Page 104 - A Handbook Genre Studies in Mass Media

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

I’ll keep my room clean and wash before every meal. . . . In fact, I won’t
be any trouble to anybody. Everything’s under control.” As the audience
watches him fall down the stairs, we get the message that eludes Andy:
adolescence is an awkward apprenticeship.
The world of Andy Hardy is by nature future-oriented. Adolescents
look ahead because, like adults, they regard the past (and the present)
as connected to the future in a logical and relevant way. This sense of
a meaningful past provides much of the foundation for adult authority.
When the future is viewed as an extension of the past, adults can and
must be counted on as reliable guides. The significance of the present
resides in its function as a transitional period, a rite of passage. In the
postwar youth film, both past and future have lost meaning, and the pres-
ent becomes eternal. In such a world, adolescence is not simply painful
but as we see in later films such as Rebel Without a Cause and Alice’s
Restaurant, it is perpetual.
For Andy Hardy, the stable connection between past and future makes
growing up a process of moving into the past, taking on the standards
of one’s parents. When change does occur, it moves along traditional
pathways and is, therefore, non-threatening. Judge Hardy understands
what Andy is going through because they share a common worldview.
Even when the judge is confronted with modern notions he does not
understand (as when his wife informs him that women have ambitions
beyond the kitchen), he can accept them because they are not presented
in the form of fundamental social change or as serious challenges to
his authority. Judge Hardy’s exposure to the latest fashions in slang,
automobiles, women’s needs, etc., are almost always presented in a hu-
morous context that trivializes their cultural significance and minimizes
their potential for personal and social disruption. The Hardy films can,
therefore, portray the modern world in a positive light precisely because
the judge has it under control.
Stable connections between past and future also presuppose and rein-
force strong institutions, as illustrated by the way the Hardy films treat
sex. In Love Finds Andy Hardy, one of Andy’s girlfriends tells him that
they are getting too old for “huggin’ and kissin’” on the porch. Sexuality
is something adolescents grow out of, which is not surprising, consider-
ing Judge Hardy as their sexual role model. The white-haired patriarch
is, to be sure, a physically imposing presence. However, dressed in the
somber garb of the traditional Puritan, Judge Hardy is hardly a sexual
animal. By postwar standards, he and his wife look and act more like

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