Life as a teenager is arguably the most confusing, difficult, and stressful time in a person’s life. There is a great amount of expectations and insecurities placed on teens that hinder them from being active participants in the world. They must undergo all of the changes of young adult life to develop into successful members of society. In the 1990’s and the 2000’s, two separate films were released that depict the cultural norms, social expectations, and developments of teenagers at that period of time. Those two films, Mean Girls and 10 Things I Hate About You, successfully illuminate the motives and characterizations of young adult life and the troubles and tribulations that come along with it. 10 Things I Hate About You is a film about teenagers growing up in Seattle in the 1990’s. The music, clothing, and slang presented in the movie all emulate the time period in which it was released. The movie itself is based off of the play by William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. Senior, Kat Stratford, portrays an angsty teenager, degrading any and all typical high school experiences. Her sister Bianca, on the other hand, is well-liked and well-desired by two boys in school. She emulates the typical teen girl, obsessed with fashion, boys, and popularity. As per their father’s rules, Bianca cannot date until uninterested Kat does. Patrick Verona, the mysterious bad boy of school, is approached by the popular Joey Donner as he offers to pay Verona to take out
In “The C Word in the Hallway”, author, Anna Quindlen expresses her pleas to reach out and end the neglect of teen struggles. Bullying, break-ups, isolation, family issues, academics, and more could result as contributing factors to the hardships of teenagers. Unfortunately, “role models” setting the examples, overlook the fatal outcomes of these hardships. The poor example taught is to mask our struggles and toughen through them. This masking method can only be effective for so long before one cracks. In her article regarding the uprising of mental health issues found in teenagers, Anna Quindlen calls to action on parents, educators, and politicians to emphasize the importance of recognizing teenage hardships, so the teenagers can too recognize
One of the main themes in Scott Westerfield’s text Uglies is the conflict teenagers have with where they stand in society and learning to respect and value themselves. Using examples from the text compare them with today’s world for teenagers.
Identity; Romance; Segregation; Beauty; Friendship; Within the film industry’s classic interpretation of female adolescents, these elements of teen culture are typically represented. A film’s demonstration of themes such as relationship tensions or social status struggles are that which attracts the popular viewership of female adolescents, for they are personally dealing with similar experiences. Furthermore, in continually representing the aforementioned traditional elements of teen culture, the film industry seems to make it so films’ story-lines and characterizations adapt to and directly reflect the era in which the film is set. This adaptation is significantly demonstrated in the popular teen films The Breakfast Club (1985), Clueless (1995), and Mean Girls (2004) as they each clearly and diversely characterize young women based on the distinct time period and the cultural attitude towards teen girls of that time. The Breakfast Club (1985) details five high school students in Illinois, a nerd, a jock, a bad boy, a weirdo, and a
In an essay published in the New Yorker in May 1999, entitled “High-School Confidential: Notes on Teen Movies,” writer David Denby analyzes movies targeted towards teenagers and the stereotypes associated with them. He begins his essay by describing the archetypal characters in high school genre films: the vapid popular girl and her athletic male counterpart, and the intellectual outsider and her awkward male counterpart. He then describes the reality of teen life, and compares it to the experience depicted in these films. Next, he analyzes the common theme that the geeky characters are the protagonists, and suggests there are such because of their writer's personal experience and a history of geeks being ostracized. Finally, Denby analyzes the tropes in
The movie 10 Things I Hate About You(1999) is a film that was based off of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew that was a popular play in the 16th
It’s a very difficult thing for adults to write accurate and believable teenage characters. Often times, people my age are written to be significantly too stereotypical. Apparently, the middle aged white men who write most of these movies think every single teenager in high school is either an athlete with no passions other than sports or a nerd who has never looked up from a book. As someone who has only been out of high school for 6 months, I feel pretty confident in saying those stereotypes rarely exist in real life.
It has not been too long ago that I still remember my adolescent years. I always remember the unintelligent things I did that I wish could change, but this Psychology class made me realize that all adolescents go through the same things I experienced. Adolescents are known to try to find their identity, go through peer pressure, make mistakes, and try new things. The move I picked that closely represented what adolescents go through was “Mean Girls”. Some of the scenes in the movie seem a little exaggerated, but it has happened in certain high schools even though I had not experienced it personally.
The story of The Taming of the Shrew is one that raises important issues both in the Shakespearean text and in the modern appropriation 10 Things I Hate About You.
Stereotypically, men and women have very different roles in the eyes of society. Gender roles and stereotypes have a history in religious, political, legal and economic systems. In reality, men and women are more alike than most people assume. Throughout the world there are struggles with identity, power, and violence occurring everyday between both men and women. The film Mean Girls, directed by Mark Walters, follows a young girl, Cady’s, transition from being home schooled to public high school. Cady enters the school’s group of mean girls, otherwise known as “the plastics”, which consists of Regina George, Gretchen Wieners, and Karen Smith. Throughout the film each character struggles with their true identity.
Teenage years are, without argument, the most confusing and difficult years of a person’s life as they
10 Things I Hate About You takes William Shakespeare’s classic play, The Taming of the Shrew and manages to make it relevant to a modern audience. The story remains the same with the younger sister, Bianca, not allowed to have a relationship until her older sister, Kat, does. They did maintain several original scenes and even used several direct quotes from the original play. The writers have eliminated some of Bianca’s suitors and changed the way Kat is tamed to appeal to a modern audience. Shakespeare would have agreed with the casting of the movie. This movie may turn Shakespeare’s work into a teen comedy but it maintains many of the elements that made the play such a hit.
The movie 10 Things I Hate About You is a movie based on Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew as well as the movie based on the play that goes by the same name. These movies both have completely different messages and storylines but the fact that they both where inspired and based on the same play meant that there were bound to be some similarities between the two. The movie 10 Things I Hate About You is undoubtedly easier to understand and relate to, as the
“Mean girls, jocks, band nerds, geeks, and freaks” are all terms used to stereotype and group teens in the 2004 movie hit, Mean Girls. This film created controversies in the content that it delivered. The credibility of adolescents is questioned greatly in this film. Mean Girls taught us that popularity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, in fact, they taught us that it’s actually meaningless. Through extreme character development, this movie shows the viewer that at the end of the day, all of the teens are the same. They all struggle to fit in, and that’s really the moral of this hilarious, but raunchy story. Mean Girls captures the struggle that every teen seems to have at some point of where they belong and how they relate to everyone around them. The film takes those stereotypes and melds them into what all high schools should aspire to be: a community.
Teenagers often find themselves going through the motions of doing what they are told when they are told to do it. In conforming to societies norms teenagers begin to feel as if they blend in and nothing is really special about them. John Updike was able to write a coming of age story in which his main character Sammy gets shoved into adulthood rather quickly over spontaneous decision. Through Sammy’s thoughts, intense observations, and his actions we are able to see his deep depravity and his longing to stand out from the crowd.
A concept of a stereotypical teenager in the 20th century was to grow up through childhood but not surpass the values, beliefs and attitudes of a typical adult. In the 1998 film, the audience is shown a great selection of characters, symbolism and setting which reinforces the idea of a teenage role that shows a new perspective that affects society.