The Kids Aren't Alright

Granted, it's been quite a while since Filmbrain had "teen" attached to his age. When he turned twenty, an actor was in the White House, Wham! had the number one song in the country, and the highest grossing film was about a teenager whose biggest concern was making sure his parents kissed in 1955. In fact, the only problems cinematic teenagers faced were surviving weekend detention, trying to win the heart of the French exchange student, and going on treasure hunts with Corey Feldman. Things have changed tremendously, as Filmbrain noticed while reflecting on the thirty-plus films he saw at the Berlinale. In his Critics Notebook piece on Sundance in the New York Times, A.O. Scott pointed out the overwhelming number of films that dealt with troubled teens in one form or another. "A festival devoted to nurturing young filmmakers can be expected to have its share of coming-of-age stories and explorations of adolescent angst, but an alien whose space ship happened to land in Park City last week might have concluded, from the evidence on screen, that the United States is populated mainly by high school students whose consuming interests are drugs, sex and killing themselves and each other." There was a similar trend at the Berlinale, though with one noticeable difference -- many of the European films found young people suffering at the hands of adults. Have things gotten so bad for the young 'uns? Is it really so hard to be a teenager/20-something these days? Or is it rather the result of a new (and young) breed of filmmakers/screenwriters who are only interested in writing about their lived experiences and worst fears? That may be the case, but not exclusively -- some of the films have screenwriters who left their youth behind ages ago. This is not meant to be an all-out condemnation of these films -- some of them were quite good, but the sheer numbers were such that when Filmbrain saw Sally Potter's Yes, he realized that it was one of the first films he saw at the festival that was strictly about adults. With nearly three-hundred films in the various festival programs (not to mention the additional five-hundred films shown at the marketplace) it was possible to navigate through the festival without hitting a youth-centric film, but hard to avoid if you saw the films in Competition. Though set during World War II and based on factual accounts, both Marc Rothemund's Sophie Scholl - The Final Days and Lajos Koltai's Fateless are portraits of life (and death) under the Nazi regime as seen through the eyes of young protagonists. There are the three troubled children of Peacock, the case of arrested development that is Thumbsucker, the almost-homeless and beaten young women of Ghosts, and the possible molestation victim of Accused. It was the same story in other areas of the festival. There were exploited child stars (Childstar), juvenile offenders with transsexual fathers (Transamerica), alienated, gun-worshiping pacifists (Dear Wendy), abused pregnant runaways (Mila From Mars), incest victims turning to patricide (Angel's Fall (Melegin Düsüsü)), and teens literally loved to death by a parent (Barrage). The selection of new German films that made up the Perspektive Detusches Kino contained an overwhelming number of films about the under-twenty-five crowd. There were the documentaries -- Janine F., about the suicide of a young Berlin artist back in 2002, and Was Lebst Du?, which follows the lives of three young migrants living in Cologne. The features ranged from the simple teenager-hates-life-in-small-town (Smile of the Monsterfish (Das Lächeln der Tiefseefische)), to tales of pro and anti Hitler youth (Edelweiss Pirates (Edelweisspiraten)), to the oft told story of the teenage boy who shows up at the doorstep of his deadbeat dad (Netto). Is the rationale behind all this strictly a question of demographics and dollars? Filmbrain isn't sure. While it's understandable that a young screenwriter will follow the old adage "write what you know", it's getting dangerously close to over-saturation. Still, that doesn't explain older screenwriters who choose to write about the trials and tribulations of the young. While it's fair to say that ever since Rebel Without a Cause youth have been at the forefront of a fair amount of popular cinema, it's only recently that we are seeing them portrayed either as victims of an insane adult world, or as self-hating, self-centered and self-destructive nihilists. But is being a member of generation-whatever really all that difficult, or are they simply whinging? Is the rise of youth-in-crisis cinema in both the American Indie and global film scenes simply the latest trend, or are there other forces at play? Filmbrain would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Comments

[telly]

This genre has been around forever; as far as the "shock value" and "tough issues"
go, things pretty much reached a peak in the seventies.

There certainly are a lot of them nowadays, though.

[cinetrix]

Nice "Better Off Dead" reference, but moreover, great lede.

[Filmbrain]

Wasn't the seventies more about self-exploration, breaking away, and rebelling rather than self-destruction and/or victimization? Sure, there were films like The Warriors, but that was exploiting a specific social fear at that time.

[dvd]

My two cents: I may be too young (but probably not) to suggest this, but I think there's a very definite divide between the troubled-youth films of yore and what we're being saturated with now; the obvious separative point would have be the suicide of Kurt Cobain. Prior to the artistic renaissance represented by Nirvana, was nihilism and self loathing ever such a major element of youth culture? Maybe it was, but certainly it was never so prominent as it was in the 90s, when heroin-chic became - well, chic. Whereas the rebellious teens of the 70s represented a defiance of cultural norms, that stance has evolved (or did evolve - I may be out of touch with things by this point) to a certain extreme - a defiance of the self - whereit became acceptable, and even desireable, to be depressed, upset and self destructive (I know this much from firsthand experience). The films that have been coming out since then have represented that, especially now that the 14 year olds who carved Cobain's names into their arm have graduated from film school. We also haver older filmmakers, like the ones you mentioned, who I imagine are approaching the material with the same will to shock and edify their own generation that Tom Wolfe had when he sat down to write 'I Am Charlotte Simmons.'

Of note: I think Donnie Darko is rather representative of this generational divide, taking place as it does before the rise of grunge rock - in particular, Drew Barrymore's plea to the principal of the school: "We're losing them to apathy." They sure did.

As far as the victimization goes - hasn't youth culture always, to an extent, blamed their parents (and the adult world in general), a la The 400 Blows? I think this leitmotif is now simply being taken to further extremes than it has in the past, where the cluelessness of parental figures has become a sort of villification.

[Filmbrain]

Excellent, excellent point DVD. Cobain died in 94, Larry Clark's Kids (one of the earliest films that falls into this category that I can think of) came out the year after. There's been no looking back ever since. I hadn't thought of that -- thanks.

Two other interesting points about the 70s which you bring up -- the spirit of rebellion and defiance, quite popular at that time, has all been quashed for today's youth. Rebellion has been co-opted by Madison Avenue -- to rebel these days is to conform. (Read Thomas Frank for much more on this subject.)

The second point is that in the 70s, kids sought to get away -- to travel, to explore their country, their world. Today, there seems to be far less of that of that going on. Many of these films are contained in these small towns -- very insular, and completely oblivious to the world outside of their personal hellhole. But then again, with the malling of America, why travel? One town looks just like another.

While I agree with you that the young have always blamed the old, if The 400 Blows was made today, Antoine Doinel would be a junkie who peddles his ass in Pigalle.

[Robert Nagle]

2 points, probably obvious.

1. Younger people are making more films these days, especially in independent filmmaking. (Declining costs, etc).
2. Demographics favor themes likely to appeal to younger audiences (both in terms of audience and funding). Definitely true for big studios, probably also true for smaller studios. But I suspect that if you looked at what comes to mainstream theatres, this trend toward youth will seem no more noticeable than usual.
3. cross-generational nostalgic stories always win out. Look at Happy Days, which grabbed children of the 70's and parents from the 50's who remembered what being a teen in the 50's was like. \

Actually, although films about angsty teens are pretty easy to do, it's hard to do a good film about children under 8. (white balloon, forbidden games, i was born but).

When you are swimming in teen angst/nonconformist teens in jeopardy films, you really start appreciate films with unusual characters. As I get older, I find that I write more about my youth, when in youth I tried to construct older characters. Parodoxical really.