Generation Multiplex
The Image of Youth in American Cinema since 1980
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- US$29.99
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- US$29.99
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Generation Multiplex (2002) was the first comprehensive study of the representation of teenagers in American cinema since David Considine’s Cinema of Adolescence in 1985. This updated and expanded edition reaffirms the idea that films about youth constitute a legitimate genre worthy of study on its own terms. Identifying four distinct subgenres—school, delinquency, horror, and romance—Timothy Shary explores hundreds of representative films while offering in-depth discussion of movies that constitute key moments in the genre, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Breakfast Club, Say Anything . . . , Boyz N the Hood, Scream, American Pie, Napoleon Dynamite, Superbad, The Twilight Saga, and The Hunger Games. Analyzing developments in teen films since 2002, Shary covers such topics as the increasing availability of movies on demand, which has given teens greater access to both popular and lesser-seen films; the recent dominance of supernatural and fantasy films as a category within the genre; and how the ongoing commodification of teen images in media affects real-life issues such as school bullying, athletic development, sexual identity, and teenage pregnancy.
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In this comprehensive academic work, film scholar Shary analyzes hundreds of "youth films" made between 1980 and 2001 to detail how young people are represented "within a codified system... ... certain subgenres and character types." He is particularly insightful in his breakdown of film genres (e.g., school-based, delinquent youth-centered, horror, science, sex) and on subgenre trends, such as changes in youth sex films since the prevalence of AIDS and more open attitudes toward teenage homosexuality. Appropriately, Shary criticizes some film reviewers for their condescending attitude toward teen films. But his constant reminders of how hard it is for him to remain objective doing research that "will always be imbued with the problematics of her or his personal ideological positions" are tiresome, as most readers accept this condition as the cost of reading another person's writing; seeking complete objectivity in a humanistic study seems misplaced. Still, Shary's conclusions raise thought-provoking questions, among them: what is the "elitist" cinema? and who are the "we" who "tell youth who they are"? The in-depth analysis and embrace of all types of teen movies, from Porky's (1981) to Save the Last Dance(2001), make this is a useful book, albeit one directed toward Shary's fellow academics.
