Summary
Abstract
This essay examines the international genre of the teen movie, with special reference to developments since the early 1970s. Its working model of genre theory is expansive, refusing to corral the teen movie within an enclosed definition of its themes, moods, plots and iconography. Rather, the essay's emphasis is on tracing the representation of the cultural figure of youth, youthfulness or “teen spirit” across diverse, generic settings of romance, comedy, and fantasy. The subject of teen movies is liminality: the state of being poised between childhood and adulthood, a state that opens up both possibility and anxiety. The story of the teen-figure as social outsider can be resolved in conservative ways, or taken in politically radical directions. Numerous examples are discussed.
Keywords: Genre, Teen movie, adolescence, youth, popular culture
In trying to account for my own abiding fascination with the teen movie genre – a fascination that has gone on for 30 years – I figure I could begin in three different ways.
First, by simply giving a random list of titles – very diverse films of various styles, moods and qualities, from many different countries, some well known, some hardly known – but all films that capture, for me, some essential part of the contemporary teen movie: LE DÉPART (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1967), EN KÄRLEKSHISTORIA (Roy Andersson, 1970), AMERICAN GRAFFITI (George Lucas, 1973), FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH (Amy Heckerling, 1982), RECKLESS (James Foley, 1984), PURPLE RAIN (Albert Magnoli, 1984), FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF (John Hughes, 1986), NEAR DARK (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987), LES ROSEAUX SAUVAGES (André Téchiné, 1993), RIRI SHUSHU NO SUBETE (Shunji Iwai, 2001), WASSUP ROCKERS (Larry Clark, 2005), PRINZESSIN (Birgit Grosskopf, 2006), THE HOUSE BUNNY (Fred Wolf, 2008), ADVENTURELAND (Greg Mottola, 2009), EASY A (Will Gluck, 2010), STEP UP 3D (Jon M. Chu, 2010) and UN AMOUR DE JEUNESSE (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2011).
Second, I could offer a quotation. It is from the French director Olivier Assayas, who has made at least three bona fide teen movies, Désordre (1986), L’EAU FROIDE (1994) and APRÈS MAI (2012). In 1997 at the Melbourne International Film Festival, Assayas confessed:
When you’re a filmmaker you have to remain so very close to your youthful ideals, to the things that you have been. You’re sometimes stuck with yourself when you’re an artist. You keep those ideals inside yourself for some reason, and [you] keep on replaying and replaying the same situation of your youth.
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- Mysteries of CinemaReflections on Film Theory, History and Culture 1982–2016, pp. 291 - 300Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018