Page 100 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

with identity, social status, and quest for meaning that pervades Ameri-
can culture. The films examined in the following pages reveal common
concerns about problems facing adolescents. In addition, however, these
films serve as a means by which the adult writers and producers could
safely explore their own uncertainties and fears related to the same de-
velopmental issues. Tracing the evolution of youth culture in popular film
provides insight into the increasingly precarious position of adulthood
in contemporary American society.
The critical attention devoted to films about young people since World
War II has a decidedly discontinuous and policy-oriented quality. Critics
and scholars have examined the “delinquent problem” films of the 1950s
and the “youth movement” movies of the 1960s, but there has been little
effort to make sense of the underlying themes connecting postwar youth
films, up to and including the more recent “post–baby-boom” movies
of the early 1980s. Youth films have been applauded and attacked for
what they suggest about young people’s values, desires, and behavior,
particularly sexual and criminal. While they have been used to measure
the social fevers of the young, youth films have rarely been taken seri-
ously as film. 35

Crisis in Adolescence and Adulthood: Continuity and Change
in the American Youth Film

In the mid-1950s a new genre emerged in American popular film: the
youth culture film. Films in this genre share a common thematic focus on
the struggle of young people to live honorably in a world corrupted by
adult hypocrisy and weakness. While the youth culture genre underwent
significant shifts in emphasis over the next thirty years, its fundamental
themes of generational conflict, adult corruption, and young people’s
search for honor remained intact.
Without debating the often precious distinctions made in “genre
theory,” we propose that a movie must meet the following conditions in
order to be considered a youth culture film: (1) it must be directed at a
popular audience; (2) it must be “popular” in the sense of achieving at
least modest commercial success; and (3) it must assume and idealize
the point of view of young people.
The first two conditions establish the genre as part of popular as opposed
to elite culture, meaning that a film such as Blue Denim (1959) should
probably be considered a youth culture film, but Jules and Jim (1961)

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