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A LOOK AT
TEEN MOVIES
Kids, huh? What are they like? In the past 60 years or so, our collective idea of "teenage" has been neatly repackaged for each new generation. But in Hollywood - the media domain that virtually invented this concept by promoting stars such as Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in the 1940s - the desire to keep up with the kids and sell them teen dreams has seemingly ended. In 2006, studio productions angling for the teen buck invest in the proven returns of horror, while fables of the prom and the last golden summer have been swallowed up by TV series such as Dawson's Creek and The OC, in which a sleekly homogenised version of teen is rolled out for the under-agers. The teen movie, as we know it, appears to exist only in a haze of Gen X nostalgia for the mid-1980s powerhouse that was John Hughes and his acolytes.
MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/apr/21/3
In the 1950s “public attention was focused on teens to an unprecedented degree in American culture” (Rollin Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades). Society, and cinema, had an interest in youth and the ever-expanding period of life known as adolescence. Gradually, post World War II, “the age between childhood and adulthood came to be codified, debated, celebrated, and perhaps most significantly, elongated” (Shary Generation Multiplex).
MORE: http://www.turnedout.tv/blogs/2317
Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen (Short Cuts Series)
By Timothy Shary
London: Wallflower Press, 2005. ISBN: 1-904764-49-5 (pbk). 125pp. £12.99 (pbk)
Children, Cinema & Censorship: From Dracula to the Dead End Kids
By Sarah J. Smith
London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. ISBN: 1-85043-813-7 (pbk), ISBN: 1-85043-812-9 (hbk). 237pp. £16.99 (pbk), £47.50 (hbk)
A Review by Richard Harrison, Norwich City College, UK
There is no doubt that, despite youth being arguably the most important film audience, films concerning it and the effects films have upon it have oft been neglected. Indeed, compared to other social or historically-based studies, youth finds itself greatly under-represented, both in terms of general histories and theoretical approaches. These two books attempt to redress the balance, but each has a different focus -- the former provides a brief history of youth within films, the latter a far more detailed amalgamation of children, cinema and their relationship to censorship.
The author of Teen Movies: American Youth On Screen himself identifies the problematical nature of the 'Short Cuts' series -- "a book such as this can only offer an overview and evaluation of past practices" (109). That this comes at the end of his book produces an effect akin to that of eating a rather forgettable meal and being told during the coffee that it was prepared by the third choice chef -- you had already made that same deduction but it was nice of your host to admit it. Thus, the words 'overview' and 'evaluation' are appropriate to the point of summing up Shary's book rather neatly and conveniently, something he does to many teen films across many years by giving them the 'film guide' treatment. What starts out as a promising investigation into the under-researched and unjustly neglected area of 'teen movies' swiftly becomes a chronological synopsis of such films -- and, in this vein, becomes sadly less and less readable.
TEENS REBEL AGAINST AUTHORITY
By Celeste Delgado
Many teenagers today are viewed by their elders as nonconformist. But some of these adults themselves were the nonconformist rebels back in the fifties.
Of course, teen behavior in the 1950s was much different from that of today. Charles Panati, author of Panati's Parade of Fads, Follies, and Manias says, panty raids in late March of 1952 at the University of Michigan began with a shout, "To the girl's dorm!" The object of these young men was to return with any article of women's lingerie, a trophy proudly to be displayed.
More often than not, the girls, gleeful and squealing, tossed down stockings, panties or bras, making the festivity sound like a riot. Storming the girls' dorm to steal underwear was the decade's first rebellious craze and was more of a harmless prank.
The Wild One (1953), despite featuring characters past their teens, was the first in a torrent of JD films, which became ubiquitous by the end of the 1950s. In 1955 two of the most powerful JD films appeared: Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle. Rebel spoke about current teen tensions in sincere tones rather than didactic monologues, and, with the death of its star, James Dean (1931–1955), just days before its release, it had an automatically profound marketing campaign. The ensuing veneration of Dean as an icon of young coolness—and his performance as Jim Stark, which embodied that image—made the film an indelible symbol of youth in the agonizing process of self-discovery and the forging of identity. Blackboard Jungle used the more typical scenario of an inspiring teacher who tries to gain authority over his delinquent charges, although some of them are beyond reform. The film was significant not only for its use of rock music, but for its integration of nonwhite teens into the story, which enabled it to make a searing statement about uniting against tyranny.
http://www.posterpalace.com/categorysearch.lasso?-Token.category=badgirls
TEENAGE MOVIE TRAILERS
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