Teen Movies of the 1980s Flashcards
Name three crisis’ that the United States was facing as the 1980s began?
American hostages were being held in Iran. Inflation was going up by double digits each year, unemployment was rising to nearly ten percent by 1982; the prime lending rate was closing in on twenty percent. The disco era was being replaced with a growing realization of class struggle.
Many Hollywood studio films of the early 1980’s demonstrated a contempt for what?
Wealth
Name one of the films mentioned in the early part of the reading that “vilified” upper-class aspirations while vindicating those of the working-class.
Ordinary People (1980)
What is the “cause” that Jim Stark’s character in Rebel Without A Cause is searching for?
‘Honesty and decency in a hypocritical world.’
While the studio-driven film industry was exploring issues finding teens “vulnerable to the tyranny of wealth,” it was also doing what toward its own service?
Exploiting the disposable incomes of youth.
What Shakespearian work created the archetype for class-clash teen romances?
Romeo and Juliet
What “treacherous mythology” does the storyline of the film Pretty in Pink preserve?
Young women will reject the good guy to go with the guy that has money.
According to critic Roger Ebert, Heathers is a movie about what teenage issues?
Peer pressure in high school, teenage suicide, and the harmfulness of cliques.
Porky’s is a co-production originating from which two countries?
Canada and America
According to critic Roger Ebert, director Reginald Hudlin is compared to what accomplished filmmaker who refused to relate his characters to those of white society?
Spike Lee
Teen Movie Themes
peer pressure: bullying, alienation, personality formation, fitting in;
sexual exploration: sexual identity, getting laid;
rebellion against authority: drinking, partying, slacking
