Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie is the first academic monograph to consider the aesthetic and narrative potential of this highly popular, yet often overlooked, film genre. Reconsidering tropes such as the male juvenile delinquent figure, the makeover and the teen vampire, the book uses a series of detailed case studies of films like Rebel Without a Cause, Grease, Heathers and Twilight to explore the genre's relation to critical concepts of intersectionality, postfeminism and the posthuman. This book is an innovative overview of the Hollywood teen movie and its construction of teen identity.
Frances Smith is Teaching Fellow and Convenor of the Writing Lab at University College London.
List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Rethinking the Teen Movie Acting Up: Performing Masculine Delinquency in the Teen Movie Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978) Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1989) Making Over: Gender and Class at the High-School Prom Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986) She’s All That (Robert Iscove, 1999) Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004) Looking Back: Nostalgia, Postfeminism and the Teen Movie American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) Dirty Dancing (Emile Ardolino, 1987) Easy A (Will Gluck, 2010) Becoming Other: The Posthuman and the Teen Movie Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002) Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008) Chronicle (Josh Trank, 2012) Conclusion: Not Another Teen Movie? Bibliography Filmography
Smith’s work here is distinctively knowledgeable, and it will be highly valued among the evolving studies of youth cinema. The genre needs some rethinking, and Smith delivers in her analysis with cogent insights, solid research, and significant aesthetic perspectives that other surveys have elided.