night, but the one before a group of teenagers,
after leaving high school, are on the verge of either going to college, or to work, or simply
wondering what to do - and in the meantime try to have one final good time, driving cars in the
night, cruising for girls ... before everything changes. With a rich collection of rock'n'roll hits as
the background, the movie hit the movie market just at the right time: in 1973 the Vietnam War
had come to an end, but in '62 teenagers were still being drafted to fight in that war, JFK had not
yet been killed, and the appeal of the '50s was not yet over. So the movie is a bittersweet
recollection of a night when life was definitely going to change for its young characters. And, by
ending the movie with captions that tell the audience what happened to the characters afterwards,
the nostalgic mood comes full circle: one of the boys is missing-in-action in Vietnam, another
becomes a car mechanic (but is killed in a car accident), a third becomes an insurance agent, and
only the one who actually does get out of town, dodging the draft, is now a successful writer ...
(significantly, no mention is made of the girls, confirming their peripheral, and all in all not very
interesting, roles). As Director George Lucas, on whose personal recollections the movie is partly
based, described that fateful year:

"[It was] the end of a political era, a sociological era, and a rock era. You have three eras coming
to an end, and people have to change. You have to go from a warm, secure, uninvolved life into the
later sixties, which was involvement, anti-war stuff, and a different kind of rock'n'roll" (Note 8)

The huge success of American Graffiti opened the way to a wave of "nostalgia movies" that
spanned the whole decade. Although played out on a very different key, Grease (see video 2 below)
was just as successful with teenage audiences (and not just with them). Set in a high school in the
'50s, it revolves around a straightforward love story (boy - John Travolta - falls in love with girl -
Olivia Newton-John - , boy rejects her in order to look "cool" with his mates, girl changes her
looks and wins him over)(see video 1 below). The story is told as a musical, with plenty of "period"
references (cars, fashion, hairstyles, locations and, of course, the soundtrack), but also carefully
avoids the real plights of the real '50s teenagers (except for a (false) pregnancy). And in the end the
moral is clear: a man does not need to change to win over a woman - rather the opposite -
although to find such male dominance one has to look back to the past. The nostalgic tone reaches
its climax at the end, when the whole group of students get together for an end-of-year carnival
and, when they start wondering what will happen after high school is over, they start singing:
"We'll be together" ... although this is clearly shown to be a fairy tale, as the two lovers literally
"take off" in a car (just the two of them) heading for the sky, and leaving everybody behind ... (see
video 3 below).

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Video 1
American graffiti (by George Lucas, USA 1973)

Video 2
Grease (by Randal Kleiser, USA 1978)

Video 3
Grease (by Randal Kleiser, USA 1978)

The '70s ended with another back-to-the past British movie, Quadrophenia (see video below; the
full film is available here), loosely based on the Who's rock opera (and Sting's movie debut), which
takes us back to the mid-'60s England and the violent fights between the then fashionable opposing
gangs of the Mods and the Rockers. The portrait of this generation, already caught in an
alienating life made up of drugs, sex, dancing, hanging out, urban fights and raving parties, could
well resonate with the end of the '70s widespread disillusionment as the decade, which had started
with so much hope and excitement, was drawing to an end. Traditional family values are by now a
thing of the past, but money, which will be one of the mantras of the following decade, is just a
means of buying fashionable clothes, riding around with scooters, getting drunk and doing drugs
at parties. Jimmy (Phil Daniels) seems to find a sense of belonging and solidarity as he joins a
crowd of Mods in a street fight with the police in Brighton - but the pressure of a meaningless
existence will lead him to his ultimate end, as he jumps with his scooter off the White Cliffs of
Dover.

"The specific look, the dances, the dating rituals, then scooters, and the music that documented and
defined [the Mods' generation] suggested that if you shopped at the right stores, danced the proper
steps, "pulled the smart birds", drove an Italian scooter, and listened to the appropriate bands you
were OK ... Jimmy ably follows such a fashion, embracing the hell-bent hedonism with a kind of
desperate fervor. But at the end, he cannot escape his fundamental difference from the maddening
crowd. For that refusal - after all he is the film's only hero - he pays a big price" (Note 9).

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Quadrophenia (by Franc Roddam, GB 1979)

Notes

(1) Doherty T. 1988. Teenagers & teenpics. The juvenilization of American movies in the 1950s,
Unwin Hyman, Boston, p. 91.

(2) Betrock A. 1986. The I was a teenage juvenile delinquent rock'n'roll horror beach party movie
book: A complete guide to the teen exploitation film, 1954-1969, St. Martin's, New York, p. 103.

(3) Tropiano S. 2006. Rebels and chicks. A history of the Hollywood teen movie. Back Stage Books,
New York, pp. 44-45.

(4) Rubine I. 1958,. "Boys meet ghouls, make money", New York Times, March 16. Quoted in
Doherty, cit, p. 160.

(5) Hill D. 1958-59. "The face of horror", Sight and Sound, 28, p. 7. Quoted in Doherty, cit, p. 175.

(6) Shary T. 2005. Teen movies. American youth on screen, Wallflower, London and New York, p.
33.

(7) Monaco J. 1979. American film now: The people, the power, the money, the movies, New
American Library, New York, p. 60.

(8) Klemesrud J. 1973. "'Graffiti' is the story of his life", New York Times, 7 October 1973, p. 13.
Quoted in Tropiano, op. cit., p. 116.

(9) Lewis J. 1992. The road to romance and ruin, Routledge, New York & London, p. 86-87.

Back to Contents

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American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers filmstudies.it

Part 3:
Revamping teen pics: the '80s

1. New values, beliefs and attitudes

The 1980s marked the closure of an era and the entrance into new territory. As the "rebels" of
the previous decades were now turning into settled-down adults, the short-lived season of
political struggle, of "counterculture" movements and of "peace and love" utopia was coming to
an end. The wave of nostalgia that had swept over the latter part of the '70s, with its return to a
supposedly "golden age" of the '50s, hiding a rather sombre and pessimistic view of the present,
was soon replaced by a renewed interest in that same "present", which was now holding new
promises - but this time, no idealism, no utopia, no "back to the past" (and neither "off to the
future"). The new present was heralded by a return to tradition, or rather, a new conservatism
coupled with a renewed capitalism.

The decade would later be recalled as the triumph of "Reaganomics" - a political, economic and
cultural stance which found its most obvious symbol in the eight years of the Reagan
administration (1981-1989) - which largely coincided with the "Thatcherism" (1979-1990) in
Britain and other similar right-wing movements in other countries. A new wave of capitalist
liberalism was matched with a renewed emphasis on that old American value - individualism -
and its affirmation of professional success, economic welfare and related consumerism that were
the main ambitions of those who could "make it" (forgetting, of course, all about all those who
could not make it). The "hippy" of just a few years earlier had quickly turned into the Wall Street
"yuppie" of the new world order.

How did teens fare in this order? Stephen Tropiano (Note 1) makes a few illuminating remarks
about how teenagers adapted to such major changes in values and attitudes: several surveys
revealed that not only did a clear majority accept the prevalent moods of the time, but actually
admired Reagan, declared themselves "religious", made much less use of drugs, were in favour
of laws against drug addiction and even wanted their teachers to assign more homework.

The core of the new order was obviously "money" and all its implications, like making money
through appropriate higher education and access to profitable jobs, and spending that same
money by buying the increasingly wider range of products that the industry (with the
entertainment industry at the forefront) was only too eager to provide. This "materialistic"
attitude marked teenagers' ordinary lives right from the start, with youths taking up jobs in their
free time in order to be able to afford nights out and other desirable pastimes. The present was to
be enjoyed, but even the future was often seen as an opportunity to raise one's standard of living.

However, such an attitude does not tell the whole story. Teenagers were still confronted with the
problems that their parents (and grandparents) had faced. Other surveys made it clear that
typical teenage concerns, like dating and having sex, were high on their agenda, followed by
more problematic issues like alcoholism, suicide and teen pregnancy. And, to underline the
contradictions of the time, the suicide rates were growing (and sometimes spreading within a
community) and, by the mid-eighties, drug consumption, especially cocaine, was developing
again. The latter '80s partly changed this scenario with the spread of AIDS and all its related
consequences, and the refusal of the Reagan administration to promote contraception among
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teenagers only made problems like unwanted pregnancies, sexually-transmitted diseases, and
especially AIDS, even worse. Sex education meant abstinence, or, to put it in Nancy Reagan's
words, "Just say no". Of course, such appeals did not prevent teenagers from having (often un-
safe) sex and to keep issues like virginity and sex at the core of their concerns - and teen movies
are there to testify it, despite clear and frequent attempts by conservative groups to censor not
just movies, but books, record lyrics and even public education classes (Reagan supported the
teaching of creationism alongside evolution ...).

2. New (and renewed) waves of teen pics

Through all the previous decades, teenagers (by now meaning not just "people in their teens" but
also people in their twenties) had definitely become, in terms of numbers but above all in terms of
box-office gains, the most profitable, and thus the most important, film audience. This trend
continued in the '80s and was one of the main reasons for the huge success of the new category of
"blockbusters" (the opposite of the so-called "B-movies", i.e. low-budget and often low-profit
films) that had emerged in the late '70s with films like Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), Superman
(1978) and Alien (1979) - all titles that spawned prequels, sequels and remakes in the following
decades and up to the present.

In the meantime, the ways in which movies were consumed, and not just produced, were
changing fast. Open-air drive-ins, which we now easily associate with the '50s and '60s, were
quickly being replaced by multiplex theatres, which became a staple first of outdoor shopping
centres and soon afterwards of indoor shopping malls - these were places where youths could
gather, spend their time (and money) and, above all, be offered a range of movies to satisfy all
kinds of tastes. No wonder these teens would later be called "generation multiplex" (Note 2).

Other technological developments were changing the ways films were produced and distributed.
The diffusion of home entertainment with tape-recorders, VHS cassettes, and later DVDs, and the
possibility of renting, in addition to buying, films, also meant that specific products could be
developed with a "straight-to-video" destination, i.e. with no theatrical distribution - and this
once again opened the way to the production of movies with limited budgets (once called B-
movies).

The attention that Hollywood mainstream cinema was always paying to the teen market showed
in the fact that teenagers were cast as characters in non-teenpics, as well as in the revamping of
the "teen movie" in general and of its "sub-genres", which at least partially reflected the
traditional "cycles" of the previous decades. The three major subgenres which can be considered
as mostly representative of the '80s teen pics are the horror (or "slasher") movies, the sex
comedies and the more "serious" dramas or comedy-dramas. However, many teen pics of this
period cannot be easily assigned to a particular subgenre, and topics, situations and character
types were often shared by different genres: the high school, the prom and the shopping mall, for
example, often appear as settings in several kinds of movies, and sex is a staple of most teen films
of the decade. As ever, we should not forget that a "teen movie" virtually always reflects an adult
vision, and the "self-consciousness" of many films as regards their very essence of movies
especially focussing on teenagers is another distinctive feature of the period.

3. The horror/slasher subgenre

Since its appearance in the '50s (see Part 1), the teen horror genre had never disappeared from
the screens, although in the '70s it will mainly be remembered thanks to two different movies
which, significantly, featured adolescent characters facing the difficult transition to adulthood, as
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in The exorcist (by William Friedkin, USA 1973) and Carrie (by Brian De Palma, USA 1976),
which set new standards for the genre.

In the '80s, horror was revived by the huge success of a few movies which, although not
specifically targeted at teenagers, saw them once again as main characters (see videos below):
such was the case with Halloween, in which a psychopath escapes an asylum and comes back to
the place where he had committed its original crime and starts a horrible new series of killings,
with his sister, good student Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis, in her debut role) as his primary target. In
Friday the 13th, an ill-fated lake and its adjoining campsite are the settings for a horrific series
of deaths involving a group of teenagers, unaware of the fate that is to befall them. In A
nightmare on Elm Street (the debut film for Johnny Depp), a "boogey man" wearing a special
glove fitted with sharp blades enters the dreams of teenagers - and this is the only way in which
he can actually kill them (so, in a way, youths are responsible for allowing the killer to cross over
to reality). Such films, which were so successful as to spawn several sequels, remakes and other
related movies, considerably raised the level of horror made visible on the screen, up to the point
of being called "slasher" and/or "splatter" movies, referring to the amount and range of horrible,
bloody ways in which teenagers met their death (hardly to be compared, however, with the
further developments of the genre in the decades to follow).

Halloween (by John Carpenter, USA 1978)

Friday the 13th (by Sean S. Cunningham, USA 1980)

A nightmare on Elm Street (by Wes Craven, USA 1984)

The success of such movies raises the classical question of why teenagers (or anybody else, for
that matter) should want to attend such horrific shows and what kind of pleasure they might get
out of them (see the Dossier "Why do we pay to get scared? The paradoxical lure of horror
films"). One may just assume that such "teen horror" movies tap into adolescents' fears of their
changing body becoming sexual, of their emotional instability, of being different and abandoned
to themselves in such plights by their parents (who are actually either absent or ineffective in all
such films) - or they may provide teens with a, albeit virtual or metaphorical, way out of their
fears, projecting such fears out of reality and onto the screen, and thus making them feel not so
much in danger after all - you can even exit the theatre feeling stronger because you have
survived.

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However, the settings of these horror movies are meaningful as well, since they all take place in
what could be considered as safe "comfort zones" (like schools, holiday camps, home parties),
i.e. communities that turn out to be just the opposite, as the realm of adult hypocrisy and hatred -
the ultimate decline and fall of the American dream. So, while the teenagers of previous decades
had suffered from the repressive, patriarchal authority of their families, these "new" teenagers
are left alone by a generation of parents who can't or won't care for them.

What particularly strikes in this subgenre is, however, the often explicit connection between
violence and sex: the victims are practically all girls and especially girls who have just had sex,
or are going to have it, or are in any way sex-prone and, generally speaking, morally
transgressive (not just sexually, but also by using drugs or simply having one party too much).
One could make the obvious link to the comments we made above on teen sexuality in the '80s, so
that youths are clearly taught how dangerous sex can be; however, the interesting fact to note
here is that there is usually a teenager who survives at the end, and this is almost exclusively a
girl - what has been called by feminist critics "the final girl" who manages to escape the killer or
kill him/her, after witnessing all her friends brutally murdered in one long sequence of horrific
deeds:

"The women in these films are typically portrayed as independent, as sexual, as enjoying life, and
the killer, typically - not all the time but most often - is a man who is sexually frustrated with
these new aggressive women, and so he strikes back at them. He throws knives at them. He can't
deal with them. He cuts them up, he kills them"(Note 3)

In the end, and as a general rule, teenagers are portrayed as victims of their own weaknesses
and, in the absence of any parental authority and/or help (significantly, parents and adults are
absent or hardly seen) they have to face some kind of punishment coming from other sources
(natural or supernatural). In the end, they must rely on their self-esteem and be ready to develop
the necessary confidence and skills to literally "throw" the killer out of their dreams, as the
Nightmare films seem to suggest. Director Wes Craven "must have also realised that only certain
characters survive, and that their actions embody particularly admirable human qualities such as
integrity, intelligence, purity and loyalty" (Note 4). This can partly explain how subsequent waves
of horror movies (like the Scream series, started by the same Wes Craven in 1996) would further
revive the genre by introducting not just smart killers, but also correspondingly smart kids to
fight them.

4. The sex comedies subgenre

Sex had always been a central issues in teen pics, but apparently one had to wait for the '80s to
be provided with raunchy, "vulgar" and in a way outrageous descriptions of what boys' mind in
high school was set on and the way it could be given visual exposure. Porky's (see video below
left), a Canadian film, was crude in depicting sexuality in terms of the active male as the subject
of lewd acts towards a passive female seen mainly as an object. The film, which had two sequels,
was also "innovative" in the sense that male sexuality was inextricably linked to the theme of
"getting laid", or losing one's virginity, which was initially a male affair but would soon be
shared by girls too. "Coming of age" was thus re-introduced with a clear emphasis on the sexual
aspect, with the implication that losing virginity was an inevitable component of this "rite of
passage". It is true that, despite the conservative attitudes towards teen sexuality, these were the
years when the age of first intercourse was rapidly decreasing (until the AIDS crisis added a new
perspective in the middle '80s). The titles of this range of new sex comedies tell all the story, e.g.
The last American virgin, Losin' it, Getting it on, Screwballs ... to name just a few.
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"It’s kind of a double-edged sword, isn’t it? . . . If you say you haven’t . . . you’re
a prude. If you say you have . . . you’re a slut! It’s a trap. You want to but you can’t but when you
do you wish you didn’t, right?"
Alison in The Breakfast Club (see below)

"Virginity is an important recurring element of teen film for several reasons. It is one place in
which to see the negotiation of individual choice and socially established norms. It intersects
historically specific and highly gendered experiences of adolescence with the political opposition
between tradition and change. It is a psychological marker that remains internal to adolescence,
referring to its origins in ideas about puberty and its destiny in images of adulthood (and potential
parenthood)." (Note 5)

But the '80s were just as keen on business and financial success - and nothing could be more
exciting that "sex + business". That's what Risky business (see video below right) is all about: a
horny 17-year-old, Joel (Tom Cruise, in one of his most important debut roles) does not just
quickly solve the "virginity problem" with a professional older female, but, in his father's
absence, turns his house into a brothel - to the satisfaction of all parties involved: his friends, the
professionals he employs, and himself in his new role as an entrepreneur. And, on top of all that,
Joel invites the admissions office from Princeton University to "join the club" - and the officer is
so satisfied with what he's offered that Joel's grades (which were certainly not very brilliant)
soon change and Joel is granted admission to the prestigious college. His father, unaware of
what has been going on in his absence, eventually congratulates Joel and the two agree that
"taking chances" is still the good old way to get along.

Thus the film could be seen as a satire of the times, but it also revels in the comic depiction of
such a successful example of good American capitalism - not to mention that patriarchal
authority is reaffirmed, together with a mysoginism which is even more despicable by being at
the service of the male's financial exploit.

Porky's (by Bob Clark, Canada 1981) Risky business (by Paul Brickman, USA
1983)

Although on the surface dealing with the same subject-matter, Fast times at Ridgemont High (see
the video below) is very different in tone. Based on a (partly autobiographical) book/survey by
future director Cameron Crowe, it is one of the first movies of this kind directed by a woman,
Amy Heckerling (who would go on to direct other comedies like Clueless, American school, and
the first two highly successful Look who's talking, with John Travolta). The students at a
Californian college spend their time by working part-time, smoking marijuana and surfing (in
addition to, one may suppose, studying ...). Once again, the main concern of both boys and girls
seems to be how to lose their virginity, but there is little of the farcical and raunchy tone of both
Porky's and Risky business - the portrayal of these youths, who seem to be the perfect
embodiment of the American teens of the Reagan era in their perennial state of confusion and
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uncertainty, is honest, sincere and, above all, non-judgmental towards the "fast times" that these
youths seem to go through in their quest for "coming of age". And for once, female characters
are given full scope and are not simply an appendage of the male condition.

Fast times at Ridgemont High (by Amy Herckerling, USA 1982)

5. The John Hugues films

Teenagers in the '80s were not all just bent on having sex, or a least a good time. There were
other sub-genres which took things more seriously and set out to portray and explore teens'
problems and plights with a more earnest, if not always realistic, concern.

A series of films directed and/or produced by John Hughes over a span of just a few years have
become an essential point of reference for teen pics of the '80s and beyond, not because they offer
a really in-depth depiction of the teen condition (which is still focused on the average, white,
middle-class, suburban type), but mainly because they establish a series of character types and
situations/settings that are both symbols of a particular era and a portrayal of teen pressures and
concerns that, more generally, were able to resonate with contemporary, as well as later, teen
audiences.

The best known, and probably the best, of these films is The Breakfast Club (see video below),
which introduced a number of characters representative of a range of youths which could be
considered typical of the social and cultural American high school system. Five students, for
reasons which are not entirely clear, are forced to spend one Saturday "in detention", with the
task of writing an essay describing "who you think you are", under the (rather unconspicuous)
supervision of one of their teachers. Apparently, these youths couldn't be more different from one
another, as they typify figures that teen pics had already introduced, but were here presented
with such clarity and precision to turn them into stereotypes: Brian the "nerd", Andrew "the
jock", Allison "the rebel", Bender "the juvenile delinquent" and Claire "the popular girl". The
whole action takes place in the restricted space of a gym, and this adds to the sense of "privacy"
and "intimacy" that gradually develops. At first simply irritated by being held "prisoners" for a
whole day, they start to "open up": by talking about almost every common teen concern, from sex
to family, from sports to drugs, from wealth to popularity and even teen anxiety and suicide, by
the end of the day they will reveal a lot about their most intimate worries and, even if they stick to
their self-imposed roles, they will learn that they can share much more than they had expected -
their fears and feelings are, after all, much the same. Hughes is careful to vary the tones of their
self-revelations, making them at times serious, at times funny, but always closely connected with
the inner lives of these boys and girls. And when, as could probably be expected, the "nerd" is left
to write the required essay, he will not betray the images that the audiences have so far
constructed of them - but at the same time he will reaffirm the labels that right from the start they
have been assigned, thus adding nothing to the teacher's (and the audience's) knowledge of them:

"Dear Mr. Vernon,

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we
did wrong. But we think you are crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we

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are. You see us as you want to see us - in the simplest terms, the most convenient definitions, But
what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and
criminal. Does that answer your question?
Sincerely yours,
The Breakfast Club"

"Both Fast Times and Breakfast Club feature the five basic characters of school films that
permeate the subgenre: intellectual and essentially repressed (and thus occasionally aggressive)
nerds; delinquent boys and girls “from the wrong side of the tracks” who either pay for their
crimes or learn to reform; psychologically distraught rebels who may dabble in crime but are
usually looking for a more acceptable outlet for their malaise; “popular” types whom everyone at
school knows and who support their status through fashion, appearance, and attitude; and
athletes, usually shown as physically focused and prouder than their counterparts, dedicated to a
given sport yet surprisingly emotional as well." (Note 6)

The Breakfast Club (by John Hughes, USA 1985)

Issues confronting teenagers are focussed on social class and its influence on students'
relationships in Pretty in Pink, written and produced by Hughes although directed by Howard
Deutch (see video below left). Andie is a "working class girl", with an unemployed (though
thoughtful) father and a part-time job in a record shop. She has a very good old friend in Duckie,
who is in her same "social class" and has always been in love with her, but easily develops a
crush on Blane, a "richie", driving an expensive fast car and living in a similarly sumptuous
villa. Andie is obviously not welcomed by Blane's friends, and she suffers the humiliation of being
invited to the "prom" by Blane, only to be dumped at the last minute. Andie, however, reacts
promptly - she works hard on changing a horrible pink dress into something more attractive and
goes to the prom alone. There she will find good old Duckie (see video below right), who is only
too pleased to be her partner at the prom. But Blane is there too - so who will Andie choose? One
would expect that Andie will stay with Duckie, who is by far the really earnest young man around
- and this is how the movie was meant to end. But preview screenings showed that the audiences
were not satisfied with this ending, so this was changed, and Andie eventually goes off with Blane
- leaving poor Duckie to take up another girl, although he very generously accepts Andie's
choice. This very ambiguous finale reminds us that we are in the '80s - money and good looks are
essential, especially if combined in one person. However, Andie proves to be a very active,
enterprising girl who seems to be in control of her own choices and feelings - a rather unusual
character for teen movies of this era.

Video 1 Video 2

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filmstudies.it American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

Pretty in pink (by Howard Deutch, USA 1986)

In the same year, Hughes wrote and directed Ferris Bueller's day off (see video 1 below), where
well-off kid Ferris (Matthew Broderick) "takes a day off school", i.e. plays truant, driving around
town in his dad's Ferrari, together with his girlfriend and his best friend, and getting into all
sorts of (relatively harmless) mischiefs, while the school headmaster desperately tries to get hold
of him. This brilliant comedy has farcical tones, especially in the depiction of the inept
headmaster and the tragi-comical experiences of the trio. The day off seems to turn into a
bittersweet holiday before adolescence comes to an end - and, indeed, much of what Ferris does
seems to point to his future "business" career (he visits the Stock Exchange, has lunch in a typical
"businessmen restaurant" and even imitates them). However, Ferris is very much aware of what
he's doing, and at times the movie takes a tone of self-consciousness, as when Ferris looks
straight into the camera, or the sequence after the end credits (see video 3 below), when he turns
to the audience and says, "You're still here? It's over! Go home”.

Video 1 Video 2

Una pazza giornata di vacanza/Ferris Bueller's day off (di/by John Hughes, USA 1986)

A year later, Some kind of wonderful (see video below left) tells more or less the same story as
Pretty in pink, with reversed roles: this time it's the boy, Keith, who longs for Amanda, both being
middle-class - although Keith's best friend Watts, a sort of tomboy punk, has a big crush on him
(who does not seem to notice). Amanda is very keen on being super-rich Hardy's girlfriend, but
when Hardy dumps her, she quickly accepts Keith's invitation to an expensive evening out - with
poor Watts even accepting to be their chauffeur for the night out. In the final sequence, Keith
confronts Hardy (with the help of a juvenile delinquent friend) and finally realizes that Watts, not
Amanda, is his true love. Once again, Hughes takes his characters much more seriously than in
most other teen movies of the time, with girls being more determined and considerate than boys,
and at the same time gives a portrait of the '80s, when class differences and economic status were
clear signs of the times.

The "serious" consideration that Hughes brought to his films is also a keynote of Lucas (see
video below right), in which a smart, resourceful, lively 14-year-old develops a crush on the 16-
year-old "new kid in town" Maggie, who soon falls in love with one of the older, attractive
football players of the school's team. Lucas is small, even for his age, and is easily bullied by the
older boys; however, he will do everything in his power to conquer his "girlfriend", even
attempting, with disastrous yet hilarious consequences, to become part of the football team. In a
moving conversation between Lucas and Maggie, the girl tries to make Lucas understand that
she just want to be "friends", but Lucas cannot grasp the distinction between "friendship" and
"love" - although in the end he will come to accept it. The movie is a tender portrait of a young
adolescent and its subtle psychological implications, far from the superficial sex comedies of the
same period.

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Some kind of wonderful (by Howard Deutch, USA

1987) Lucas (by David Seltzer, USA 1986)

6. The "dancing" movies

Music and dancing have always figured prominently in teen movies, and since the early days of
rock'n'roll, youths seem to have found in dancing an alternative way to express their feelings as
well as a particularly apt means of venting their erotic and sexual pressures. Such had been the
case, at the end of the previous decade, of Saturday night fever (see video below left), which is
mainly remembered for Tony Manero (John Travolta)'s white outfit, his finger pointing to the sky,
displaying his skills on the dance floor of the Saturday night disco, dancing to the tunes of the
emerging disco music and the Bee Gees' score. However, the movie has a remarkably explicit
socio-cultural background, which makes it at the same time a portrait of another "lost"
generation, which, after losing all the ideals of the '60s and early '70s, foreshadowed the
hedonistic atmosphere of the '80s. Tony Manero has nothing much to rejoice about, with a boring
job as a shop assistant in a hardware store - except living all the week in expectation of his
Saturday night exploits at the disco, which becomes a way of finding a different status in another
world, one of the symbols of pleasure through consumption. His Catholic family and his bunch of
confused friends are not much better off - his brother is in the process of giving up his
priesthood, and one of his friends, who has desperately tried to make himself understood or
simply listened to, will eventually jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. So, all in all, the glamour of the
Saturday night "fever" is not so glamorous after all ...
Another "musical" film with interesting subtexts had been Fame (see video below right), which
set out to portray the dreams, aspirations, feelings and disappointments of a group of youths
attending New York's demanding High School of Performing Art. The times had changed, and
now a Hollywood movie could tackle, although superficially, themes such as the integration of
Black Americans, inter-racial relationships, and even homosexuality. Once again, an update of
the American dream ("a dream of instant success", as the trailer says) is at the basis of all these
youths' hard efforts to succeed, again foreshadowing the success-based philosophy of the '80s.
Fame was a huge hit, revived the American musical (even in its traditional story of a group of
young people setting up a final show), and gave rise to a TV series of the same name.

Saturday night fever (by John Badham, USA Fame (by Alan Parker, USA 1980)
1977)

On August 1, 1981, MTV (Music Television) was launched, and the music and film market was
changed forever. The TV channel aired mostly music videos, a form of show/entertainment which
was practically unheard of previously, and whose target was the same audience who flocked to
the theatres to watch teen movies (and who would be soon be buying VHS tapes, CDs and later
DVDs). The very close integration of music, dancing and film (plus, of course, the heavy

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filmstudies.it American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

component of commercials) quickly became not just an extremely powerful marketing tool, but
also a new standard in entertainment, and, in addition to boosting the sales of films and records,
also established a new visual style, made of fast paced, carefully edited videos, specific
soundtracks and carefully choreographed dancing numbers which soon influenced movies.

This influence was particularly evident in the "dancing" musicals of the '80s (see videos below), a
sort of feature-length videos, starting from Flashdance, a typical "success story" of the era, in
which a working-class girl struggles hard to be admitted to a dance school (finding love in the
meantime), and continuing with Footloose, the story of a city boy who moves to the American
province and finds the local religious authorities fiercely opposing music and dancing (as if we
were back in the '50s ...); and ending with Dirty dancing, which, back in the '60s, tells the story of
a "next door girl" who is initiated into dancing and sex (or rather, into sex through dancing) by a
"macho" instructor to the aphrodisiac tunes of Latin-like rhythms.

1 2 3
1. Flashdance (di/by Adrian Lyne, USA 1983)
2. Footloose (di/by Herbert Ross, USA 1984)
3. Dirty dancing (di/by Emile Ardolino, USA 1987)

7. "Sports", "war" games and technology

The '80s were not all about dancing, though: success, both personal and social, both professional
and financial, was being achieved by teenagers in a variety of other forms, in situations and
settings where (mainly) boys had the opportunity of displaying their strengths and overcoming
their weaknesses - in a triumph of individual achievement (and with the typically American
promise that anyone, no matter their starting points, can be an achiever). Rocky and Rambo, of
course, set the standards.

Such was the case with sports and its related challenges - and one of the major hits of the decade
was The karate kid (see video below), which has a love story at the basis of an essentially sports
adventure. 16-year-old Daniel falls in love with rich girl Ali and is soon made the target of
bullying by Johnny, the girl's ex-boyfriend, who happens to be an expert in martial arts. The only
way the boy can hope to conquer Ali is (obviously) to challenge his competitor on his own
grounds. He eventually finds an old karate master, Mr Miyagi, who will very informally train him
in the practice and philosophy of karate, eventually leading him to win a tournament where
Johnny was supposed to be the winner. The model of all this is obviously Rocky (director John
G. Avildsen had been, not by chance, the director of the first Rocky movie). The karate kid was a
huge success and spawned three sequels, an animated TV series and a remake in 2010.

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The karate kid (by John G. Avildsen, USA 1984)

Sports were not the only realm in which teenagers could show their abilities and determination -
there was also the fast-growing world of technology, and (home) computers in particular, which
teens would soon master and become its most fanatical adepts. Together with teens' mastery of
technology, however, came also, as might be expected, a new wave of fear that they might
overuse or misuse such technology to the public damage. These were the final years of the Cold
War, and the nuclear threat was still very much felt, in a revival of '50s communist fears, at least
until 1987, when Reagan and Russian Gorbachev agreed on a treaty to ban intermediate-range
missiles.

Such worries and feelings were captured in War Games (see video below left), a huge success at
the box office, which tells the story of a computer "geek", David (Matthew Broderick), who,
together with classmate Jennifer, by playing "war" with computer games ends up, quite
accidentally and unaware of it, hacking the U.S. Department of Defense system and launches
Soviet missiles towards America, setting in motion a nationwide emergency alert. Although the
game is programmed to go on until one of the parties involved is destroyed, David will eventually
be able, though with the help of the computer's inventor and with the essential help from a very
expert and determined Jennifer, to save the Earth from the nuclear disaster. The movie is fun to
watch, but its pacifist message is clear (nobody can win at this terrible game, and the question of
who can and will "press the button" is still a crucial one) and the technocratic military's
blindness is exposed, when the US Army Headquarters suspect David to be a spy and would
rather believe the computer information rather than the boy's expertise. And, after all, it is the
wisdom a smart, concerned teenager which ultimately saves the world.

The thrills, but also the dangers, of technology are also at the basis of Back to the future (see
video below right), a box office hit produced by Spielberg and written by Robert Zemeckis (who
also directed it) and Bob Gale. Teen Marty (Michael J. Fox) is carried back to 1955 by a "time-
machine" car invented by his friend, scientist Doc. He will meet his parents and will have a
chance to change a few things - including the embarrassing situation in which his mother falls in
love with him - and will do all his best to make his parents stick together (which is also a pre-
requisite for his own existence, of course). The movie is a nostalgic look at the '50s, once again
seen as a sort of "long lost golden age", and, at the same time, a celebration of the optimism of
the '80s. Maybe it is not by chance that Michael J. Fox will star as the protagonist of The secret
of my success (by Herbert Ross, USA 1987), which, again, celebrates the dominant "yuppie"
philosophy of the era.

WarGames (by John Badham, USA 1983) Back to the future (by Robert Zemeckis, USA
1985)

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filmstudies.it American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

8. Teen "dramas"

There is a sort of stereotyped vision of the '80s where sex, music, dancing and partying were the
staple of teenagers' life (and not just teenagers'!). A number of movies caught another side of the
era, a much darker and worrying picture of the real concerns and anxieties that were lurking
behind the superficial image of a world where "appearing", and not really just "being", was the
password.

In Colors (by Dennis Hopper, USA 1988), for example, teenagers, clearly let down by family,
school and employment, find a way of experiencing a sense of belonging and identity through
their affiliation to militarized street gangs - and though they have to face special police forces,
their "culture" and lifestyle eventually appear more appealing and seductive than the social
order they set out to defy. A similar context had been the subject, a decade earlier, of The
warriors (by Walter Hill, USA 1979), in which the struggle is ultimately between the gangs
themselves.

Two films by Francis Ford Coppola were particularly in tune with the teenagers' anxieties of the
'80s, the first being The outsiders (see video below left), which, with a clear reference to Rebel
without a cause as a model, focuses on the fight between two street gangs, the "greasers" (made
up of immigrants and other marginal groups) and the "socials" (i.e. the white, affluent middle
class teens), who share the same territory (and sometimes the same girls). Their fights, and their
encounters with the police, will cause more than a tragic death. The stylized mise-en-scène is
reminiscent of teen TV-films, and the dark and violent colours match the strong feelings of these
new "rebels". Quite a number of young actors were launched through this film, including the
protagonist, Matt Dillon, and, among others, Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Tom Waits, Rob Lowe
and Sofia Coppola.

In the same year Coppola directed Rumble fish (see video below right), which, much in the same
vein as the previous movie, is a portrait of Rusty (Matt Dillon), the leader of a youth gang who
lives with his alcohol-addicted father (Dennis Hopper), while his mother has long left the family.
Rusty worships his older brother (Mickey Rourke),"the kid with the motorbike", who lived the
"glorious" era of the motorbike gangs. Once again, fate awaits these people, when the older boy
is killed by a policeman, and they can only be the painful witnesses of another failure of the
American dream:

"By the end of the film, Rusty's girlfriend dumps him ... the father doesn't quit drinking. The
mother never returns. In the end, Rusty James is still a teenager, lost in a world he may never
adequately understand. Though the films presents the decadence of institutional authority and the
subsequent search for a viable and traditional alternative ... such a search is thwarted at every
turn. The film ends unambiguously in boredom, suicide, hopelessness." (Note 7).

Rumble fish was highly praised for its stylistic qualities too, which, in their expressionist tones
(and its excellent black and white photography), seem to refer back to Orson Welles' technical
prowess. The title refers to a species of "fighting fish", which Rusty's brother would like to set
free from an aquarium, because, as he says using an all-too-clear metaphor, "they belong to the
river, and wouldn't fight if they were in the river and had more room for themselves".

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American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers filmstudies.it

I ragazzi della 56a strada/The outsiders (di/by Rusty il selvaggio/Rumble fish (di/by Francis
Francis Ford Coppola, USA 1983) Ford Coppola, USA 1983)

"I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse; it'll just be another thing to worry
about. It's less painful if I don't care"

Less than zero (by Marek Kanievska, USA 1987)

A different, and in a way more disturbing, image of American youth is offered by River's edge
(see video below left), which tells the true story of a girl murdered by her boyfriend, who then
goes on to show her naked body to a group of friends. The shock does not lie in this exposure, but
in the behaviour of these kids, who seem to be utterly confused, or rather, emotionally (and
morally) detached from what they see. At first, nobody calls the police, and one of them, a
particularly "crazy" boy and actually a sort of sociopath, sets up a whole series of actions to
protect his guilty friend, in order to show his "loyalty", but even more because he feels the whole
thing is "exciting, like some fucking movie". One of the friends will eventually go to the police,
but even then, he can only repeat, "I don't know". And when the kids file past the open casket at
the funeral, they stare at the body of the girl with a blank expression on their faces. The movie
does not offer any explanation for these teenagers' (lack of) reactions, just seems to record their
aimless and amoral behaviour (maybe in need of support from authority figures), leaving the
audience to wonder what has tragically gone wrong with this generation of American kids who
have turned into zombie-like creatures.

A more explicit explosion of violence is the focus of Heathers (see video below right), set in a
high school for future "yuppies", which turns into a nightmare of murder and violence. The
"Heathers" of the title are three rich, very popular girls, the perfect embodiment of '80s
fashionable image, who become the target of a classmate (Winona Ryder), who is uncertain
between conforming to her friends' superficial, even despicable lifestyle and taking up a "rebel"
stance. She finds understanding and support in J.D. (note the initials, which may well stand for
"Juvenile Delinquent")(Christian Slater), who is really a psychopath who involves her in the
murder of two of the "Heathers" (and a couple of boys), disguising such murders as "suicides".
When J.D. threatens to blow himself up, together with the whole school, his girlfriend, who after
all seems to "have a conscience" will eventually kill him and then continue with a more "normal"
life at school - but, rather ambiguously, with a satisfying much greater degree of "popularity".
The amoral violence displayed in the film is, once again, not explained, and the cynicism of the
Reagan era reaches its ultimate expression in this nihilistic portrait of a deranged youth. In this
dark picture nobody is saved - not the obtuse school teachers and administrators, not the absent

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filmstudies.it American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

parents, and neither, in the end, the students themselves, who are victims of their own peer
pressure.

River's edge (by Tim Hunter, USA 1986)

Heathers (by Michael Lehmann, USA 1988)

"The terrible secret is that being young is sometimes less fun than being dead ... What's the point
of living in a totally exhausted decade where there is nothing to look forward to and no one to
look up to?"
Harry in Pump up the volume

A similarly dark atmosphere pervades the high school which is the setting of Pump up the volume
(see video below left), where a model student, Harry (Christian Slater) turns into a radio dj by
night, sending off his broadcast from home, in complete anonymity. He doesn't just play the
students' favourite hits, but accompanies them with witty, ironic remarks which tap into teens'
serious concerns, like school, sex, identity and even homosexuality and suicide, giving vent to
their fears and anxieties. His phone-in programme, however, gets out of control when a student
threatens to take his life and, facing Harry's unsatisfactory comments, actually does. Harry,
shocked by this story, converts into an "active rebel" and, armed with a portable transmitter,
starts rousing the students' anger and discontent, quickly becoming their worshipped hero,
fighting against idiotic adults like the school principal, the guidance counsellor and others. He
will eventually be caught and (we may assume) sent to jail - but by this time the message he's
been sending over the air is very clear ("form you own radio stations and go on fighting"),
although there is not much to be hopeful for in these teenagers' future. However, the movie offers
a rather unusual image of adolescents as intelligent people who can learn to be independent and
thus achieve an identity of their own.

A rather different portrayal of (pre-)adolescence is offered by Stand by me (see video below

right), which, although focussing on a group of boys in their last summer before entering high
school, is nevertheless a poignant story of coming-of-age, suffused with a nostalgic tone (the
story is told in retrospect by one of the characters, now an adult, who looks back to those days
when childhood was giving way to more "adult" concerns). The kids, after learning about a
corpse found somewhere in the area, and believing it may belong to one of their friends, set off to
discover it and embark on a series of adventures which will expose their innermost fears and
feelings, making them more aware of more "adult" issues like sex, moral responsibility and death
- and when they finally part, nothing will ever be the same. Adapted from a story by Stephen
King, and featuring a '50s musical score which includes Ben E. King's famous hit "Stand by me",
the movie moves halfway between reality and fantasy, adopting, on the one hand, the kids' point
of view, and complementing it, on the other hand, with an adult perspective.

Pump up the volume (by Allan Moyle, USA 1990) Stand by me (by Rob Reiner, USA 1986)

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"Life seems to be demanding [that these boys] make decisions about the future: that they choose
between "shop" and "college" classes and determine how far their families and friends define
them. The wilderness narrative takes them out of this demanding context and offers them a new
experience of limits which represents the border between childhood and adolescence as a frontier
- a limit of knowable experience where all the social rules are suspended and strength of
character alone enables survival. A well-known American myth of the frontier as a place of self-
determination is here associated with a question about maturity." (Note 8)

Notes

(1) Tropiano S. 2006. Rebels and chicks. A history of the Hollywood teen movie. Back Stage Books,
New York.
(2) Generation multiplex è il titolo di un volume di Timothy Shary (2002, University of Texas
Press, Nuova edizione 2014)./ Generation multiplex is the title of a volume by Timothy Shary
(2002, University of Texas Press, New edition 2014)
(3) Gene Siksel, as quoted in Tropiano, op. cit., p. 154.
(4) Shary T. 2005. Teen movies. American youth on screen, Wallflower, London and New York, p.
59.
(5) Driscoll C. 2011. Teen film. A critical introduction, Berg, Oxford & New York, p. 71.
(6) Shary T., op. cit., p. 61.
(7) Lewis J. 1992. The road to romance and ruin, Routledge, New York & London, p. 149.
(8) Driscoll C., op. cit., 80.

Back to Contents

Part 4:
From the '90s into the new century

1. A new entertainment landscape

The '90s and the first decades of the 21st century have seen an unprecedented development of
technology, which has had the greatest impact on media and communications. The entertainment
industry has been affected in such ways that the production, distribution and consumption of media
products have changed drastically, involving major economic and socio-cultural changes. The
traditional way of watching a movie, for example, which had already seen significant
developments with the advent of multiplex theatres, cable TV and the sale of DVDs and BluRay
discs, now includes streaming via the Internet, in addition to analogue and digital television which
offers access to video libraries by subscription and pay-per-view options, plus the almost countless
contents available directly on the Internet at any time of the day throughout the year.

The formats of media contents have also changed. Feature movies are now only a small proportion
of the total amount of media available through a multitude of different channels, being
complemented, in addition to TV movies, by all sorts of videos distributed via the Internet, as well
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as by straight-to-video movies, i.e. films distributed only through DVDs and BluRay sales and no
theatrical release, thus produced (although not always) with smaller budgets and correspondingly
lower expectations of financial returns. The almost universal availability of "home movie" systems
has caused, on the one hand, a decrease of box office returns, with a corresponding decline in
theatre numbers, and on the other hand, the creation of tailor-made products such as the TV
series, which have now reached a status at least equal to that of feature films, if not greater,
attracting not only big investments (which in any case are a pre-condition of any such venture) but
also high production values in terms of people involved (directors, actors, designers, composers,
etc.), technical expertise and sophistication.

Perhaps one of the most important developments, with a huge impact on the way movies are
produced, distributed and consumed, is the appearance of a (relatively) small number of "mega-
media conglomerates", i.e. financial groups owning chains of film studios, TV channels, radio
stations, record labels and Internet services. Such conglomerates, e.g. Paramount
Communications/Viacom/ CBS, are in a process of constant change, as companies acquire new
ventures and merge or split their subsidiaries. A major consequence of this new financial and
production system is that a movie is now considered only a piece in a complex puzzle of media
exploitation. The movie itself is usually shown at theatres (if it is not designed for exclusive
streaming distribution), usually for a short period of time, and is then broadcast via pay-per-view
or subscription channels; it is then released on DVD and BluRay discs. In the meantime, if the
movie is successful, it can be turned quite quickly into a TV series (the reverse is also true), its
soundtrack appears on TV and radio networks and is released through CDs in many formats (e.g.
karaoke), it can give rise to a series of books or comics, and is often made the basis of videogames
- plus a variety of other tie-ins like clothes, toys and even food articles. All this can happen in an
order which may not follow the route we have just described: for example, a TV series can be
turned into (a series of) movies, or the soundtrack of a movie can be launched via CDs or radio
stations as the first marketing strategy before the actual release of the movie. In the meantime, the
Internet, and all the media associated with it, is called into play to promote this truly multi-
dimensional product.

2. Changing teenager audiences

How have audiences, particularly teen audiences, changed in accordance with such developments
in the entertainment industry? First of all, we must remember that teens continue to make up a big
proportion of the total movie audience, and continue to be a very attractive target as consumers,
with an even greater amount of money available to them. In the '90s, the movie industry could
lament the competition of TV shows, videogames and the Internet, but now, as we have seen, all
these media formats have become increasingly integrated, and have turned from potential enemies
to essential contributors by marketing a multi-media product in a variety of ways.

Two important cultural consequences should be stressed, particularly as teenagers are concerned.
We saw in Part 3 that the advent of MTV greatly influenced the way music videos, and then movie
themselves, as well the growing market of videogames, could be produced, introducing faster
narrative times, new editing strategies with the juxtaposition of shorter and shorter sequences
through frequent "cuts". The availability of sophisticated software has completely revolutionized
the field, leading to a new dimension of fast-paced images and sounds (including 3D films and
Virtual Reality or VR experiences). Consequently, viewers' (and listeners') attention spans are
gradually decreasing, and this has important consequences both for learning and entertainment
environments, for example as regards narration processes. Audiences (and not just teenage
audiences) can now follow narratives (including, e.g. time lapses, flashbacks and flashforwards,
changes in settings, etc.) in a way previous audiences could not do - and indeed expect to be
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American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers filmstudies.it

presented with narratives fashioned in these ways.

The other major consequence of this new media era, and one which could have potential important
developments in the near future, is the level of interaction that Internet-based media can provide.
This means that audiences are no longer exclusively on the receptive side of an entertainment
experience, but can contribute to the experience itself, thus playing also a productive role. This is
already happening in chats, forums, social networks, and above all on the fan fiction sites,
where both content and form of media products are examined, discussed and even transformed
through individual and collective participation and action. The plot of a movie can thus be
changed, developed, extended or reduced by the collective online work of fans (which of course
media conglomerates are only too eager to please), opening up new paths in the
production/consumption process. In turn, this could lead to teenagers being able to take a more
active part in the creation of those media, including movies, which so far have taken them as
passive characters, but could now offer them the opportunity to make their voice heard both on
their problems and, even more importantly, on the very images of themselves as teenagers.

3. Film genres, cycles and series

The amount of teen movies produced since the '90s has not only remarkably increased in number,
but has also shown an amazing range of genres (or sub-genres, or "cycles"), so much so that it is
almost impossible to arrange such products into conventional "categories". If all the genres we
have explored in the first three parts of this Dossier continue to exist and even to thrive (e.g.
horror films, romantic comedy dramas), a large number of movies cannot easily be labelled and
often display a range of characters, settings, themes and other features which can be said to
belong to more than one specific "genre". However, for the sake of clarity, we will try to arrange
teen movies of the last few decades into some possible "groups" that seem to share some important
characteristics.

4. African American crime drama

Teen movies had often dealt with race problems, but rarely had racial minorities been represented
by characters in leading roles. Thus the cycle of movies focussing on African Americans that
started to be produced in the early '90s represented something new in the teen film tradition.
Besides, the fact that such movies were often directed by young African Americans, who could for
reasons of both ethnicity and age represent their own culture in more direct and "authentic" ways,
was also a substantial change. Indeed, starting from this decade, young filmmakers were able to
provide portraits of their own generation (as we shall see with what has been called "Generation
X").

Given the perennial unresolved status of ethnic minorities in the US, it is no surprise that racial
tensions are the frequent background to most of this cycle of movies, as are the mostly urban
violent settings. However, a new attitude was clearly developing, as African American began to be
portrayed as people fighting for their own independence, under difficult sociocultural
circumstances and against a social and political system unfavourable (to say the least) to them -
although the visually attractiveness of violent street gangs, coupled with "black" music
soundtracks, was difficult to tone down and continued to represent what has been called the
"blacksploitation" phenomenon.

Perhaps the most influential of these movies remains Boyz'n the Hood (see video below left),which
makes his message very clear right from the start, with the opening title card reading, "One of
every twenty-one black American males will be murdered in their lifetime. Most will die at the
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hand of another balck male" - thus introducing the theme, not only of racial tensions, but also, and
even more strongly, of violence within the black communities. The movie, set in an African-
American "ghetto" in South Central (Los Angeles) in 1984, portrays the hard life awaiting black
youths confronting issues of drug use, poverty, jobless families and street violence (which includes
the African-American policemen). The story focuses on three teenagers, only one of which will
eventually be able to escape his friends' tragic fate, thanks to a caring, supportive father who
teaches him the values of taking responsibility for one's actions, self-confidence and "black pride"
- despite the oppressive racist legal and political system. This sense of a growing self-
consciousness by African-American characters of their own rights and responsibilities as citizens
was also the hallmark of a new generation of young African-American directors, starting with 23-
year-old John Singleton who won two Academy Awards nominations (for best script and best
direction) for his debut film Boyz'n the Hood.

The most famous of these directors is probably Spike Lee, who directed one of the movies which
marked the end of this short cycle, Clockers (see video below right), a documentary-thriller-
melodrama focusing on a 16-year-old drug dealer ("clocker" is the slang term) and adopting his
point of view - the point of view of a young African-American who, despite being innocent and
dreaming of an impossible escape from the black "neighbourhood" in which he is trapped, must
face the hard methods of police detectives. Director Lee stated that his film was meant to have all
the elements of a "black shoot-'em up hip-hop drug gangsta-rap" film, and the movie itself is
actually a realistic portrait of black culture, which avoids the identification of "bad" characters as
necessarily "black" and the "good" ones as "white". The fact remains that the only way out for
these African-American kids is the way out of the "'hood" - out of the racist and violent city streets.

Boyz'n the Hood (by John Singleton, USA 1991) Clockers (by Spike Lee, USA 1995)

5. "Generation X"

Films like River's Edge (1986) and Pump up the volume (1990) (see Part 3) had ended the '80s
with a portrayal of youth which was either unemotional and disaffected (in the former case) or
unable to face an increasingly threatening world unless by recourse to violent confrontation (in the
latter case). The '90s opened with the picture of a generation which could no longer derive true
satisfaction from the hedonistic models of Reaganism and was thus left with the uncertainty and
confusion which had grown even stronger than what previous generations had experienced.

These feelings were captured by movies which, by and large, we could describe as "comedies", but
which offered interesting insights into the inner lives of their characters. One such movie was Say
anything, director Cameron Crowe's debut film, which focuses on the relationship between two
high school youths, and which opens, quite significantly, on Graduation Day, which signals the
end of high school and the beginning of new life directions. The leading speech is delivered by
Diane (Ione Skye), a beautiful and smart girl who is the obvious (but unattainable) target of boy's
desires. Although Diane comes from a middle-class family and has, as we will later learn, high
expectations as regards her future college career, she doesn't seem so self-confident about herself
when she says (see video below left):

"We're all about to enter "the real world". That's what everybody says. But most of us have been in
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the real world for a long time. But I have something to tell everybody. I've glimpsed our future,
and all I can say is ... go back!"

Diane soon falls for Lloyd (John Cusack), a boy of lower social status, who is sure only about what
he does not want to do: he doesn't want an office job where he should buy, sell, process or in any
way handle goods for a profit (see video below right). As an alternative, he could join the army
(where his father works), but that doesn't seem to convince him either. So he trains in (and even
teaches) kickboxing as his main activity and hangs around, making love to Diane, until the girl
wins a scholarship for a prestigious university in England. A this point, she is torn between leaving
Lloyd and giving up the scholarship. She seems inclined to choose the first option when her father,
who she has always trusted and confided in, is charged with tax dodging and jailed for nine
months. Diane and Lloyd's course of action becomes suddenly clear: she will go to England, after
all, but Lloyd will leave with her. Say anything thus seems to mark the end of Reaganomics - no
future as "yuppies" for these young people, no families to rely on, but the opportunity to enjoy a
present and not too clear future prospects ... At the same time, the depiction of two youths who, for
once, are interesting, emotional characters, and who engage in a romantic yet serious and mature
relationship, marks the movie as a new departure from standardized clichés.

Say anything (by Cameron Crowe, USA 1989)

In retrospect, this movie could be taken as a preamble to what would soon be called "Generation
X", a generation which magazine articles were describing in less than flattering terms: "tuned-
out", "doofus", "numb", "blank" and "a category of people who wanted to hop off the merry-go-
round of status, money, and social climbing that so often frames modern existence" (Note 1). The
term quickly became a buzzword in the media, and is best described by another speech given at the
beginning of the college year (thus a few months after Graduation Day) by Lelaina (Wynona
Rider) in Reality bites (see video below):

"And they wonder why those of us in our twenties refuse to work an eighty-hour week just so we
can afford to buy their BMWs. Why we aren't interested in the counterculture they invented, as if
we didn't see them disavowal their revolution for a pair of running shoes. But the question remains:
What are we going to do now? How can we repair the damage we inherited? Fellow graduates, the
answer is simple: The answer is (pause) ... the answer is ... I don't know."

This is a clear refusal both of their parents' "counterculture" of the '60s and '70s and, even more,
of the betrayal by those same parents of that culture just to embrace the "merry-go-
round" consumerism of the '80s. After refusing both the hedonist, money-and-work based lifestyle
and the utopian idealism of the "counterculture", Generation X was left with ... nothing but going
about the ever present teen concerns (love, sex, plus AIDS ...) with the carelessness and
disillusionment of a generation which lacks any point of reference except itself.

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Reality bites (by Ben Stiller, USA 1994)

Director Richard Linklater caught the spirit of this generation in his debut film, Slacker (see the
trailer here and the full film here), whose title reflects the vacuum in which its characters seem to
live, hanging around, drinking coffee and beer, talking, philosophizing but engaging in neither
study nor work (and nor politics, for that matter). This portrait of another "lost" generation was
further developed in his next film, Dazed and confused (see video below), which launched a group
of actors including Ben Affleck, Matthew McConaughey and Renee Zellweger, in a nostalgic view
of high school featuring the usual and familiar school "types" which included the ones made
famous in the John Hughes movies of the previous decade (see Part 3). Again, these youths hang
around (with the help of a bit of marijuana if necessary), play tricks on incoming freshmen and
don't do much else. "If I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life," one of them says,
"remind me to kill myself".

Dazed and confused (by Richard Linklater, USA 1993)

A year later, Clerks (see video below) offers once again an insight into a day in the life of these
"slackers", this time a grocery store clerk and his friend who works in the video store next door,
who spend their time serving bizarre customers but mainly talking, talking, talking ... about
anything, including movies, sex, their present and past girlfriends and more "existential" topics.
This very low-budget independent movie captures with bittersweet irony the frustrations of these
youths who can't help feeling more important than their customers but are unable to find any
alternative to their present or the will and strength to change their future. This "indie" film won an
award for Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival and the Critics' Week award at the Cannes
Film Festival, before becoming a success at the US box office.

Clerks (by Kevin Smith, USA 1994)

6. A new horror cycle

Horror films had never ceased to attract audiences, especially after TV ha developed a number of
successful series. Director Kevin Williamson, who had created the hit TV series Dawson Creek,
succeeded in reviving the horror cycle when he wrote Scream (see video below), which was a
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turning point in the history of the genre by showing how a horror film could be self-aware and
self-reflexive: the story actually revolves around a serial killer who is an expert on the horror
genre and asks his potential teenage victims questions about the topic. If they cannot answer, or
produce a wrong answer, they are doomed ... So the movie becomes a sort of encyclopaedia of the
genre, thus achieving a pleasurable sense of irony. The point in this new cycle is obviously not
what will happen, or to whom, but rather how it will happen - thus the question of style becomes
of central importance. Scream was so successful that it was followed by two sequels and
generated a number of imitators, among which I know what you did last summer (by Jim Gillespie,
USA 1997) and its sequel, in which a group of teenagers run over a man and, in the presumption
of having killed him, throw his body into the sea - only to find out, a year later, that a mysterious
character is looking for revenge ...

Scream (by Wes Craven, USA 1996)

Another movie which definitely renewed the horror canon was The Blair Witch Project (see video
below), which is also an interesting example of how you can turn a low-budget film into a
smashing box-office hit by a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign. The movie takes the form
of a fake documentary, shot by three teenagers who, so the film goes, disappeared while doing a
research on a legend known as the Blair Witch. The film was backed up by an astonishing range
of information about the youths, their families, police interviews, etc., and an Internet site was set
up in order to create the impression of reality and stimulate interest and expectations about the
movie. For some time audiences were really unsure whether they were watching "the real thing",
and when finally the truth came out, the movie had already earned something in the region of $240
million and had reached the status of a "cult".

The Blair Witch Project (by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, USA 1999)

However, the horror genre was moving into new territory, where the main tone was now parody,
farce and satire, i.e. ways to shift the emphasis away from pure suspense and into a game played
with the traditional basic horror ingredients (including sex) - with jokes and allusions to previous
movies and characters as a way to turning the genre into an object of ridicule. For example, Scary
movie (see video below) plays with elements and clear quotations from such diverse films as The
Blair Witch Project and The Matrix - the title of the original script being Last summer I screamed
because Halloween fell on Friday the 13th, and the working title being Scream if you don't know
what I did Last Halloween ... The (inevitable) three sequels did not match the level of novelty (and
above all, pure entertainment) reached by the original.

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Scary movie (by Keenen Ivory Wayans, USA 2000)

7. Tough/angry girls

In Scream, the "final girl" (i.e. the only survivor after everybody else has been killed - see Part 2),
is able to face and finally defeat the killer by showing her skills and the mastery of the situation. In
a way, she was a precursor of the heroines of a number of '90s movies which featured "bad" or
"tough" girls, ready to go all the way in asserting their power with whatever means it takes. The
image of the smart, tough (and amoral) woman who turns out to be a predator of poor males
falling prey to their devilish (obviously including sexual) charms, had already appeared in
successful movies like Body heat (by Lawrence Kasdan, USA 1981), Fatal attraction (by Adrian
Lyne, USA 1987) and Basic instinct (by Paul Verhoeven, USA 1992), so this updated version of the
"femme fatale" soon took the shape of a teenage girl. But the teen film genre itself had already
offered the portrait of a tough girl in Heathers (1989 - see Part 3).

The "tough girl" is usually white, middle- or upper-middle class, beautiful, smart, often prone to
drinking and possibly enjoying cocaine, and, of course, sexually active. Her role and status are
sometimes already established at the start of the movie, or are quickly gained as a result of her
ruthless decisions and actions, especially towards her possible competitors, both in terms of sexual
conquest or in terms of power in the school context. In addition, some of these girls are not
immune to making out with their girlfriends, with more than a hint of bisexuality.

In Clueless (by Amy Heckerling, USA 1995), Cher (Alicia Silverstone), a bit like Emma in Jane
Austen's novel, gets a kick out of matching the right boy with (what she supposes to be) the right
girl, and goes as far as changing a friend into a "femme fatale" (only to fall for a boy without even
suspecting that he is gay). Although exposing the "other" side of the Californian high school youth,
Clueless is only just an introduction to the much "darker" story of Wild things (by John
McNaughton, USA 1998), where two tough girls team up with a sailing instructor in order to
wring a big sum of money from one of their mothers - with a series of twists and turns among the
three main characters in a sort of thriller-like plot. And the going gets even tougher in Cruel
intentions (see video below), inspired by Laclos' "Dangerous Liaisons", where an evil upper-class
girl persuades her amoral stepbrother to seduce two girls, which he gladly accepts to do for a bet -
pity he falls for the second one and thus wrecking the girl's plans. The movie is basically a display
of exterior glamour (houses, clothes, fashionable songs) matched with puritan hypocrisy (the final
redemption and/or punishment of "bad" characters, plus misogynist and homophobic attitudes and
a deep contempt for anyone or anything which is not "trendy"), with the additional bonus of a bit
of lesbian sex.

Another movie which is indicative of the "angry girl" type is offered in The opposite of sex (see
video below), which portrays the "tough" way in which Deedee navigates through life: after
witnessing with a rather disenchanted and indifferent attitude the death of her father, she moves to
live with her gay step-brother Bill, seduces his boyfriend, steals Bill's money and goes on the run,
chased by Bill himself, by another girl, Lucia (secretly in love with Bill), and by a sheriff who has
developed a crush on Lucia ... and eventually turns up being pregnant - and leaving her brother to
care for the baby. The film, which could be seen as a dark, cruel and in a way cynical parody of
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"politically correctness", is nevertheless an amoral (and basically superficial in its analysis)

portrait of another "lost generation" and of a representative sample of the "touch girl" type which
was going to become a stable character also in the new century - witness the success of Hunger
Games (by Gary Ross, USA 2012) and its sequels.

Cruel intentions (by Roger Kumble, USA 1999)

The opposite of sex (by Don Roos, USA 1998)

A subtler analysis of the "tough girl" image, this time targeted at a female audience, appears in
Mean girls (see video below), based on a bestseller book by Rosalind Wiseman, which is a
practical guide for parents on how to deal with their (mean) daughters:

"Girls are often their own and other girls' worst enemies, and for some, the rivalry defines their
adolescence. I have watched time after time as a sweet, intelligent girl plots another girl's
humiliating downfall. It's hard to admit when the evildoer is your own child or one of her close
friends." (Note 1)

The world of Mean girls is a real jungle, where students team up to destroy the reputation of
classmates and the protagonist sets out to expose the false appearances and deceptive looks of the
school "queen" - only to find out that, after all, she is turning out to be just the same. Starting from
a supposedly liberal, even revolutionary outlook, the movie quickly becomes a pamphlet of the
usual middle-class respectability - as the film narrator says at the end, "Finally, Girl World was at
peace".

Mean girls (by Mark S. Waters, USA 2004)

However, all in all, "teenage girls in American cinema at the turn of the century emerged as more
aware of their past mistreatment and misrepresentations and more in control of their destiny, both
politically and sexually. The blockbuster success of Charlie's Angels [by McG - Joseph McGiny
Nichol, USA 2000], Tomb raider [by Simon West, USA 2001], Kill Bill [by Quentin Tarantino,
USA 2003-2004] ... can also be attributed to changing attitudes toward young female power,
despite some lingering sexist aspects. Most of the recent representations of girls' roles in general
reveal a cautious effort by the film industry to provide increasingly active images of young
women, even if many tend to remain conflicted about their new senses of power." (Note 2).

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8. Teen drama

The '90s also saw a series of movies which took up, once again, the themes of coming-of-age,
sexual discovery, identification and socialization dealt with a serious, concerned attitude. These
movies often portrayed troubled teens facing hard contexts, both at home and, mostly, at school.
Such was the case with Dawn, the protagonist of Welcome to the Dollhouse (winner of the 1996
Sundance Festival - see video below left), who has a hard time at her junior school, where she is
bullied, hurt and frightened to the point that when she asks one of her classmates why he hates her,
he simply answers, "Because you're ugly". Dawn, however, is not at all a passive character, and
tries to fight back, at home too (where her younger, simpering sister and her older "swot" brother
receive all the family's attentions). And yet she will eventually find a bit of rough affection just in
one of her opponents, punk 15-year-old Brandon, who every day threatens "to rape her at 3 p.m.
sharp" ... Black humour is thus the key component of this movie, which aims at giving a realistic
portrait of how difficult is the process of growing up without giving way to false hope: at the end,
Dawn has not won her personal war but perhaps she will a little better equipped to face the battles
of a cruel world.

Another portrait of a peculiar, odd teenage boy is offered in Rushmore (see video below right).
Max is talented and full of resources - but only in extra-curricular activities, since his grades are
terrible and he often risks being expelled from school. In a way, he seems too old as a teenager
while the people he turns to seem too young - both his teacher, a young widow he develops a crush
on, and a millionaire benefactor who is a bit like Max in his naive approach to life. The tone is, as
is often the case with Director Wes Anderson, both sad and ludicrous - this is not the usual film
about school life but a tender, and yet painful and certainly not comforting, depiction of the bumpy
time of growing up.

Welcome to the dollhouse (by Todd Solondz, USA Rushmore (by Wes Anderson, USA 1998)
1995)

The contrasts and fights in the school setting play a dominant role in Election (see video below
left), which centres on Tracy, the best pupil in Professor McAllister's class and a hypocritical
"social climber", ready to do anything to reach her objectives: she is also the only candidate in the
election for the students' council president. Against this alternative version of the "tough" girl,
McAllister tries to convince, first a student, whose only ability is in the football field, and then a
lesbian rebel, to run in the upcoming election. Mc Allister will eventually lose his battle against
Tracy (as well as his job), but in the meantime the weaknesses and hypocrisy of the context will
have been exposed. The movie is at the same time a self-ironical look at the school world and its
power system (mirroring the system in adult life) and a humorous yet cruel portrait of a social
context where nobody and nothing is saved. Teens may be arrogant and deceitful, but these are the
attitudes some of them have recourse to in a world which is certainly not better than their troubled
adolescent life.

A victim of the social context appears as the protagonist of thirteen (see video below right): Tracy,
initially a model student, with a background of divorced parents and a permissive mother, is soon
led to imitate her friend Evie, the sexiest and most popular girl at school, in stealing, using drugs,

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having sex encounters with black boys. As the two girls get closer, their "deviant" life leads them
to more dangerous experiences, until her mother discovers the truth about her daughter and their
relationship will get to a crisis point. Although very explicit in its mise-en-scène, the movie looks
as a portrait of the bleak life of the white middle class more than an honest and realistic depiction
of these hedonistic teens' troubles - and there is a disturbing sense of hypocrisy, as Tracy's
behaviours are somewhat excused, but not Evie's.

Election (by Alexander Payne, USA 1999) thirteen (by Catherine Hardwicke, USA 2003)

As we have seen, "the depiction of adolescent love and sex on the whole had clearly become
problematic in many ’90s films, with a host of “dangerous deviants” ... As more American films
in the mid-’90s made specific statements about youth love and sex than in the early ’90s, their
messages became rather pessimistic and cynical. This cynicism may have been emblematic of
revived anxieties about youth sexuality in society at large, may have been the effort of the industry
to appeal to teens’ curious but serious concerns and fears about sexuality, may have been
indicative of teens’ own confusions about the increasingly sexualized culture in which they live, or
most likely a combination of all these factors." (Note 3)

Note/Notes

(1) Quoted in Tropiano S. 2006. Rebels and chicks. A history of the Hollywood teen movie. Back
Stage Books, New York, p. 248.

(2) Shary T. 2005. Teen movies. American youth on screen, Wallflower, London and New York, p.
95.

(3) Shary T. 2014. Generation multiplex. The image of youth in American cinema since 1980,
University of Texas Press, Austin, p. 392.

Back to Contents

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Part 5:
Some trends in the new century

1. Horror turns supernatural

In the new century, the "slasher" movies gradually gave way to a new kind of stories where
teenagers, who had already become smarter and more able to cope with outside threats, were now
facing events and adventures which went beyond the traditional fantastic "horror" and out into
new "supernatural" territory. Whether these new "supernatural" movies can still qualify as
"horror" is open to question, although the fact remains that an element of fear and suspense
continues to provide the emotional basis for many of these movies even beyond the label of
"horror" (which anyway is in itself a rather generic category).

In these "supernatural" movies, "Youth either confront phantoms or deities in gaining deliverance
from their adolescent plights, find themselves in strange new worlds that they must survive to
prove their bravery, or discover latent superpowers that endow them with the ability to surmount
their personal problems. Nerdy characters can thus turn tough and cool; disregarded teens become
valuable saviors; unpopular pariahs gain appreciable recognition. Likewise, families can be
sustained or reunited by their children, teenage ambitions can be validated, and civilization can be
liberated from blights that only youth can conquer." (Note 1)

Of course, "supernatural" forces had always populated the teen horror films, like zombies,
vampires and other kinds of monsters, as well as fantastic contexts characterised by wilderness,
exotica and dangerous, unknown landscapes and "gothic" atmospheres. In the previous decades,
films like Body snatchers (by Abel Ferrara, USA 1993 - watch the full film here), a remake of the
1956 classic, had reminded (teen) audiences of the danger inherent in one's body and mind being
replaced by an external being, thus gradually turning everybody into conformist, passive,
dehumanized creatures. And even a science-fiction movie like Back to the future (see Part 3)
introduced a "supernatural" element (travel through time) which would become important in later
films. The fantastic side had also been revived in Casper (by Brad Silberling, USA 1995), a sweet
adolescent ghost sporting a bulb as his head, a figure which had been very familiar to American
audiences through a series of comic books since the '40s and '50s. A teen girl had also been the
protagonist of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (by Fran Ruben Kuzui, USA 1992), who discovers that
she is the last descendant of a family of vampire killers. The film was so successful as to originate
a TV series (1997-2003) which quickly became a "cult".

However, the supernatural element became the basic structural element of the plot in a series of
movies which started with the Harry Potter saga (2001-2011, a British production)(see video
below), which focuses on an eleven-year-old who discovers that he is a wizard and, as such, is
entitled to attend an exclusive wizard academy in Scotland, where the main events in the series
take place. The peculiar quality of this series is the fact that the audience can follow Harry (Daniel
Radcliffe) and his friends through the passing of time, as they grow up and face the typical
challenges of adolescence, including friendship, romance, school life, but also anxiety and stress,
thus depicting a world which is not only the wizarding world, with all its glamour and surprises,
but also the emotional and social development that gradually lead them through this extra-
ordinary "coming of age". The series, which includes eight films, was extremely well received and
can rightly be considered as one of the sagas which carried Hollywood blockbusters into the 21st
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century, inspiring later series like The Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man and Dark Knight. In
addition, it gave rise to a media franchise (an agreement in which the intellectual property of an
original work is licensed to other parties or partners in order to exploit its success), which
included, as was the case in many other similar ventures, videogames, books (on which the movie
series was based), records, and all sorts of merchandising directly or indirectly linked to the main
character and story. Not to be missed is also the importance of the web communities dedicated to
Harry Potter and the development of fan fiction sites (which we mentioned at the beginning of Part
4).

Harry Potter: the complete trailers

Following in the wake of the Harry Potter series, as well as capitalizing on the central theme of
extraordinary powers and the responsibilities that go with using them, Spider-Man (see video
below), based on the Marvel comics character created in the '60 and popularized by seven TV
series, finally made it to the big screen in 2002 (soon to be followed by several sequels). The
protagonist is again a teenager (Tobey Maguire), who has a crush on his next-door neighbour
and, after being bitten by a genetically modified spider, becomes a super-hero, putting his powers
at the service of the ever-present good vs evil fight. However, the character is a sympathetic figure,
who is at the same time a super-hero but also a shy, romantic yet passionate young lover. And the
fact that he is portrayed as a "nerd" (not the ideal masculine figure of traditional teen films) makes
his physical transformation even more significant - as if to say that being an academically gifted
student and challenging the image of physical attractiveness and established gender roles can and
does open up new ways of "being powerful".

Other series, featuring some kind of a "supernatural" element, which gained the attention of teen
audiences in the past few years include Spy Kids, Kick-Ass, The Chronicles of Narnia, Percy
Jackson & the Olympians and Hunger Games.

Spider-Man (by Sam Raimi, USA 2002)

The fantastical (supernatural?) dimension is also at work in Donnie Darko (see video below),
which mixes elements from various genres (including teen comedy, science-fiction and high school
drama and romance) in telling the story of a troubled, narcoleptic teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal),
whose parents make him regularly see a psychiatrist in the hope of getting him back to "normal".
Donnie's life is actually not "normal" at all: one night a plane engine falls through his bedroom
ceiling, and soon after he starts getting visits from a strange creature, Frank, a rabbit-like monster
wearing a grotesque mask, who informs him that the world will end in "twenty-eight days, six
hours, forty-two minutes and twelve seconds". When his girlfriend is killed by a car driven by a
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"real life" Frank, Donnie, who by now has realised that he can travel in time, decides to go back to
the beginning of the story - this means that the plane engine will kill him but his girlfriend will be
alive because she has never met him ... Donnie is a new kind of "rebel", cynical yet romantic at the
same time, who cannot find any help in shaping his identity either in his family or (worse still) at
school, which is described as a place of hypocrisy and incompetence (the "motivational speaker
for teens", whom Donnie openly confronts, is eventually exposed as a paedophile).

Although not really successful when it opened at the box-office, Donnie Darko has since become a
"cult film", especially for teenagers hoping to find a new way to idealism and, at the same time,
eager to discuss and explore the secret turns and twists of Donnie's story.

Donnie Darko (by Richard Kelly, USA 2001)

"Fantasy films for youth tackle many unsettling concerns of young people: missing parents, broken
families, the need for friends, finding love, and gaining respect. In their conclusions, these stories
strongly tell their young viewers that even after enduring childhood troubles and adolescent
adjustments, there are nonetheless more challenges ahead as life brings further changes such as
new homes, new schools, and new relationships. Such films may not often overtly confront serious
issues like crime or sex, but through confrontations with life and death, they often give young
people a dose of encouraging empowerment within their otherwise unreal stories and highly
commercial contexts." (Note 3)

2. Teen neo-noir and crime after Columbine

Although movies dealing with darker aspects of teen life had appeared in the '90s and early '00s,
like Heathers, River's Edge and Mean Girls (see Part 4), it was not until the mid-'00s that critics
began talking about teen noir, meaning movies which included some of the characteristic themes
and styles of the noir genre, such as "femmes fatales", the use of voice-over to narrate and/or
comment on the events from the main character's point of view, and dishonest or immoral adults
and authorities (including teachers and principals). Successful TV series like Veronica Mars
(2004-2007) in the meantime were introducing teenagers as detectives, albeit as gifted, smart
"amateurs".
The recurring success of the noir genre has often been associated with times of social crisis and
insecurity, like the post-War War II and Cold War times, and the end of the century and the
beginning of the new one were indicative in this respect: events like Kurt Cobain (leader of the
Nirvana group)'s suicide in 1994, the 1999 Columbine high school massacre (when two high-
schoolers shot twelve students and a teacher) and, in an even pervasive way, the 2001 attack to the
Twin Towers in New York City and even the New Orleans flood in 2005, did much to spread a
generic sense of fear, anxiety and cynicism, instilling doubts and skepticism towards leaders and
authority figures.

These major events shocked America in a new, unprecedented way. But important sociocultural
aspects of America's society had undergone great changes in the past few decades. Suburban
areas, which had steadily continued to expand since the '50s, were becoming self-contained living
areas, including office buildings (thus reducing the number of commuters), schools and large
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shopping malls. This went hand-in-hand with the economic and social crisis of the middle-class,
the traditional inhabitants of suburban areas, making those same areas a symbol of declining
prestige and increasing feelings of insecurity, and leading to "gated communities", i.e. residential
areas effectively closed to the public and under constant armed surveillance, as many movies and
TV series set in suburbia started to show and still continue to do - e.g. the movie Disturbia (by
D.J.Caruso, USA 2007), where a teenage boy is confined to house arrest and begins thinking that
his neighbour is a serial killer.

Brick (see video below left) was one of the first movies to be explicitly labelled as "teen noir",
thanks to its mixture of classical film noir stylistic choices (fast-paced editing, sound contrasts,
shadows, night scenes) and its thematic content. Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Leavitt) is a high school
student (although we never see him at school and he seems to be spending his whole time doing
other things) quickly turns into a sort of detective when he finds the dead body of his ex-girlfriend.
In his search for the truth he will be helped by a close friend nerd (who seems to know everything
about everybody in the area) and will meet dangerous, violent (and sometimes grotesque)
characters, all involved in drug pushing - and he even acts as a sort of informer for the ambiguous
principal and vice-principal of his own school. Although the treatment of the typical noir aspects is
not very convincing and the film eventually lacks interesting characters and events, it quickly
achieved "cult" status - a sign that it met with some really felt audience expectations.

Although not directly depicting the Columbine massacre, Elephant (see video below right; you can
watch the full film in Italian with automatic subtitles here) is clearly a sort of documentary-style
representation of that event. Director Gus Van Sant follows the everyday comings and goings in a
typical American high school day, with repeated views of the same scenes from different angles
and viewpoints: everything seems to go on in much the usual way, except that two students are
preparing for their terrorist attack. We see them listening to Beethoven, playing videogames,
watching Nazi videos and even taking a shower together - before they dress up like real terrorists
and start the massacre. There is no comment, no music, no explanation for what we are forced to
see. It is as if evil is embodied in these two youths with no possibility of reacting or escaping from
the almost unbearable feeling of anxiety and horror - foreshadowed, however, by uneasy feelings
of alienation and apathy in the first part of the film. Elephant was highly praised and won the
Golden Palms for Best Film and Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.

Elephant (by Gus Van Sant, USA 2003)

Brick (by Rian Johnson, USA 2005)

A similar incident is told in We need to talk about Kevin (by Lynne Ramsay, USA 2011), in which
a mother hopelessly tries to understand the motives that led her son Kevin to shoot his fellow
students with a bow and arrows in the locked local school gym. Once again, few if any clues are
offered for this evil boy's behaviour, we get no insight into his emotions, and all we are left with is
the same sense of alienation and indifference which haunted Elephant. Such films offer no
explanation and no way-out and their ultimate message is one of impotence and despair.

A much finer analysis of youth violence and crime is offered in Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino (see
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video below), where old pensioner and widower Walt (Clintwood himself) lives all alone, with few
contacts with his sons' families and hardly bearing the massive presence of Hmong immigrants
with whom he shares the district where he lives. When a young shy Hmong boy tries to steal his '72
Gran Torino as a rite of initiation into a violent street gang, Walt starts to have contacts with the
boy and his family, and slowly his diffidence and insularity turn into a sincere wish to help the boy
stand up against the bullying of the gang. When this same gang rapes and beats the boy's sister,
Walt will give up any direct revenge acts and will offer himself in sacrifice as the gang attacks
him. Walt's self-sacrifice, which equals suicide, will eventually lead the police to arrest the violent
youths. Gran Torino is one of those rare movies which, although perhaps not qualifying as a
classic "teen movie", presents an adult character who gradually turns into a caring, paternal
figure enabling the teenager boy to both resist the lure of the street gang and respond to bullying
without recourse to violence.

Gran Torino (by Clint Eastwood, USA/Australia 2008)

3. A new musical wave

Music and dancing have always represented a remarkable portion of teen films, since the early
days of Rock around the clock (see Part 1) and the "deviant" dancing movies of the '80s (see Part
3). New kinds of music (from rock to disco, from lambada to break dancing) have enabled teens to
find one of the possible ways in which to express, if not overt rebellion, at least their generation
gap with older audiences.

The traditional musical had been somewhat revived by the adaptation for the screen of one of the
best known and often quoted examples of teen love - William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, which
Director Baz Luhrmann adapted for the screen as a sort of a musical, or, rather, as another MTV-
style long video, buzzing with music, choreographies, and a fast-paced style which was probably
meant to attract teens' interest for the sad, romantic love story. Set in Verona Beach, Los Angeles,
with a background of racial tensions, Romeo is now an upper-class white boy while Juliet is a
Latin-American girl. The director was brave enough to maintain the original text in a beach
setting and with a musical score which includes every possible kind of music, and the result is both
stunning and confusing - despite the performances of the young actors (Leonardo di Caprio and
Claire Danes).

William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet (by Baz Luhrmann, USA 1996)

Negli anni 2000, tuttavia, si affermò una nuova In the '00s, however, a new wave of
ondata di film di musica e danza con il debutto music/dancing movies started with the debut of
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della serie High School Musical (vedi il video qui the High School Musical series (see video
sotto a sinistra), inizialmente una produzione TV below left), initially a TV (Disney Channel)
(Disney Channel), che ricorda ancora una volta la production, once again reminiscent of the
storia di Romeo e Giulietta, questa volta con il Romeo and Juliet story, this time with the
capitano di una squadra di basket (Zac Efron) e la captain of a basketball team (Zac Efron) and
timida adolescente Gabriella (Vanessa Anne shy teen Gabriella (Vanessa Anne Hudgens)
Hudgens) che si innamorano e, proprio come nei who fall in love and, much as in classical
classici musical di Hollywood, si ritrovano nel Hollywood musical, get together in the end-of-
musical di fine anno, non senza molte opposizioni year musical, not without much opposition
da parte dei concorrenti. Il film, una sorta di fiaba from competitors. The movie, a sort of fairy
che mette in luce sentimenti di amicizia, tale highlighting feelings of friendship,
cooperazione e determinazione, ha generato tre cooperation and determination, spawned three
sequel, remake stranieri, uno spettacolo sul sequels, foreign remakes, an ice show and
ghiaccio e tour di concerti. concert tours.

Nello stesso anno, Step Up (di Anne Fletcher, In the same year, Step Up (by Anne Fletcher,
USA 2006) mise in scena un'altra storia d'amore, USA 2006) staged another love story, this time
questa volta tra un ragazzo, Tyler (Channing between a boy, Tyler (Channing Tatum)
Tatum) condannato ad un servizio sociale in sentenced to community service in an art
un'accademia d'arte, e una ballerina (Jenna academy, and a ballet dancer (Jenna Dewan).
Dewan). Il ragazzo scopre ben presto di avere un The boy soon discovers that he has a natural
talento naturale per la danza, e quando gli capita talent for dancing, and when he happens to
di sostituire il solito compagno di ballo di Nora, i replace Nora's usual dancing partner, they fall
due si innamorano - il primo passo di una serie di in love - the first step in a series of sentimental
alti e bassi sentimentali e romantici, che si and romantic ups and downs, which end in the
concludono con il solito finale-spettacolo hip-hop. usual end-of-year hip-hop show. The film,
Il film, che più della serie High School Musical which more than the High School Musical
era chiaramente rivolto a un pubblico femminile series was clearly targeted at a very young
molto giovane (quelle che sono state chiamate female audience (what have been called
"tweens", cioè pre-liceali), è stato seguito dagli "tweens", i.e. pre-high schoolers), was followed
ormai consueti sequel. by the by now usual sequels.

L'anno successivo, questo rinnovato interesse per i The following year, this renewed interest for
musical per adolescenti ha originato Hairspray teen musicals led to Hairspray (see video below
(vedi il video qui sotto a destra), un remake del right), a remake of the original film (by John
film originale (di John Waters, USA 1988), oltre Waters, USA 1988), as well as taking
che dell'omonimo musical teatrale. Proprio come inspiration from the stage musical of the same
il film del 1988 era una parodia dei coloratissimi name. Just as the 1988 movie was a parody of
musical degli anni '60, questo remake è di nuovo the colourful '60s musicals, this remake is
un esempio di revival degli anni '60, con l'intento again an example of '60s revival, with the
di ricreare, con tocchi di nostalgia, i contesti intent of recreating, with touches of nostalgia,
positivi e ottimisti di quell'epoca. La storia in the positive, optimistic contexts of that era. The
entrambi i film è fondamentalmente la stessa, con story in both movies is basically the same, with
Tracy (Nikki Blonsky), un'adolescente sovrappeso Tracy (Nikki Blonsky) an overweight teenager
che diventa una star di uno show televisivo e nel becoming a star of a TV show and in the
frattempo mette fine alla discriminazione razziale meantime putting an end to racial
in televisione. Il film del 2007 sarà ricordato discrimination on television. The 2007 movie
anche per la sorprendente interpretazione di John will be remembered also for John Travolta's
Travolta nei panni dell'altrettanto cicciona madre astonishing performance as the equally (very
di Tracy. much) overweight Tracy's mother.

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High School Musical (by Kenny Ortega, USA Hairspray (by Adam Shankman, USA 2007)
2006)

4. Sex, romance and a little fantasy

Explicit sex comedies, in the vein of Porky's (see Part 3) had become rarer in the '90s, especially
with the advent of AIDS and the subsequent fears, which cinema was hardly eager to depict.
However, the end of the decade saw a resurgence of the "gross" sex comedies with American pie
(see video below right), once again focussing on young male characters searching for ways of
losing their virginity, if possible before the end-of-year prom (but practising safe sex throughout
...). There is no limit to the vulgarity of many funny sequences (and their constant double
entendres), which other recent movies had already successfully exploited, like Bobby and Peter
Farrelly's Dumb and dumber (USA 1994) and There's something about Mary (USA 1998),
although the movie is flawed by a basic feeling of conformism as well as by the fact of privileging
the male gaze - with the result that female characters are generally under-developed if not entirely
secondary to the plot (although they seem as attracted to sex as boys are). American Pie was a
huge box-office hit, so much so that it spawned five (!) sequels, plus a host of similar movies,
sometimes concentrating their basic storyline in the all-too-explicit title, like Coming soon (by
Colette Burson, USA 1999 - see the trailer here and the full film here).

American pie (by Paul Weitz, USA 1999)

However, the interest in such "gross" sex comedies soon waned and the romance side of sexual
relationships still found more than one release in a few movies which sometimes verged on the
fantastic side. A forerunner had been Edward Scissorhands (see video below right), a sort of a fairy
tale, both sweet and cruel, about a boy who is really a machine created by a mad scientist, who
died before adding hands to his creature - so that Edward now has to rely on a pair of scissors
working as his hands. The story is a symbolic coming-of-age tale in which Edward is first accepted
as a member of a standard traditional American family, only to be the object of discrimination by
the local community owing to his being so “different”.

Edward Scissorhands (by Tim Burton, USA 1990)

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An almost fantasy-like story is also told by Moonrise kingdom (see video below), the story of two
twelve-year-olds, Sam and Suzy, who start their relationships through a series of letters and then
find themselves sharing the experience of a scout camp on an undescript New England island in
the summer of 1965. Both youths have problematic family backgrounds (Sam is an orphan living
with foster parents, Suzy can hardly bear her parents and little brothers). The two soon develop a
deep affection and decide to run away, putting up a tent, building a fire - and basically, setting up
a relationship which makes for Suzy's parents' indifference and Sam's restlessness towards the
strict rules of the camp leader. Theirs is not a real sexual encounter, although they share moments
of intimacy; rather, it is the experience of a utopian world far from their dreadful daily realities.
While a storm is going to hit the island, rescue teams are set up to trace them, and after a series of
bizarre events, they are eventually saved and the scouts arrange a sort of wedding ceremony for
them - although at the end the families have their final say. However, the story and its climax are
neither dramatic nor aim to expose any deep existential anxiety - Sam and Suzy's world shows
traces of a cartoon-like mise-en-scene and has unusual, colourful tones that underline the gap
between the adult world and these pre-teens' one.

Moonrise kingdom (by Wes Anderson, USA 2012)

However, apart from such rather unique examples, teen films of the '00s have found other ways to
express the ever-present concerns about love and personal relationships. For example, a focus on
relationships is at the centre of Charlie Bartlett (see video below), in which a brilliant but rather
undisciplined student is expelled from a private school and enrolled in a public high school. He
soon becomes a sort of informal psychologist/social worker for his fellow students, who turn to him
in search of solutions to a variety of problems - and which he treats, quite "professionally" by
prescribing various drugs. His obvious need is for integration and love, and this will lead him to
fall in love with the daughter of the school's depressed and alcoholic principal. In his own very
peculiar way, Charlie is an example of a character who takes responsibility for the people around
him and thus goes against the competitive feelings that often plague youth communities.

Charlie Bartlett (by John Poll, USA 2007)

Another Charlie is the protagonist of The perks of being a wallflower (see video below right). This
16-year-old, a shy and sensitive student, is still bearing the signs of a childhood trauma (which

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will become clearer towards the end of the film) and, more recently, of the painful loss of a close
friend, who committed suicide, and to whom he regularly writes letters telling him about his
experiences. When he accidentally takes a dose of cannabis, he starts getting in touch with a new
social reality, made, among other things, of parties, sex, abortions, drugs and homophobia.
However, this new reality includes the friendship of the beautiful and easy-going Sam (whom he
soon develops a crush on) and of her gay step-brother Patrick. This close friendship will be
beneficial to all parties involved, since each one of them has her/his own problems, but will, more
importantly, boost Charlie's confidence and make him stronger and better able, not just to cope
with his plights, but also to enjoy the tumultuous yet wonderful age of growing up. Set in the '90s,
and with a brilliant musical score that underlines the feelings and passions of its young characters,
this movie represents a rare, serious, moving yet exciting portrait of the wonders and troubles
of being a teenager today.

The perks of being a wallflower (by Stephen Chbosky, USA 2012)

On another side, the present state of girlhood (and feminism) is portrayed in Easy A (see video
below), where Olive tells her story speaking into her webcam: she is an intelligent and lively (but
also quite tough) girl who, in order to help a schoolmate considered as gay, "tells a little lie" and
lets everybody believe that she had sex with him. Soon the voice spreads and Olive is quickly
labelled as a "dirty skank". Instead of redressing the story, she begins to wear provocative clothing
and even stitches an "A" onto her clothing (as the "Adulteress" in "The scarlet letter", a novel the
class is reading at the moment, was forced to do). And boys who need to boost their popularity on
sex matters begin to say they have sex with her (in exchange for gift cards ...). Olive's "reputation"
thus soars, until she has to find a way out of it ... Easy A calls attention to the issue of popularity
and conformism at school and the difficult route that youths, and particularly girls, have to
negotiate to affirm their own individuality. The film exposes the contradictions of (post)feminism:
on the one hand, girls can now display sexuality and sexual knowledge, but on the hand, they are
still subject to a puritanical vision of women instigating sex. It is not by chance that Olive looks
back nostalgically to the '80s (especially to John Hughes's teen films - see Part 3) as a time when,
paradoxically, it was easier to be a teenager:

"Whatever happened to chivalry? Did it only exist in Eighties movies? I want John Cusack holding
a boom-box outside my window [1]. I want to ride off on a lawnmower with Patrick Dempsey [2],
I want Jake from Sixteen candles waiting outside the church for me. I want Judd Nelson thrusting
his fist in the air because he knows he got me just once [3]. I want my life to be like an eighties
movie".

(Note: the images mentioned refer to [1] Say anything (by Cameron Crowe, USA 1989); [2] Can't
buy me love (by Steve Rash, USA 1987); [3] The breakfast club (by John Hughes, USA 1985). See
Part 3 of this Dossier)

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Easy A (by Will Gluck, 2010)

5. Gender and LGBTQ+ issues

Hollywood cinema, as most national cinemas, has always depicted heterosexual relationships,
mostly within a patriarchal, conservative view of gender issues. Until the demise of the Production
Code in 1968, homosexual references were explicitly banned, and even mild connotations could be
subject to censorship. This did not prevent filmmakers from introducing subtexts, like the subtly
homoerotic tension between Plato and Jim in Rebel without a cause (see Part 1). And even in the
following decades, gay characters continued either to be ignored, to be cast aside and to be
condemned if not ridiculed. In any case, sexuality other than normative heterosexuality was
identified with troubled characters who often ended up in difficult situations if not in suicide, as in
Ode to Billie Joe (by Max Baer Jr., USA 1976, inspired by a hit ballad by Bobbie Gentry).
It was not until the '90s that sexual orientation, gender issues and the explicit portrayal of
LGBTQ+ relationships began to be addressed in teen films - which could be considered as the
most natural context for sexual and gender issues, given the quest for sexual and psycho-social
identity which is one of the landmarks of adolescence. Queer youth thus started to be portrayed in
terms of both sexual and romantic experience - as is the case for any adolescent - and dealt with
with respect and in a more positive light.

One of the first depictions of a gay couple appeared in My own private Idaho (see video below
left), where two male prostitutes embark on a journey which will see them take two different
routes: while Mike (River Phoenix), a narcoleptic in search of his mother, is doomed to loneliness,
Scott (Keanu Reeves) will eventually give up his "on the road" life and his gay identity for the love
of an Italian girl (Chiara Caselli). Thus the explicitness of the sexual relationship does not close
on a happy ending (at least for Mike).

Then came Totally fucked up (USA 1993; watch the full film here), a semi-documentary,
experimental movie by gay director Gregg Araki, which consists mostly of interviews with gay and
lesbian youths who very frankly and openly talk about their (typical) teenage concerns like sex,
identity and romance, but also about homophobia, AIDS and drugs. The movie starts with a
newspaper cutting about the growing incidence of suicide among homosexual teenagers; and goes
on to show the life of loneliness and torment, if not desperation, which these boys and girls have to
go through, with no job prospects and no adult figures (not even in the background) to support
(and love) them. And even if their problems and worries are much the same as their heterosexual
counterparts, the fact of living in a basically homophobic and intolerant society adds to the
pressure that they have to suffer.

That cinema was starting to take gay and lesbian characters into serious consideration was proved
by, among other movies, Edge of seventeen (see video below right - you can also watch the full
film here), which focuses on Eric, a first-year high school student who discovers he fancies guys.
At the start he is very uncertain about his actual tendencies, and even tries to (re)start a sexual-
romantic relationship with best (girl)friend - but he soon clarifies his doubts and integrates into

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the gay community. However, having his family, particularly his mother, accept his gayness is
quite another matter, and it is in this respect that the film depicts the trouble teenagers have to go
through in their quest for acceptance and recognition.

My own private Idaho (by Gus Van Sant, USA

1991) Edge of seventeen (by David Moreton, USA
1998)

A "new kid in town" is also the protagonist of Boys don't cry (see video below left): a nice-looking
boy, Brendan (Hilary Swank, who won an Academy Award for this role) immediately gets the
attention of several of his classmates, especially Lana, who develops a crush on him. However,
when Brendan is discovered to be a boy, the social context collapses and violence explodes. Sexual
ambiguity and the tensions of forging one's gender identity is treated with understanding and
sympathy in describing the crisis of sexual identity, which rarely (if ever) had teen movies so
frankly and openly exposed.

A rather satirical tone denotes But I'm a cheerleader (see video below right), which is one of the
first movies clearly focused on families' attempts at curing their children's (supposed)
homosexuality, and on exposing, although in rather light-hearted terms, the hypocrisy of such
practices. 17-year-old Megan, suspected of being a lesbian, is sent to "True directions", a
"reparative therapy" camp, where teenagers are asked (or rather, forced) to admit their
homosexuality, re-discover their gender identity, demystify the opposite sex and even simulate
heterosexual intercourse. Through a series of tragi-comical incidents, however, Megan will be
able to reaffirm her identity (starting from reminding everybody that "she's a cheerleader!"), make
friends with the other kids at the camp, organize a sort of rebellion against "homophobic abuse"
and eventually win over her girlfriend lover. Ironically, the final scene shows Megan's parents
attending a meeting of an association providing support for parents of homosexual kids ...

But I'm a cheerleader (by Jamie Babbit, USA

Boys don't cry (by Kimberly Peirce, USA 1999 1999)

The issue of "redeeming" youths from their gay sexuality is taken up again in Saved! (see video
below), which, on the surface, seems to suggest a critical view of Catholic fundamentalism: the
action takes place in a Christian high school (The "American Eagle Christian High School"),
where strictly observant families send their children (to be indoctrinated, as it soon appears to be).
The youths are so affected by the doctrine that, when Dean reveals his gayness to his girlfriend

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Mary, she makes love to him in order to "redeem him" in God's name. Soon after, Dean's
"perversion" is discovered by his parents and sent away to a kind of "recovery school", while Mary
finds out that she is pregnant. Abortion is obviously out of the question, but Mary finds a lot of
support from her friends, particularly the "outcast" characters, like a disabled boy, a sympathetic
skater and a provocative Jewish girl who seems to do everything to be expelled from school. The
superficial satirical tone eventually proves perfunctory, as everybody seems to be reunited, once
again, at the end-of-year "prom", in the name of the previously parodied Christian ideals, where
Mary finds her true love in the skater, the disabled boy is paired off with the Jewish girl, and even
Dean, escaped from the reform school with his new gay partner, happily recognizes the new-born
baby as his own - with a final photograph showing all the characters happily reunited.

Saved! (by Brian Dannelly, USA 2004)

The issue of "correcting" what are thought of as "deviant" identities is also the focus of some more
recent movies, like The miseducation of Cameron Post and Boy erased (see videos below), dealing
with a girl's and a boy's plight respectively - witness to the fact that gender identities and sexual
insecurity are now issues that Hollywood cinema now seems to be able to tackle quite openly, and
a clear indication that something is changing in audiences' (and societies') perspectives in this
respect.

The miseducation of Cameron Post (by Desiree Akhavan, USA 2018)

Boy erased (by Joel Edgerton, USA 2018)

In the same year as Saved!, and after a decade since Totally fucked up, with Mysterious skin
director Gregg Araki gave an impressive, dramatic and touching portray of two friends who, after
spending part of their childhood together playing in the local baseball team, have lost touch with
each other and have taken up very different paths of life: while Neil has become a gay hustler and
tries to cope with a non-existent family, Brian leads an apparently normal life but is still haunted
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by an event in his childhood, when he lost control of himself for five hours and believes that he was
abducted by aliens. The two boys will not meet again until a few years later, when, in one of the
most disturbing yet touching scenes in teen cinema (see video below), Neil reveals that he and
Brian were sexually abused by their baseball coach - but while Neil had already developed a
sexual awareness at the time, and even came to love the abuser, Brian's shock turned into a sort of
amnesia. The film offers a realistic, sometimes violent but never voyeuristic depiction of such
terrible experiences, and treats its characters with respect and seriousness. "Mysterious skin in no
way exonerates the coach, recognizing that there is no justice to be brought to his victims, who, as
an eloquent closing shot illustrates, will be hereafter isolated in their own unique world of disorder.
Their solitary consolation, also suggested by this shot, is that they have formed a new bond
together, not in sexual exchange, but in their mutual understanding of each other." (Note 4).

Mysterious skin (by Gregg Araki, USA 2004)

Gender and race are the central elements of Moonlight (see video below - you can watch the full
film here), the story of an African American boy and his struggle to conquer both his ethnic and
sexual identities. Chiron is a ten-year-old who is an easy target of his bullying classmates (who
call him "Little") within the violent and homophobic African-American community in Miami.
Chiron is neither tough nor weak - just a gay boy who will not surrender to arrogance and
intolerance. Through his rebellion he ends up in jail, but when he comes out he is a different
person - more aware of the evil that surrounds him but also unable to show affection after he has
suffered in the only love relationship established with his classmate Kevin. It will take him some
more years to come to grips with his own problems and finally find himself when just by chance he
meets Kevin again. Without moralizing or recurring to stereotypes, Moonlight chooses a neutral
tone which is perhaps one of its strongest points.

Moonlight (by Barry Jenkins, USA 2016)

But the depiction of queer characters does not necessarily involve troubled teenagers or highly
dramatized issues: in the past few years teen pictures have eventually come to portray young
people who are coming to terms with their sexual identity in subtle, yet sympathetic ways: this is
the case of Love, Simon (see video below), who focusses on a high school student who leads quite
a normal life and has a caring family and good friends - yet he has a secret: he is gay. Simon has
started a romantic web chat with un unknown student, and when this secret risks being exposed,
things start getting a bit more difficult for Simon. Families are not, by definition, the easiest places
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where to discuss such issues (and adults turns out to be, once more, unaware of their children's
real troubles and/or unable to deal with them), but Simon can count on his friends' caring and
empathic community and will finally discover the true identity of his secret lover ...

Love, Simon (by Greg Berlanti, USA 2018)

6. Conclusion

What the new century has brought (and continues to bring) to the depiction of youth in the movies
is the ever-increasing variety of ways in which their images are constructed by filmmakers and
then offered to moviegoers - including, of course, teenagers, who are at the same time the objects
of representation and the subjects as the (main) audience of teen films. What is remarkable is a
move away from stereotypes, particularly the good/bad dichotomy and the masculine viewpoint as
the source of signification, and a more open, frank and serious consideration and representation of
teenagers. Negative elements associated with adolescence (like juvenile delinquency, drug abuse,
sexual promiscuity) have often given way to more complex, if contradictory, views of the concerns
and plights that coming-of-age entails. And, as is mostly evinced in the treatment of LGBTQ+
issues, a tolerance for differences, an acceptance of conflicts and the capacity to deal with them,
and a renewed sense of community and responsibility have found their place in the stories told by
contemporary teen cinema.

Still, teen pics have a long way to go in producing images of youths that are closer to the reality of
adolescence in specific contexts: girls are less frequently portrayed than boys; African-Americans,
Latin-Americans and other minorities do not appear as much as the predominant white, middle-
class characters (including the ideologies behind them); crucial issues in teenagers' life, like
pregnancy, abortion, parenting, but also drug abuse, depression and physical and mental
disabilities, do not receive the attention they deserve; and the social and political commitment of
younger generations rarely finds expression on the screen.

Teenagers have often been exploited by cinema as a source of attractive content, mostly in terms of
sex and/or violence, and this "teenploitation" (like similar ways of exploiting the image of other
groups) has accompanied teen films from the beginning and all through their history - with teens
placed in the rather depressing position of being both the exploited group on the screen and the
audience enjoying the exploitation itself. Regretfully, movies depicting teens as more superficial
and stupid than they really are have enjoyed, especially in the past, the appreciation of those same
teens. Of course, the cinema industry will always try to exploit whatever material can attract
specific kinds of audiences, but there are signals that teen films are moving towards a less
superficial and more serious consideration of teen themselves.

As we have already mentioned, sociocultural images of social groups, including teens, are
increasingly conveyed by media other than cinema: one is obliged to look at social networks and
all the facilities provided by the Internet to get a more comprehensive and realistic picture of how
teenagers are portrayed and, more importantly, of how teenagers see and portray themselves as
teenagers. This also means that adolescents can now have access to media not just as consumers
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filmstudies.it American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers

but also as producers of their own images. While teenagers as filmmakers are still rare, the
availability of new technical resources may well generate new ways of producing, distributing and
consuming media products, which an increasing number of teenagers will be able to take
advantage of.

This Dossier has focussed on American teen movies, also in recognition of the fact that the U.S.
cinema industry has the power to distribute its products (complete with their ideological content)
throughout the world. Certainly the global character of film distribution and consumption has
made it easier for people all over the world to understand and enjoy stories, characters and ways
of representation that essentially belong to the Western tradition - and this is one of the reasons
why the movies considered in this Dossier are mostly films that have enjoyed popularity, if not
always success, in many parts of the Western world (and beyond). However, this is not to say that
ideas about modern adolescence are simply exported from the West to the rest of the world - e.g.
the remake of The Karate Kid set in China (2010) clearly shows not just superficial adaptations
but a deeper consideration of cultural differences. So focussing on American teen films does not
imply that other cultures do not possess a tradition of teen films - but at the same time the
transnational distribution of movies, and the globalization within which this process is happening,
also open the way to appreciating how teen issues and identities can be compared and even
contrasted in productive ways within a truly transcultural perspective.

"We need to encourage the production of movies that make teens feel good about themselves and
their abilities in a progressive way. Furthermore, we need to encourage teens to actually see those
movies and discuss them ... We need to be sensitive to the concerns of youth and work toward
better conditions under which they are represented in the media, in which they understand the
media, and through which they produce media themselves." (Note 5)

Notes
(1) Shary T. 2014. Generation multiplex. The image of youth in American cinema since 1980,
University of Texas Press, Austin, p. 218.
(2) Smith F. 2017. Rethinking the Hollywood teen movie. Gender, genre and identity, Edinburgh
University Press, Edinburgh, p. 161.
(3) Shary, op. cit., p. 254.
(4) Shary, op. cit., p. 318.
(5) Shary T. 2005. Teen movies. American youth on screen, Wallflower, London-New York, p. 110.

Back to Contents

Want to know more?

* Modernism, Cinema, Adolescence: Another History for Teen Film by Catherine
Driscoll
* Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity by Leerom Medovoi
* Reel Revolutionaries: An Examination of Hollywood's Cycle of 1960s Youth

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 American teen pics: movies for teenagers, movies about teenagers filmstudies.it

Rebellion Films by Aniko Bodroghkozy, Cinema Journal, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Spring,
2002), pp. 38-58
* Investigating the 1980s Hollywood Teen Genre: Adolescence, Character, Space by
Patrick O'Neill, Kingston University, Faculty of Ard, Design and Architecture
* Growing up modern: Childhood, youth and popular culture since 1945, by David
Buckingham - A collection of essays, e.g.:
- How movies constructed the juvenile delinquent in the 1950s
- Retrospect and nostalgia in youth movies
* Contemporary British Coming-of-Age Films (1979 to the present) by Philippa
Zielfa Maslin, Royal Holloway, University of London
* ”Teen Noir" - A Study of the Recent Film Noir Revival in the Teen Genre by Anja
Christine Rørnes Tucker, University of Bergen, Department of Foreign Languages
* Youth culture in global cinema ed. by Timothy Shgary and Alexandra Seibel

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