The Secret Lives of Teenage Sidekicks
When you think of the quintessential high-school movie, who is the star? Is it Alicia Silverstone’s Cher Horowitz, with her lustrous blond hair and Valley Girl aphorisms, from Clueless? Or maybe a bit further back, any one of Molly Ringwald’s characters from Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, or The Breakfast Club? Perhaps your mind goes to one of the Stratford sisters from 10 Things I Hate About You, the ultra-popular socialite Bianca or her curmudgeonly older sister, Kat.
The leads of classic American coming-of-age films tend to have at least one thing in common: Beyond their youthful ennui, most of them are white, well-off, and surrounded by people who look a lot like them. These characters’ troubles aren’t necessarily trivial—high school is, after all, a petri dish of anxieties for everyone. But these films consistently focused on teens from a narrow demographic; when their peers of color were included, they were usually relegated to sidekick status. If you revisit the likes of , , and , you’ll remember the black best friend or the Asian neighbor or the Latino love interest who added some color—literally and figuratively—but to the plot. Often sycophants or
