The Undercurrents of Adolescence - Tracking Modern Adolescence & Delinquency Through Classic Cinema by Bret Stephenson

Imagine a great movie about adolescence like Rebel Without a Cause or The Breakfast Club with a written commentary rather than a DVD audio one. For years I have used movies about teens to learn and grow from. As a movie fan, and as I became more entrenched in the world of teenagers, I found myself looking at teen movies in a couple different ways. With each new teen film, I would just turn off my brain and enjoy the movie. But then I found myself watching the same movie again with my ‘adolescent filters’ on and a legal pad & pen for keeping notes. I saw countless useful pieces in almost every movie, from hedonistic party-driven films like Dazed and Confused to true-life tearjerkers like Freedom Writers. Classics like West Side Story and American Graffiti or musicals like Footloose, all gave me great material to use in helping parents and other adults involved with teens a venue to learn from. While researching for my first book, From Boys to Men: Spiritual Rites of Passage in an Indulgent Age, I learned of a somewhat unknown spike of delinquent and adolescent discontent in the 1950s. Beginning with Catcher in the Rye in 1951, through James Dean’s brilliance and into West Side Story, the undercurrent of teen problems was coming to the surface. The youth of the 50s were children of two wars, and not buying into the post-WWII I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best vision of America. The section in my book about this period and films became one of the most popular components of my workshops. When on-line streaming and rentals, as well as inexpensive movie sales arrived, I realized I could finally write a book where readers could watch the film and read my comments on adolescence. By deeply paraphrasing each movie, even people who could not view each of the ten classic films I use in Undercurrents could learn a lot about teens and adolescence.