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WEEK 12

The Outsiders is a film that intersects both nostalgia and U.S. boyhood. The boyhood in this case is masculinity and adulthood. The greasers in the movie are seen as the outcasts so they band together to face the oppression from everyone else. They are also very aggressive too by picking fights with people or having people pick fights with them. In the opening scene, we see a boy walking back and on the way back he gets chased by the popular boys who beat him up ad cut him. As this is going on, his friends drive off the popular kids. At this point, the audience knows that the greasers are showing off their masculinity through aggression and what they are wearing. Nostalgia is shown through several instances. One of the key ones is at the drive in movie theatre when we see a group of clean cut kids that look like they are from an Andy Hardy film. A lot of the music and cultural references are very nostalgic too. The beginning of the Robert Frost poem scene is painted like a picture, but is highly reminiscent of Gone with the Wind. It is also interesting to note that this is directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The book was written by a female so Coppola is adapting that to screen from both his and the book’s point of view. Coppola is not making the average teen move everyone has seen before. Instead, he is adapting a form of literature that is seen through his view in an award winning style.

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WEEK 11

Two films that focus on urban black girlhood are Pariah and Just Another Girl in the IRT. Just Another Girl in the IRT focuses on a black women who has dreams of graduating and going into the medical field but all of that is crushed when she has a baby. Pariah focuses on a lesbian girl who is trying to find herself and come out to her parents. Both films are directed by women but it is important to note how the films display sexuality and activism. Chantel comes off as nice but also very intimidating and in your face. This represents the black woman trying to take command from the oppressor of a male in some of the sexual scenes. In Pariah, Alike is oppressed by what it means to be a conservative black woman by going against the grain of sexuality and she is also acting as the activist by saying it is ok to be black lesbian in America. Another thing these films do really well is portray what black girlhood is like. A lot of the scenes throughout both films take place in apartments and in urban cities. This is a complete contrast to what audiences saw in Heathers or Love Finds Andy Hardy. The music is also representative of their culture in both films too. There is a lot of rap music that is being played and it seeps into the attitude and mood of the film. It is also important to note that Dee Rees, the director of Pariah, is a queer woman of color helming her perspective on a project like this.

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WEEK 10

With the release of the Virgin Suicides, it marked a significant turning point in the teen film where now these films were popularized as having women direct them. Sofia Coppola was already going to have sort of a big budget due to her dad, Francis Ford Coppola, already being a powerhouse in the film industry. Mosquita y Mari is another teen film directed by a female director, but it is an indie project made on a much smaller budget. This movie rchanges the perspective of the male gaze since it is a female director. The original purpose of the male gaze is to have women on display as objects. The director of Mosquita y Mari is the holder of this gaze now and she uses it to show a more realistic sense of girl hood in a more ethnic area. This also marks a change of class in teen film. As an audience, we see both Mosquita and Mari’s perspective as people as one struggles within her pursuits of higher education and the latter is trying to get by one job at a time. It also draws onto the idea of compulsory heterosexuality which Adrienne Rich has written about. It is the idea that women form women only communities to achieve clarity away from men. The film as a whole is woven as that community as the main characters are female and the one helming the entire project together is female. Through all of these aspects, Mosquita y Mari achieves this through the contrasting male gaze and forms of identity.

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WEEK 8

In the teen film there has always been the defining clean cut boy, wild boy, killer girl, and now there is a transition into the mean girl. The mean girl is someone who I find very likeable as an audience member, but in the world of the film she is extremely controversial. The gender switch changes the representation of peer aggression. Wild boys would use their aggression in a physical way against people who were not like them or deemed under them. Mean Girls use their aggression to separate themselves from different societal clicks with their words. Both Heathers and Mean Girls utilize the mean girl group to separate themselves from average or nerdy girls. Mean Girls literally uses a book of mean words and photographs to go against certain women in a total institution. The peer to peer conflict also changes in these types of mean girl movies. Instead of having the adults go against the teens, the audience now sees teens going against other teens. To be even more specific it can be one teen going against a teen clique. Dawn Cecil talks about how girlhood in both of these movies is operating on a contrasting set of binaries. There is a stark difference in the popular and the outcast,  winner and loser, friend and enemy, and even the victim and abuser. Girlhood is highlighted as a popularity contest in both films because they are socially competitive creatures that, in an effort to become popular, they end up damaging their victims for a lifetime.

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WEEK 7

The teen goes through the changing body phase such as puberty. This happens more in the adolescent stage of a teen in both physical and mental forms. The teen films have reflected this change by intersecting between different genres. Intersection has happened before in movies such as Animal House and Porky’s, but the intersection of monstrous puberty and horror reaches it’s peak with the release of Carrie. Carrie tells the story of a telekinetic girl who does not fit in at school and thinks she has a chance when one of the most popular men there asks her out to the prom. What Carrie thinks will be the greatest moment of her life turns out not to be as she is tricked and uses her telekinetic powers to end people at prom in a blood bath. Blood plays a huge part in Carrie as a symbol for not only her period but also sexual repression. In the infamous opening scene, A group of girls are all taking a shower. The camera pans to Carrie who is taking one by herself. Bloods starts coming from her vagina and she starts freaking out. Her blood in this case is a form of her sexuality coming out and she is not adept to it yet. She later becomes a killer girl, which is in code to the rebellious nature of the wild boy in the teen film. She becomes a killer girl when blood is dripped down on her at the end, thus finally being adept in releasing her sexual repression by killing of people in the gym during prom.

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WEEK 6

In the 1980’s a whole resurgence of teen movies happened. In the past, people were used to the idea of a teen movie either being like Love Finds Andy Hardy or Rebel Without A Cause, but the emergence of MTV helped to shift the language of the teen movie in a very different direction. With the release of the movie Tuff Turf, the industry found a way to sell music to teens through cinema. With MTV being formed in 1981, music was being put into cinema to show to teens in the for of advertisement. Tuff Turf is fully loaded with music from start to finish and watching it in this day and age, it is reminiscent of 1980’s culture. The Shary reading talk a lot in depth about this but it also talks about how the shopping mall quickly became one of the most popular tropes for teen movies. Having the shopping mall expanded the horizons of the claustrophobic spaces of the bedroom or the total institution of the high school. During the 1980’s too the home video market started to rise. Instead of going to the theatres, teens and other people could buy videos for use at home. The home video market is important for helping flush out movies on a wide scale platform, but it is also very important to know that more teens are buying home movies. The term, video, is going to become very important during the 1980’s as America will now see teens adopt a lot of their culture through both music and home movies.

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WEEK 5

In his piece, Goffman describes schools as total institutions. Both high schools and prisons are controlled based on the binaries of power. Prisoners are controlled by a higher authority which are the prison guards and high schoolers are controlled by school administrators. In one way or another, both high schoolers and prisoners share the same commonality of being oppressed. Another commonality that is shared between the two is the lack of social intercourse. This is shielded by a barrier that protects the subjects from the outside world. This is symbolized and shown through locked doors, high walls, and other forms of barrier holding. Those in charge regulate the behavior of those who are inside the barrier and punish them if they act out. Going back to the binaries, the ones who are oppressed often see those who control them in condescending and mean manner. The ones in control see those who are put down under them in a negative light. This here greatly distorts the power dynamic between them and a lot of those inmates or students who suffer from boredom or are demoralized by the system were either left behind or neglected. The Breakfast Club showcases a group of students in detention or a being controlled by one administrator. The power dynamic between students and administrators is immediately shown in the total institution of the high school. While the students are extremely different in character, they all share one commonality which is that they are oppressed or neglected in some way either at detention or in their own personal lives.

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WEEK 4

The high school is a quintessential setting in any world of a teen film. It represents the liminal space where social dynamics are formed. Even though the area is away from home, there is still an authority presiding over the students. This is seen and exploited in the documentary film High School. In the movie, the camera shows several scenes that take place in a high school from 1968. The viewer sees the different types of students throughout the school and the interchanging social dynamics too. One of these social dynamics and/or representations that is shown is the distinction between troublemakers and clean-cut kids. This distinction has been exploited in fictional movies in the past, but this is one of the first times an audience is watching the real-life version of it. The high school is the site for the unofficial or official transmission of knowledge. Whenever two or more teens are talking in a movie such as Heathers they are transmitting knowledge to one another and it is establishing a form of socialization between the teens. The high school also serves as the place of discovering who the teen really is. The teen has a period of growth, experimentation, and self-discovery. For the social dynamics that were shown on screen in High School, those could change over time while those teens are still in the school even if it is not shown on camera. The characters in the Breakfast Club have a moment of self-discovery about themselves they share with one another problems in their personal lives while still being oppressed under subjects of authority in a high school.

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WEEK 3

After World War II, the market for the teen film changed. The teen film carried many more characteristics than it ever did before with the inclusion of conflicts between girls and boys regarding social status, the love triangle between teens, bullying, and emotions that filter through relationships. The emotions that started to come up often were rebellion, angst, and desire. With all of these characteristics playing into the new frontier of teen films, there was this fear of youth that started to arise. Instead of being targeted towards everyone, movies are now being targeted towards teens and the refining factors of the genre shifted in their favor. This shift was so popular that by the mid 1950’s, juvenile delinquents become the most represented types of teens in movie. The example movie that many film theorists called the crystallization of the teen movie genre is Rebel Without a Cause. When the movie was released, it was a critical and commercial success and James Dean became the most popular teen in the movie business. One of the main reasons why his character Jim Stark stood out is because he displayed a new type of adolescent hero. No longer do we have the clean cut Andy Hardy, but instead we have the jacket-wearing delinquent that is Jim Stark. Jim Stark is nonconformist and sensitive. He doesn’t play by the rules of society and isn’t as confident within himself as Andy Hardy. A lot of the clothing and style choices also represent a huge change from previous teen culture. Whereas Andy Hardy would wear, for the most part, buttoned suits and a top hat, Jim Stark is best known for his light blue jeans and red jacket.

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WEEK ONE

G. Stanley hall played an influential part in the formation of the teen film by defining what it means to be an adolescent. In 1904, the adolescence was defined through key concepts such as the binaries existing between children and adults, the separation of the life stage, and the need for education in order to gain productivity. The period of adolescence in young men and women was understood to be between the ages of 14-24. Jon Savage was another key figure who played a part in the culmination of what we now know as the teen film. Savage notes that the implementation of delinquency laws and compulsory education laws compelled people in their teen years to exhibit unique behaviors. The binaries were not only between parents and youth, but also between teen boys and girls because they experienced adolescence differently. Girls are represented in these movies through the idea of girlhood. Girlhood takes many stages in female adolescence. These stages are the orphan, the sweetheart, the tomboy, the schoolgirl, the daughter and the fairy-tale heroine. The best example as far as a film goes to show all of this is the Seven Ages of Life. In this silent short film, the audience watches a girl go through these stages of girlhood all on the screen with a man. Even though the man’s stages are never identified, the girl’s stages are explicitly shown through imagery. The 1920 film The Flapper utilizes the schoolgirl stage for a majority of that film. The film even starts with the girl going to boarding school and the audience sees everything that is going on and happening to the girl from her perspective.