Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen

By Timothy Shary

Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen is a detailed look at the depiction of teens on film and its impact throughout film's history. Timothy Shary looks at the development of the teen movie -- the rebellion, the romance, the sex and the horror -- up to contemporary portrayals of ever-changing youth. Films studied include Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Splendor in the Grass (1961), Carrie (1976), The Breakfast Club (1985), and American Pie (1999).

• Language: English
• Publisher: WallFlower Press
• Release date: May 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780231501606

Timothy Shary

Timothy Shary is the author of numerous books on youth and film, including Boyhood: A Young Life on Screen (Routledge, 2017), and Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2002; revised 2014). He is co-author of Fade to Gray: Aging in American Cinema (University of Texas Press, 2016), and his publications have appeared in The Journal of Film and Video, Film Quarterly, The Journal of Popular Culture, The Journal of Popular Film and Television, and Boyhood Studies. He teaches at Eastern Florida State College.

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SHORT CUTS

INTRODUCTIONS TO FILM STUDIES

OTHER TITLES IN THE SHORT CUTS SERIES

THE HORROR GENRE: FROM BEELZEBUB TO BLAIR WITCH Paul Wells

THE STAR SYSTEM: HOLLYWOOD’S PRODUCTION OF POPULAR IDENTITIES Paul McDonald

SCIENCE FICTION CINEMA: FROM OUTERSPACE TO CYBERSPACE Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska

EARLY SOVIET CINEMA: INNOVATION, IDEOLOGY AND PROPAGANDA David Gillespie

READING HOLLYWOOD: SPACES AND MEANINGS IN AMERICAN FILM Deborah Thomas

DISASTER MOVIES: THE CINEMA OF CATASTROPHE Stephen Keane

THE WESTERN GENRE: FROM LORDSBURG TO BIG WHISKEY John Saunders

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND CINEMA: THE PLAY OF SHADOWS Vicky Lebeau

COSTUME AND CINEMA: DRESS CODES IN POPULAR FILM Sarah Street

MISE-EN-SCÈNE: FILM STYLE AND INTERPRETATION John Gibbs

NEW CHINESE CINEMA: CHALLENGING REPRESENTATIONS Sheila Cornelius with Ian Haydn Smith

SCENARIO: THE CRAFT OF SCREENWRITING Tudor Gates

ANIMATION: GENRE AND AUTHORSHIP Paul Wells

WOMEN’S CINEMA: THE CONTESTED SCREEN Alison Butler

BRITISH SOCIAL REALISM: FROM DOCUMENTARY TO BRIT GRIT Samantha Lay

FILM EDITING: THE ART OF THE EXPRESSIVE Valerie Orpen

AVANT-GARDE FILM: FORMS, THEMES AND PASSIONS Michael O’Pray

PRODUCTION DESIGN: ARCHITECTS OF THE SCREEN Jane Barnwell

NEW GERMAN CINEMA: IMAGES OF A GENERATION Julia Knight

EARLY CINEMA: FROM FACTORY GATE TO DREAM FACTORY Simon Popple and Joe Kember

MUSIC IN FILM: SOUNDTRACKS AND SYNERGY Pauline Reay

FEMINIST FILM STUDIES: WRITING THE WOMAN INTO CINEMA Janet McCabe

MELODRAMA: GENRE STYLE SENSIBILITY John Mercer and Martin Shingler

FILM PERFORMANCE: FROM ACHIEVEMENT TO APPRECITATION Andrew Klevan

NEW DIGITAL CINEMA: REINVENTING THE MOVING IMAGE Holly Willis

THE MUSICAL: RACE, GENDER AND PERFORMANCE Susan Smith

FILM AND PHILOSOPHY: IMAGES OF WISDOM Adrian Page

FILM NOIR: FROM FRITZ LANG TO FIGHT CLUB Mark Bould

THE NEW HOLLYWOOD: FROM BONNIE AND CLYDE TO STAR WARS Peter Krämer

DOCUMENTARY: THE MARGINS OF REALITY Paul Ward

TEEN MOVIES

AMERICAN YOUTH ON SCREEN

TIMOTHY SHARY

WALLFLOWER

LONDON and NEW YORK

A Wallflower Book

Published by

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York • Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright © Timothy Shary 2005

All rights reserved.

E-ISBN 978-0-231-50160-6

A complete CIP record is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN ISBN 978-1-904764-49-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-231-50160-6 (e-book)

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [e-mail].

CONTENTS

acknowledgments

        introduction

1      the teen film in its infancy, 1895–1948

2      the teen film matures, 1949–1967

3      youth film rebels, 1968–1979

4      teen cinema is reborn in abundance, 1978–1995

5      the teen film takes on a new century, 1994–2004

        conclusion

notes

bibliography

index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My foremost thanks go to Yoram Allon at Wallflower Press who suggested that I write this book and who has encouraged its development along the way. I also need to thank the University of Texas Press, and my editor there, Jim Burr, for previously publishing my work on youth cinema, which I also utilised here.

Clark University has provided me with research support and the opportunity to teach courses on teen films, most recently with Beth Gale, which has given me a greater understanding of the field. My thanks to Clark, my many intelligent students, and the Higgins School of Humanities, which also provided funding.

One of the most esteemed scholars in teen film studies, Jon Lewis of Oregon State University, gave the entire manuscript a thorough reading and offered many suggestions for which I am very grateful. I further thank Ilana Nash of Western Michigan University for her advice on the introductory chapters. I also thank my colleagues who have shared their ideas on teen cinema over the years, which have influenced my own work: Carolyn Anderson, Christine Holmlund, Mary Kearney, Jon Lupo, Bob Miklitsch, Marty Norden, Murray Pomerance, Catherine Portuges, Bennett Schaber, Alexandra Seibel and Louisa Stein.

Most of the images in this book were gathered through collectors of movie memorabilia from all over the world. I offer my thanks to them, and my encouragement to keep film history alive.

This book is dedicated to Becky, who keeps me young.

INTRODUCTION

Adolescence and motion pictures were both ‘discovered’ as the nineteenth century was growing into the twentieth. In 1904, G. Stanley Hall wrote his groundbreaking study Adolescence: Its Psychology, and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, an ambitious first effort to catalogue what was then being identified as a strange but significant phase of life. At the same time, movie theatres were becoming new fixtures in towns all over America, rapidly changing the social notions of art and even reality. Indeed, until television a half-century later, movies would be the most influential entertainment medium in the world, shaping cultural notions about history, behavior and values. This profound influence was used to convey emotions, sway opinions and represent social groups in both sincere and stereotypical terms.

The impact of movies on the pre-adult population would be swift and sweeping, as moral guardians moved to protect children from the cinema’s pervasive influence.¹ Nonetheless, American cinema depicted young characters on screen in wildly inconsistent ways (and rather infrequently at that) until the 1930s, and nothing could prepare the film industry, nor the country, for the emergence of that powerful demographic force that bloomed during and after the Second World War: teenagers.

Of course, people had passed through their teen years since the start of human time, and thus there always were teenagers. Yet the term was not used until well into the twentieth century, and ‘teenage culture’ was rarely identified as such until Hall and other pioneers (primarily in psychology) offered increasing evidence for the distinct nature of adolescence as a meaningful passage from childhood to adulthood.² And one of the reasons the teenage population became more visible was due to the spread of movie theatres, where young people would congregate outside of school hours. Furthermore, an increasing number of children stayed in school until their later teens, thus elongating the duration of their perceived youth.

As with the depiction of any minority group in the media, a question of motivation must be raised: does the industry depict minorities to fulfill the expectations of the majority, to appeal to the minority, or a balance of both? Young people have an especially delicate position as a minority group, since they are generally considered the ‘property’ of adults until they are almost out of their teen years, and until recently, their access to mass media – both in terms of reception and especially production – has been restricted by adults. Thus, there would never be a cinematic tradition of movies made by children, unlike many other marginalised groups in US history. The assumption seemed to be that adults could portray the youth experience based on their personal memories and current observations; the only creative input young people actually had was in performing the roles adults designed for them.

Yet Hollywood studios realised that they did need to appeal to the young audience, first through matinee shows that played well to children with or without their parents, and by promoting morally respectable young stars, which fulfilled the expectations of the adult majority. This formula proved adequate until the 1950s, when television rapidly began stealing away the movie audience, and Hollywood responded by making more films aimed directly at youth. In Teenagers and Teenpics (1988), Thomas Doherty argues that this response led to a ‘juvenilisation’ of American movies that has been persistent ever since the 1950s, with studios capitalising on youth trends and attitudes through movies that more directly and aggressively address the teenage audience. In Generation Multiplex (2002), I argue that the 1980s produced a more codified approach to teen films, as Hollywood and independent studios systematically developed different youth subgenres to depict an increasingly diverse array of teen experiences. And authors such as David Considine (The Cinema of Adolescence, 1985), Jon Lewis (The Road to Romance and Ruin, 1992) and Georganne Scheiner (Signifying Female Adolescence, 2000) have studied the evolution of adolescence in American movies in relation to social and political trends.

This book provides a linear and concise history of the American teen film, beginning in the silent era, before the term ‘teenager’ was ever used, and when adolescence was still being identified. While the ‘teen film’ would take some time to become a genre, its effects would be abundantly evident by the late 1930s. The genre was more clearly recognised and more prolific by the 1950s, and thus the majority of this study concentrates on films made during that decade and thereafter.

Alas, many teen films in our history have become obscure or gone missing altogether, leaving researchers with the rather problematic limitation of only examining the most popular and accessible examples. In the case of this study, that means that the most complete commentaries will be found on box-office hits from the past, as well as more recent releases. Fortunately, the majority of teen films since 1980 are easily available for viewing, and since the 1980s were perhaps the most fertile period of teen films in American history, this book offers a further focus on films from that decade to present.

The focus on exclusively US teen films in this book is only a matter of formality, and not an effort to privilege them. The Short Cuts series is designed to cover film subjects in a rather concentrated form, and any attempt to study teens in films at the international level surely needs a much larger volume. Fortunately, such a volume will soon appear, as I am editing the collection Youth Culture in Global Cinema with Alexandra Seibel.

Teen films hold a special place in the hearts of almost all moviegoers, since we have fond and frustrating memories of the films that spoke to us in our adolescence. Each generation witnesses its adolescent ideas and expectations, its fantasies and fears, presented in the images of youthful characters coming of age. Teen films, like successive generations of teenagers themselves, have grown up and changed with the times, testing their boundaries, exploring their potential and seeking new identities. Indeed, the study of teen films reveals the evolving maturity of our culture.

1      THE TEEN FILM IN ITS INFANCY 1895–1948

Adolescence before the teen film

Some of the earliest motion pictures ever made featured youth at play, including the comical short L’Arroseur arrosé (The Waterer Watered), which was shown at the historic public screening of the Lumière brothers’ films in Paris on December 28, 1895. Yet in the late 1890s, movies were still something of a novelty, primarily viewed through machines limited to a single viewer, machines that were usually too tall for children to even use. By the early 1900s, the principal format of movies became large screens, making their viewing more of a group experience, although the characters on screen were almost always adults, often caught up in a great adventure. Movies were so popular with and accessible to the public at large that film studios did not feel compelled to make products aimed at children, who generally had no income for entertainment, and who could be assumed to enjoy the same films their parents enjoyed.

In her book Images of Children in American Film (1986), Kathy Merlock Jackson argues that the popular depiction of children in early American cinema revolved around their rescue from danger, as in The Life of an American Fireman (1903) and The Adventures of Dolly (1908). Showing the innocence and vulnerability of children was appealing to adults and to censors, who became increasingly concerned with positive portraits of proper behavior. Audiences of that time would likely have not welcomed any tales of juvenile delinquency or adolescent sexual curiosities, which were taboo topics.

So when Hollywood first made films about youth, they tended to focus on pre-teen children. Thomas Aylesworth makes this point in Hollywood Kids (1987) by exploring the career of Mary Pickford, who was sixteen when she went to work for Biograph studios in 1909, but gained her greatest fame in her twenties by playing young girls, such as the title characters in Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and Pollyanna (1920). The most popular young performers until the later 1930s were all younger than 10 years old: the impressive Jackie Coogan in Chaplin’s The Kid (1921), the endearing Our Gang tots (who started a run of many short films in 1922), and of course the brightest child star ever, Shirley Temple. Yet while child characters may have been safer for studios, the movies did begin to portray some aspects of teenage life by the 1910s and 1920s, as in the film Seventeen (1916).

Georganne Scheiner details the crucial change in the popularity of girl characters of the 1920s, when the rise of flappers in films like The House of Youth (1924), Campus Flirt (1926) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928) ‘helped to perpetuate the popular image of wild adolescence and youth run amuck’ (2000: 29). Such films appeared as movie studios in the Roaring Twenties began testing moral boundaries with their images of decadence, becoming cautionary – yet exciting – tales about the dangers of teenage vices. Scheiner makes a further distinction between the ‘young adult’ flapper roles, which tended to feature college-aged characters, and 1920s films about clearly adolescent youth, of which there were quite few, such as the high-school comedy Harold Teen (1928). Most often, films about teenagers in the 1920s were