Objects after Adolescence: Teen Film without Transition in Spring Breakers and The Bling Ring

Abstract

The generic conventions of teen films include coming-of-age or discovery-of-identity narratives that reinforce adolescence as a period of transition, with social conformity, in one guise or another, as their natural consequence. The production of a stable sense of identity, or agency, is key to these narratives, primarily borne of navigations of homosocial and heterosexual relationships. The history of teen film extends to the introduction of the concept of adolescence in the 1950s into American and, by extension, western culture (Driscoll, 2011, p. 9). From Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) to Puberty Blues (Bruce Beresford, 1981) to Thirteen (Catherine Hardwicke, 2003), narrative cinema has attempted to capture the intensive and transitory experience of adolescence.