Review by Booklist Review
Handy, author of Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult (2017) and several picture books, again addresses an older demographic with this entertaining treatise on the evolving depiction of the American teenager in film. He pairs historical events and cultural shifts with iconic teen films to provide context, identify recurring themes, and illustrate cyclical movements. His analysis profiles screenwriters and directors, offers plot summaries, and theorizes about a movie's wider impact. Handy proposes that film studios were pioneers in recognizing the emerging teenage market, with its discrete tastes and disposable income. Mickey Rooney's recurring role as Andy Hardy in the 1940s first reflected evidence of the genre's wider appeal, Handy shows, leading to portrayals of adolescence vacillating between nostalgic idealization and demonization. For each decade, Handy points out common plot metaphors depicting the gauntlet of adolescence, with its hierarchies, high drama, rebellion, and drive for self-individualization. Handy's adoration of the art of moviemaking is evident in every paragraph. This insightful, informative, and witty guide will pique the interest of any aspiring cinephile.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This piercing analysis from journalist and humorist Handy (Wild Things) surveys how teen films throughout the decades have reflected adolescents' shifting concerns and place in society. He suggests that teens "were seen less as their own species than as not-quite adults" well into the 1930s and '40s, as exemplified by Mickey Rooney's Andy Hardy films, which followed the quaint tribulations of the teen protagonist but were aimed as much at parents as kids. The notion of the teenager as a distinct archetype with their own culture emerged alongside booming high school attendance rates spurred by New Deal--era compulsory education laws. This shift inspired such postwar movies as Rebel Without a Cause, which dramatized anxieties around the growing gulf between parents and their emboldened children. Handy also traces shifting attitudes around adolescent sexuality, discussing how the Beach Party movies of the 1960s showed "lots of flesh but no sex" and how Fast Times at Ridgemont High reflected growing levels of sex positivity across the 1970s. Elsewhere, Handy examines how Mean Girls arose out of a moral panic around female bullying and how the Hunger Games franchise dramatized teen defiance. The smart exegesis provides both a doting love letter to teen films and a fascinating history of the teen's place in society. This entertains. Agent: Jennifer Joel, CAA. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A cultural history of teen movies--and, by extension, the American teenager. Early in his second adult nonfiction book, Handy (Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children's Literature as an Adult, 2017) notes that "teenager" is a largely social construction. It was only in the 1930s that the demographic became more than just young Americans unprotected by labor laws and instead a cohort with spending money, ambition, and an ability to shape the zeitgeist. Early entries in the teen-film field were tame and shaped by moral uprightness, particularly Mickey Rooney'sAndy Hardy films, where a first kiss was a gee-willikers event. (Handy has good fun exploring how Rooney's off-screen antics countered his chaste screen persona.) But on-screen transgression soon became the order of the day, be it through James Dean inRebel Without a Cause, no-adults-allowed beach-party flicks, Sean Penn's stoner antihero inFast Times at Ridgemont High, John Hughes' defiant middle-class teens, up through Katniss Everdeen's defiant postapocalyptic herodom in theHunger Games films. Handy smartly balances scratching the target reader's nostalgic itch for details on the making of films likeThe Breakfast Club while also exploring how each iteration of the genre reflects a generation's concerns.American Graffiti sublimated '70s post-Watergate stress;Mean Girls underscored early-oughts status anxiety;Twilight was canny counterprogramming for a generation overwhelmed by sex and drugs. Inevitably, given the genre's range, Handy misses a lot: Classics likeWest Side Story andHeathers are mentioned only glancingly, horror is skipped, and indie gems likePump Up the Volume are absent. One ungainly chapter crams together '90s filmsBoyz n the Hood,Clueless, andKids. Yet the book is a well-informed conversation starter that takes an often-maligned genre seriously. Good, smart, occasionally naughty adolescent fun. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
