Rethinking the Teen Movie

There have always been teenagers. But it was only in 1904 that American psychologist G. Stanley Hall’s ground-breaking publication, Adolescence: its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sex, Crime and Education, established the existence of a hitherto undocumented period of ‘storm and stress’ between childhood and adulthood (Hall 1904: 2). As the case studies in later chapters will demonstrate, it is this sense of liminality that motivates my interest in the construction of identity found in the Hollywood teen movie. Here, I address both the evolution of the on-screen teenager in Hollywood cinema and, in tandem, the various ways in which film scholars have conceived the teen movie as a genre. With this understanding of how the field has developed over time, I explain how this book aims to rethink the Hollywood teen movie.