Space, Interiors, and 1980s Hollywood Teen Films

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Teen Films

scholarly journals My Most Prized Possession, an American Obsession. Virginity and the Sexual Politics of the American Teen Film.

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
Björn Sonnenberg-Schrank
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Teen Films ◽  
Teen Film

American "teen films" and TV series can be regarded as mass consumerculture's version of literature's "bildungsroman". Their main trope isthe adolescent individual's search for identity and independence,narrated via the personal and social initiation associated with acoming-of-age experience, often ignited and/or epitomized by a sexualinitiation, most commonly in the form of virginity loss. Thus, manyteen films are negotiations of purity, chastity, and virginity—withquite mixed messages.With recourses to Jean Paul Sartre, Barrington Moore Jr., MichelFoucault, Sigmund Freud, Laura M. Carpenter and others, this paperaddresses how the transitional in-between state of adolescence isevaluated in American (popular) culture, the sexual politics of manyof these narratives, and their agency in reflecting as well as shapingadolescent sexual identities.

How to Be a Man: Masculinity in Australian Teen Culture and American Teen Movies

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-135
Author(s):  
Scott McKinnon
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Autobiographical Writing ◽  
American Films ◽  
Teen Films ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Oral History Interviews

This paper examines the reception of American teen films by Australian audiences in the 1950s, focusing specifically on issues of masculinity and sexuality. Using material gathered from sources such as oral history interviews, autobiographical writing and Australian media reports, an attempt is made to locate the films as one element in a developing local culture based more on age than nationality. The paper argues that, screened within the context of a society which defined masculine behaviour in the light of the ideals of war, a range of popular American films and their stars acted to complicate the idea of what it meant to be male. Audiences were offered new, or at least more ambiguous, notions of gender and sexuality. These changes caused concern among some Australian adults, as they watched the teenage boys of the nation learn how to be men.

Teen Films: An Annotated Bibliography

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Benton ◽  
Mark Dolan ◽  
Rebecca Zisch
Keyword(s):  
Annotated Bibliography ◽  
Teen Films

scholarly journals Going Nowhere? The Politics of Remembering (and Forgetting) Molly Ringwald

1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Lee
Keyword(s):  
Teen Films

This article focuses on the actor Molly Ringwald, forever famous for her roles in a series of 1980s teen films directed by John Hughes, to explore notions of generational remembering and forgetting.

34. Teen Films: The Cinematic Image of Youth

2012 ◽  
pp. 576-601
Author(s):  
Timothy Shary
Keyword(s):  
Teen Films

scholarly journals The "sell-out girl" in contemporary Hollywood cinema : training future generations of capitalist consumers

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Elizabeth Dollack
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Theoretical Foundation ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
Perfect Score ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
Teen Films ◽  
Class Status

Contemporary Hollywood teen films are laden with ideological themes that advertise socially appropriate behaviours for young women. The following study, using a theoretical foundation in Marxism, presents a critical examination of the naturalized codes of consumerism, femininity, and adolescent subcultures found within the medium of film. The study of "alternative" female characters in Clueless (1995), 10 things I hate about you (1999), She's all that (1999), Ghost world (2001), Thirteen (2003), Mean girls(2004) and The perfect score (2004), reveals some of the hegemonic processes of capitalism that commodify potential forms of social opposition while reinforcing dominant norms about gender expectations, class status, and conspicuous consumption.

Breaking into Soundtrack in 1980s Teen Films

2020 ◽  
pp. 108-126
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Musical Performance ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Discrete Mode ◽  
Course Of Action ◽  
Teen Films ◽  
Love Song ◽  
Narrative Functions ◽  
Risky Business

From Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear in Risky Business (1983) to John Cusack blasting a love song on his boombox below his girlfriend’s bedroom window in Say Anything . . . (1989), characters “breaking into soundtrack” are some of the most iconic moments in teen films of the 1980s. This essay examines these sequences as a discrete mode of musical performance with aesthetic conventions and narrative functions that are largely consistent throughout the decade. The author argues that teen characters tend to break into soundtrack at strategic moments in the narrative in order to try out potential identities and to express strong, often subversive feelings without negative consequences. These performances allow teens to test the waters without committing to a course of action. That the music is all commercially available popular music only highlights the fact that these are appropriated, rather than spontaneous, songs that can be tried on like a new outfit. Thus, in these films, teens break into soundtrack in order to try out different voices as they search to find their own.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document