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Torrent Description
When teenagers began hanging out at the mall in the early 1980s, the movies followed. Multiplex theaters offered teens a wide array of perspectives on the coming-of-age experience, as well as an escape into the alternative worlds of science fiction and horror. Youth films remained a popular and profitable genre through the 1990s, offering teens a place to reflect on their evolving identities from adolescence to adulthood while simultaneously shaping and maintaining those identities. Drawing examples from hundreds of popular and lesser-known youth-themed films, Timothy Shary here offers a comprehensive examination of the representation of teenagers in American cinema in the 1980s and 1990s. He focuses on five subgenres- school, delinquency, horror, science, and romance/sexuality - to explore how they represent teens and their concerns, how these representations change over time, and how youth movies both mirror and shape societal expectations and fears about teen identities and roles. He concludes that while some teen films continue to exploit various notions of youth sexuality and violence, most teen films of the past generation have shown an increasing diversity of adolescent experiences and have been sympathetic to the particular challenges that teens face.
Publisher: University of Texas Press; 1st edition (November 1, 2002) Language: English ISBN-10: 029277771X ISBN-13: 978-0292777712 Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly In this comprehensive academic work, film scholar Shary analyzes hundreds of "youth films" made between 1980 and 2001 to detail how young people are represented "within a codified system... [of]... certain subgenres and character types." He is particularly insightful in his breakdown of film genres (e.g., school-based, delinquent youth-centered, horror, science, sex) and on subgenre trends, such as changes in youth sex films since the prevalence of AIDS and more open attitudes toward teenage homosexuality. Appropriately, Shary criticizes some film reviewers for their condescending attitude toward teen films. But his constant reminders of how hard it is for him to remain objective doing research that "will always be imbued with the problematics of her or his personal ideological positions" are tiresome, as most readers accept this condition as the cost of reading another person's writing; seeking complete objectivity in a humanistic study seems misplaced. Still, Shary's conclusions raise thought-provoking questions, among them: what is the "elitist" cinema? and who are the "we" who "tell youth who they are"? The in-depth analysis and embrace of all types of teen movies, from Porky's (1981) to Save the Last Dance (2001), make this is a useful book, albeit one directed toward Shary's fellow academics. From Library Journal Shary (screen studies, Clark Univ.) takes an engaging and thorough look at American teen movies of the last 20 years. Instead of discussing celluloid and popular culture as corrupting influences on youth or providing a guide to them, Shary treats them as reflections of adolescent culture. But this is a book about films (e.g., John Hughes's The Breakfast Club and Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse), not the psychology of teenagers. He posits that the emergence of the multiplex cinemas in shopping malls led to a diversification of the teen/youth film, with a number of distinctive subgenres developing in response to the newly identifiable audience in the malls. He names five major subgenres-"Youth in School," "Delinquent Youth," "The Youth Horror Film," "Youth and Science," and "Youth in Love and Having Sex"-and devotes a chapter to each, referring to more than 900 films released between 1980 and 2001 to illustrate his points. Any film buff who grew up in the 1980s or 1990s will find this book fascinating, filled as it is with films we've either forgotten or are ashamed to discuss in our cinema studies classes. The book is aimed at an adult audience, though the language and diction are clear and not too weighted with jargon. YA librarians in particular may find the filmography and appended lists of best/worst films useful and the film analysis enlightening. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. Andrea Slonosky, Long Island Univ. Lib., Brooklyn, NY Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. 
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