Teen Movie Research Articles

Le teen film, c'est ma culture : Céline Sciamma and the American Teen Movie

ABSTRACT: On the release of Naissance des pieuvres ( Water Lilies , 2007), director and screenwriter Céline Sciamma likened her tale of female sexual awakening to American sex quest romp American Pie (Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, 1999). With Bande de filles ( Girlhood , 2014), Sciamma continues her engagement with le teen film . I examine the various ways in which Sciamma's films invoke elements of the American teen movie. I argue that Sciamma's films call to be read alongside and as examples of the transnational teen movie, thus decoupling the category from its predominant association with American cinema.

Teen movies: A century of American youth (second edition) By TimothyShary, New York: Wallflower. 2023. pp. 170. ISBN: 978‐0‐231‐20621‐1

Teen movies: A century of American youth (second edition) By TimothyShary, New York: Wallflower. 2023. pp. 170. ISBN: 978‐0‐231‐20621‐1

Teen Movies: A Century of American Youth. TimothyShary. New York: Wallflower Press, 2023. 184 pp. $22.00 paper.

Teen Movies: A Century of American Youth. TimothyShary. New York: Wallflower Press, 2023. 184 pp. $22.00 paper.

Expansion and Paraphrase Strategies of Slang Words in Teen Movies: A Translation Analysis

Abstract. The aims of this study are to identify the types of slang word formation using Yule’s (2019) theory and to investigate the subtitling strategies of expansion and paraphrase employed by translators in translating slang words using Gottlieb’s (1992) theory. The data used in this research are slang words in English subtitles and their Indonesian translations in the movie Work It, Moxie, and He's All That. Moreover, the researchers used the descriptive qualitative method. As a result, the researchers found that there were 80 data found from the three movies. The researchers found that only 6 word-formations were identified in the three movie subtitles. The word formations were coinage, compounding, clipping, derivation, conversion, and multiple processes. Furthermore, the researchers found that there were only 3 data from the three movies that applied the expansion strategy. Meanwhile, there were 77 data from the three movies that applied the paraphrase strategy. The results indicate that the paraphrase strategy is frequently employed because most of the slang words used in movies is required generalization, modification, and alteration to be understood by the target audience.Keywords: expansion strategy; paraphrase strategy; slang; subtitling strategy; word formationAbstrak. Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk mengidentifikasi jenis-jenis pembentukan kata slang menggunakan teori Yule (2019) dan untuk menyelidiki strategi takarir, yaitu strategi expansi dan parafrasa yang digunakan oleh penerjemah dalam menerjemahkan kata-kata slang menggunakan teori Gottlieb (1992). Data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah kata-kata slang dalam takarir bahasa Inggris dan terjemahan bahasa Indonesianya dalam film Work It, Moxie, dan He's All That. Selain itu, peneliti menggunakan metode deskriptif kualitatif. Hasilnya, peneliti menemukan ada 80 data yang ditemukan dari ketiga film tersebut. Peneliti menemukan bahwa hanya 6 pembentukan kata yang diidentifikasi dalam tiga film. Pembentukan kata tersebut yaitu coinage, compounding, clipping, derivation, conversion, dan multiple processes. Selanjutnya peneliti menemukan bahwa hanya ada 3 data dari ketiga film yang menerapkan strategi ekspansi. Sementara itu, terdapat 77 data dari tiga film yang menerapkan strategi parafrasa. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa strategi parafrasa sering digunakan karena kebanyakan kata slang yang digunakan dalam film memerlukan generalisasi, modifikasi, dan perubahan agar dapat dipahami oleh khalayak sasaran.Kata kunci: pembentukan kata; slang; strategi ekspansi; strategi parafrasa; strategi subtitling

The Depiction of the Loser Teenager in the Film and Television Adaptations of John Green’s Young Adult Novels

In the last few decades, the teen movie genre has left behind the genre of light comedies or farce comedies and deals with more substantial and fundamental issues concerning teenagers and young adults. In the literary universe of John Green, which has been the basis and source of inspiration for the corresponding film and television adaptations, the form of the good-natured and well-intentioned loser teenager dominates. The loser teenager watches with longing and anxiety the lives of his popular peers, longing to be given a chance to join their company. when this finally happens, he finds out that things are not always as they seem and the values that decorate his universe are not as meaningless as he initially thought. The heroes in Green's books possess culture, dreams and ambitions, and an already complete personal universe that most of their popular peers lack, lost in the abyss of adolescence, its changes, and dilemmas. their depiction in the mass entertainment media of film and television reflects also social changes in teen and school culture, s well as the broadening of personal outlooks and expectations of teenagers themselves. in the recent article, we are going to analyse the type of loser geek/nerd teenager hero in the film and television adaptations of his young adult novel Paper Towns (2015) and Looking for Alaska (2019).

Parents' involvement on teen's movie consumption in the pandemic era

Abstract Watching movies at home through movie applications now has become a trend in this pandemic era. Adolescents who have online learning at home are forced to entertain themselves with indoor activities; spending more time watching movies is one example. As one of the online movie platforms, Netflix has gained 204 million subscribers in January 2021, following Amazon Prime with 150 million subscribers. This situation becomes a concern where adolescents seemingly have more freedom and access to select movies without parents' awareness. Adolescents are given trust in their competence to be conscious, critical, and analyse their content despite their age. This research's objects were to acknowledge how adolescents gain access to online movies despite the television content rating system and their parents' involvement in the adolescents' selection of movies. The research was conducted using a qualitative method with a case study approach. Informants were adolescents in the range of 11-14 years old and some parents. Results showed that most adolescents gained access to movies through online applications, namely Netflix, YouTube, Telegram, and illegal websites. These adolescents gained this information from friends and the TikTok application. Regarding the parents' involvement, most adolescents claimed that their parents did not contribute to their selection of movies, seemingly ignorant, and some parents even did not know what their children watch and do in their bedrooms. However, a few of them stated that their parents contributed to their selection of movies but sometimes gave adolescents some permission to watch unsuitable movies based on the television content rating system.
 
 

AFRICAN STEREOTYPES IN AMERICAN TEEN MOVIE MEAN GIRLS

<p>Movie has emerged to be a powerful device in shaping perspectives of culture, society and history. The power of visual stimulation can be manifested and exploited politically, socially and economically. The movie Mean Girls, which premiered in the United States in 2004 actualized the racial stereotypes lobbed at Africans, but with a soft ignorance. The present study aims to observe African stereotypes in American teen movie Mean Girl. This study employed qualitative descriptive method, which is a method of research that attempt to describe and interpret the objects in accordance with reality. The data of this study were collected from scenes and excerpts which contained African stereotypes based on its scripts. The study draws on Doh’s (2009) Stereotyping Africa: surprising answers to surprising questions and February (2019) Mind your colour: The “coloured” stereotype in South African literature. Findings have shown that the African stereotypes are black-skin coloured, wild and savage, financially poor, doing voodoo, and having impolite attitude. These stereotypes indicate the movie Mean Girls tends to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Africans more than the positive ones.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: <strong>African stereotype; American teen movie; Mean Girls’s movie</strong></p><p><em> </em></p>

Exposing Flaws of Affirmative Consent through Contemporary American Teen Films

The discursive shift during the twenty-first century from “no means no” to “yes means yes” clearly had an impact on contemporary American teen films. While teen films of the 1970s and 1980s often epitomized rape culture, teen films of the 2010s and later adopted consent culture actively. Such films now routinely highlight how obtaining a girl’s “yes” is equally important to respecting her “no.” However, the framework of affirmative consent is not without its flaws. In this article, I highlight how recent teen movies expose some of these shortcomings, in particular how affirmative consent remains a highly gendered discourse that prioritizes verbal consent over desire.

Screening Youth, Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema ed. by Romain Chareyron and Gilles Viennot

Reviewed by: Screening Youth, Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema ed. by Romain Chareyron and Gilles Viennot Peadar Kearney Romain Chareyron and Gilles Viennot, eds. Screening Youth, Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. Pp. 250. Screening Youth, Contemporary French and Francophone Cinema is an innovative text that gathers together diverse approaches to the notion of youth in French-language cinema. Editors Romain Chareyron and Gilles Viennot inform us that the desire to produce the collection stemmed from the realization that while youth has been a central interest of Francophone film, this focus has not yet been matched by academic studies. Most debates concerning the 'teen movie' as genre find their roots in studies of Rebel Without a Cause (Nicolas Ray, 1956). Although the 'teen movie' may be less established in the Francophone world than it is in the Anglosphere, one can think of many French-language screen productions where young people are at the fore. The collection is therefore very much at the intersection of French studies and film studies. There are three different types of chapters in Screening Youth: theory-based, filmmaker-centered, and thematic comparison. The theory-based chapters are understandably placed near the beginning of the book in order to sketch out a framework for what is to follow. The majority of chapters address the notion of youth across the work of one filmmaker. However, a number of theme-based chapters examine the notion of youth across the work of multiple directors, for example, comparing the notion of queer bodies in the Maghreb and France or representations of gender and the banlieue. The collection retains its cohesion by being grouped through its common over-arching thematic and notional concerns. Gemma Edney's theorization of what may interest us in terms of the 'youth movie' in the French-speaking context is of particular interest here, as she asks if there is a French equivalent of the 'teen movie,' an established genre of the American mainstream. Fiona Handyside's analysis adds depth and fresh perspective to Mia Hansen-Løve's films, while Elizabeth Geary Keoghan's study of Bruno Dumont's P'tit Quinquin (2014) allows us to reconsider many of the unanswered questions of the memorable mini-series. Walter S. Temple's chapter mixes the study of film with spectator reaction interviews in order to articulate the extent to which the films being studied may be considered authentic. With these examples alone, we can see that the collection successfully covers a broad range of genres and styles, even going slightly beyond the limits of cinema itself. Spanning 15 chapters, 13 of these being case studies, the collection's scope is suitably broad in covering an array of styles and artistic registers. Remaining predominantly with the extreme contemporary enhances the collection's cohesion, as few of the films studied date before 2000. There is potential for more work to develop the initial ideas and apply them elsewhere; for example, one could easily imagine another collection that concentrates on Quebec or Belgium, with an abundance to say about the notion of youth in films of Xavier Dolan or the Dardenne brothers. Comparative studies of different film cultures would surely provide further insight. Such inspiration is a testament to the collection's success. [End Page 152] Peadar Kearney Maynooth University Copyright © 2020 L'Esprit Créateur

Catching Katniss : generation K and the Evolution of the Teen Movie Genre

The aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of teen female characters during what Henry Jenkins called the era of convergence culture. As the ideal result of the interaction between production and consumption practices, the teen movie has always been one of the most prolific and profitable genres since its origin. But in order to maintain its commercial potential, such genre went through several changes and adjustments due to social and cultural changes and to market needs. Thus, the portrayal of adolescent characters in teen movies has equally changed through the decades, in order to appeal an always shifting audience. In this sense, the character of Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games series seems to be particularly relevant because she simultaneously both conforms and resists to the traditional stereotypes about the representation of female adolescents on screen. Committing to the dominant cinematic trends of our time, Katniss updates the archetype of Carol Clover’s “final girl” and offers an innovative type of teen female character. She has risen to the status of feminist icon of the new millennium, opposite to the female protagonist of another contemporary successful franchise, Bella Swann from the Twilight saga, whose behaviors are considered cultural regressive and affirmative of patriarchal values. Furthermore, the exceptional and enduring success of The Hunger Games turned this major franchise into a cultural event and contributed to transform Katniss into the emblem of what the economist Noreena Hertz named Generation K, the demographic born between 1995 and 2002 in western society. At the same time, the centrality of her character implies a renegotiation of the role of the teen male hero of the saga, Peeta Mellark. As a matter of fact, while Katniss is shown fighting or hunting in the forest, Peeta is often portrayed as a victim to be rescued. Hanging in the balance between public and private, active and passive, masculine and feminine, paternal and maternal, Katniss deconstructs the stereotypical system of representation of adolescents in teen movies. Her character stresses Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection as “whatever disturbs identity, system, order; what does not respect borders, positions, rules; the in-between, the ambiguous”. And her ambiguity embodies that state of “in-between-ness”, following Catherine Driscoll’s definition, which coincides both with the contemporary representation of adolescence on screen and with the evolution of the teen movie genre.

Postfeminist (Dis)Entanglements: Transgression and Conformism in Contemporary Italian Teen Movies

According to film historian Giampiero Brunetta, the success of Luca Lucini’s Tre metri sopra il cielo (Three Steps Over Heaven, 2004) and Fabio Brizzi’s Notte prima degli esami (Night Before the Exams, 2006) is emblematic of the current “crisis” of Italian cinema. The premise of Brunetta’s negative comments are primarily aesthetics (bad script, bad direction), while other reviewers have blamed the same films for unrealistic portrayals of Italian teenagers, and expressed their concerns about the moral and social influence that such mis-representations might have on the young spectators. My essay begins from these negative accounts to suggest an alternative reading of contemporary Italian teen movies, by which I mean popular fictions that both represent teenagers and market teenage audiences. These movies constitute a “filone” (cycle) on the basis of similarities in plots and characters, narratives formulas, choice of actors and actresses, and commercial strategies. At the core of the successful cycle of teen films, I argue, there are the tropes of freedom and choice, and the concepts of agency and individualization. These ideas are fundamental to the construction of the neo-liberal subject, rather than some deviant example of social and moral behaviors, and thus worth of our attention. Furthermore, sexuality and the sexualization of both the male and the female bodies are central discourses to the film narratives and visual strategies, which inform a configuration of gender/sex system whose features have been widely discussed by scholars in British and American cultural and film studies, under the label of “postfeminism.” In this essay, films such as Federico Moccia’s Amore 14 (2009) will be taken as examples to suggest a taxonomy of postfeminist female characters, in their various declinations. I will contextualize contemporary Italian productions in relation to critical texts on postfeminism such as Angela McRobbie’s The Aftermath of Feminism, and studies on female-oriented cycles such as Hilary Radner on American girly films. My intention is to shed light on both the specificities of the Italian context and the continuities across national borders, in a globalized and transnational film industry.

Gertie’s Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley

Reviewed by: Gertie’s Leap to Greatness by Kate Beasley Elizabeth Bush Beasley, Kate Gertie’s Leap to Greatness; illus. by Jillian Tamaki. Farrar, 2016 [256p] ISBN 978-0-374-30261-0 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 3-5 Mary Sue Spivey’s arrival in Ms. Simms’ fifth-grade class has disturbed the social order in general and Gertie Foy’s current life mission in particular. Gertie has decided to up her academic game, become the star student of the fifth grade, and thus send the mother who abandoned Gertie years ago a final stinging message that she’s missing out on one fabulous daughter. Mary Sue, however, promptly insinuates herself into that star student slot, inching past hardworking Gertie on assignments and tests. The new girl is sly and catty, not above dropping her father’s career as a movie producer into conversations, mentioning her own close acquaintance with a teen movie star, and slipping effortlessly into alpha mode among her classmates. Things get worse when the slimy newcomer uses her mother’s credentials as an environmental lobbyist to organize an anti-oil-drilling campaign, a harsh slap at Gertie, whose father works on a gulf rig off the Alabama coast. Gertie’s now battling on too many fronts, and although the struggle for her mother’s recognition doesn’t play out the way she hoped, she does come away with a new appreciation for the family she has, an understanding of how teachers’ brains work, and grudging but heartfelt insight into what makes the class tyrant tick. Tamaki’s black and white illustrations focus on the humorous side of Gertie’s drama queen antics, while Beasley balances the humor of classroom situation comedy with raw realism about how much change smarts for kids entering their double digits, how herculean effort sometimes comes up short, and how lonely and utterly normal it is to feel passed over. Copyright © 2016 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

More than an Indian teen shrew: Postcolonialism and feminism in Isi Life Mein

This essay explores a Bollywood movie entitled Isi Life Mein (dir. Vidhi Kasliwal, 2010), which exploits The Taming of the Shrew as a play-within-the-film for the first time in Bollywood, and even as an intertext on some occasions. Although apparently a mere teen movie, this article sheds light on the importance of the Indian location, which invites postcolonial readings of the text. From a postcolonial perspective, it is the aim of this essay to rethink how The Taming of the Shrew is caught up and shaped in another culture. The film experiments with, and offers a parody of Shakespeare and his text, to the extent that they are both “reborn.” The movie also reflects on Indian modernity characterized by endless migration and diaspora. This essay equally explores the significance of using The Taming of the Shrew, since cultural debates concerning gender relations are involved. The movie adds to the multiple cultural products that rewrite the play’s ending. One of Isi Life Mein’s main attractions lies in its ability to challenge patriarchy explicitly. Interestingly, postcolonialism and feminism are intertwined in Isi Life Mein, providing new understandings of the Shrew and, ultimately, the Bard.

Motherhood in crisis in Lucrecia Martel’s Salta Trilogy

This article concerns the complex negotiation of ageing and femininity in Amy Heckerling’s two most recent films: I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007) and Vamps (2012). These films are positioned as part of the contemporary postfeminist media culture, (Gill, 2007) noting the scrutiny received by the ageing female body, and its changing status under the prevailing cultural norms of femininity. However, Heckerling’s films also demonstrate a sense of play with these gender norms, and so calls to be read also in terms of Judith Butler’s theorisation of performativity (1990; 1993; 2004). This article contends that Heckerling’s representation of liminality and indeterminacy—in her teen movies, and later work alike—provides a way for women to carve out an autonomous identity that humorously demonstrates the absurdity of mediatised constructions of femininity. Her work, then, is more complex than has hitherto been acknowledged, and the piece concludes by calling for the director and screenwriter to be repositioned as a significant female voice in 21st century screen media.

Rebel Girls and Singing Boys: Performing Music and Gender in the Teen Movie

Midway through the 1986 teen movie Pretty in Pink comes a strikingly memorable scene. The film's main character, Andie (Molly Ringwald), sits nonchalantly in the local record store where she works. Adorned with posters of mid-1980s post-punk groups like New Order and The Smiths, the store represents Andie's strong alternative music identity. In this particular scene, however, Andie's boss places a recording of Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness on the turntable, instantly transforming the mood. From out of nowhere, Andie's best friend, the overly-dramatic Duckie (Jon Cryer), bursts into the store and for the next two minutes proceeds to lip sync, dance, and gyrate his way through the climactic second half of Redding's 1966 soul classic. It is an enraptured, exuberant performance, almost as if he is physically possessed by the music. Andie, the object of Duckie's affections, however, is clearly unimpressed. Soon after his musical display, the deflated Duckie sadly learns that Andie's romantic longings lie elsewhere. His thinly masked musical cry for affection and tenderness has been in vain. As unique and unforgettable as this scene is, the gendered dichotomy that it presents between females as musical connoisseurs and males as emotional performers is far from rare within the teen movie genre of the mid-1980s to early 2000s. From Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) to 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) and Juno (2007), again and again we see female characters positioned as social outsiders via their devotion to alternative musical tastes. Likewise, in films as varied as American Pie (1999), She's All That (1999) and Napoleon Dynamite (2004), teenage boys repeatedly assume the roles of dynamic performers. By breaking out into song, and often dance, adolescent males attempt to overcome social challenges. These recurring tropes raise important questions about the teen movie genre and its use of popular music. How and why does the teen movie divide its musical scores along gendered lines? What do these musical differences tell us about the contrast between female and male adolescence? What is the significance of the Rebel Girl within the history of the teen movie, (2) and how are we to interpret the teen boy who bursts into song onscreen? My goal in this article is to dig more deeply into these questions by viewing the teen movie's soundtrack through the lenses of gender identity, musical genre, and the cinematic conventions of popular song scoring. As a coming of age film, the teen movie deals specifically with the gendered rites of passage that mark the symbolic transition from adolescence to adulthood. Music in these films can thus help underscore a character's social transformation. Regardless of how the music guides our understanding of these characters, popular song functions differently for boys than for girls. If we commonly find boys performing their gender in spontaneous moments of public music spectacle--what I call a form of karaoke masculinity--girls are more likely to maintain a consistent outsider musical identity. A female character like the rebel girl is granted a stability through her musical connoisseurship, only to meet with various threats and tests as she navigates her way through the teenager's turbulent social world. I begin this exploration by presenting a brief historical overview of the teen movie genre's birth in the mid-1950s and its musical scoring practices. From there I describe the changes that occurred in the early 1980s which ultimately served to redefine the teen movie. Specifically, this new wave of teen movies began to portray adolescence in a way that resembles anthropologist Victor Turner's description of the liminal journey, a socially defined process marked by rites of passage towards adulthood. Director and producer John Hughes is often credited with popularizing this narrative story structure, and from his very first teen movie feature, Sixteen Candles (1984), he deployed music as a way of enhancing character development, particularly along lines of gender, age, taste, and performance. …

‘Even if you aren’t Swedish, even if you aren’t lesbian’: Show Me Love in Queer American Context

Concentrating on the film's reception in the United States, this article analyses _Fucking Åmål_ (_Show Me Love_, 1998) according to its status as a foreign film . The film's two main themes, lesbian love story and small-town boredom, are explored, as well as the film 's connection to the genres of romantic comedy and the American teen movie. Applying queer theory I assert that the lesbian theme is central to _Show Me Love_, where the narrative's acknowledgement and acceptance of the main characters' queer identity transcends traditional gender roles and drives the transformation of heteronormative space and community into queer space and community. The tendency of critics to downplay or disregard the lesbian theme while emphasizing the film's representation of small-town boredom and focusing on the film's coming-of-age story ignores the radical transformative power of queer acceptance and acknowledgement in general discourse. In my analysis I question the ethical and societal consequences of such readings, exploring the discourse surrounding _Show Me Love_ since its release in the United States and asking why it matters to read _Show Me Love_ as the lesbian representation it truly is.

Ditched: A Love Story (review)

Reviewed by: Ditched: A Love Story Karen Coats Mellom, Robin . Ditched: A Love Story. Hyperion, 2012. 275p. ISBN 978-1-4231-4338-3 $16.99 R Gr. 7-10. Reformed serial-kisser Justina has preserved her pucker for eight months for a shot at Ian, the prom date of her dreams. The trouble is, she's not sure whether he sees her as more than just a friend; they know all of each other's foibles (or they would, if he had any), but he's never made any romantic overtures that she registers as such. Prom begins with an iridescent thrift-store dress worn semi-ironically and ends with Justina bedraggled and alone in a roadside ditch, trying to piece together what became of the night that started off with so much promise. She stumbles to a convenience store where she finds a couple of older women with sympathetic ears and pours out her tale of woe, working her way through the trail of stains and other wardrobe malfunctions that function as a map of the night's mixed signals and missed encounters, each more zany than the last. Far-fetched and over the top? Oh, yeah. Predictable ending? Like an '80s teen movie, complete with a character there to bear wistful witness to the triumph of young love. Irresistible? Fortunately, that too. A night on the couch with this one might just prove the cure for the bad-school-dance blues. Copyright © 2012 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Rebel with a Cause : Teen Movies in the 1980s

Rebel with a Cause : Teen Movies in the 1980s

Choker (review)

Reviewed by: Choker Kate Quealy-Gainer Woods, Elizabeth . Choker. Simon, 2011. [240p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-1233-0 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-1235-4 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8-12. When the best friend she hasn’t seen in seven years suddenly shows up in her bedroom asking to hide out for a while, Cara is simply too grateful to be suspicious; her junior year has been less than pleasant, and since she earned the nickname “Choker” in an embarrassing cafeteria incident, things have gone from bad to worse. With Zoe around, however, Cara has someone who will give her the support and encouragement to reinvent herself. One quick makeover later, Cara is oozing coolness and attracting the likes of Ethan Gray, the king of the social scene; unfortunately, things are not going so well for the popular girls, as one meets an untimely death and another is reported missing. When Ethan is wrongly accused in the girl’s disappearance, Cara realizes that Zoe’s recent bizarre behavior may hold a few clues, but when she confronts her friend, she gets more than she bargained for. Though the characters here are a parade out of any Hollywood teen movie—the snotty queen bee, her clueless but charming boyfriend, the humiliated nerd, etc.—and the plot [End Page 305] reads like a standard scary story, the formula still works, and the result is a wellpaced psychological thriller perfect for a dark and stormy night. Zoe is a deliciously creepy villain, and her physical deterioration from beautiful friend to corpse-like wraith takes the tone of the book from disturbing to downright malevolent. While the twist at the end may take a few readers by surprise (think Fight Club but with a teenaged girl), savvy teens will recognize the signs shortly after Zoe make her initial appearance. Though far from innovative, this account of high-school horrors is certainly sinister enough to satisfy fans of Scream and the like. [End Page 306] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Older Characters in Teen Movies from 1980–2006

Although children as young as age three have already begun to manifest negative stereotypes toward older adults, attitudes toward older adults likely crystallize during late childhood and adolescence and become entrenched by the time an individual reaches young adulthood. Studies have shown that young people view older people in general as ineffective, dependent, lonely, poor, angry, overly wrinkled, ugly, dirty, disabled, and less physically active and healthy than younger adults. Because today's children and adolescents have less contact with older people than in past decades, it is likely that some young people get most of their information about older people and aging from the media. This is all the more likely during the teen years, when vulnerable adolescents purposely seek out certain media to form their identity. This content analysis examined the 60 most popular teen movies from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s to determine how older people are portrayed. Older people were greatly underrepresented, according to their numbers in the actual U.S. population, making up only 7% of the total number of characters in teen movies. Older people were marginalized in terms of plot and were likely to be featured only as background characters. Of older characters, 60% were portrayed stereotypically, and only 45% of the older characters were portrayed in a positive manner. Also, 32% of older characters were portrayed in a negative manner, and one-fifth of older characters were portrayed only with negative characteristics. The stereotypes that adolescents today hold toward older people, including the belief that they are bad drivers, are angry most of the time, and are senile, were reflected in older character portrayals in these popular teen films. Given the negative representations of older people that adolescents are exposed to in their childhood and during the teen years, it is no wonder that they express negative attitudes toward older people. After years of exposure to media that negatively depict older adults, adolescents have been cultivated to stereotype older people. This has the potential to influence the quality of their interactions with older people, and also influence the way they come to view the prospect of getting old.