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High School Confidential: Notes on Teen Movies (Female Villain/BBQ: (Why…
High School Confidential
: Notes on Teen Movies
ADDITIONAL INFO
SOAPStone
Speaker: David Henry
Audience: Readers of the New Yorker. People interested in film analysis
Occasion: May 1999. Turn of the Century. Past decades had many famous teen movies. Patterns become prevalent in the Drama
Subject: The state of teen film. Mentions real life people possibly inspired by said films
Purpose: Show how few teen films actually differ from the formulaic nature with overused stereotypes and how the physical depictions of the stereotypes in the movies also uses teen's insecurity for their advantage.
Tone: Informational and descriptive
Movies Used
Use Of BBQ and Jock as Stock Figures
Disturbing Behavior: Horror Film
Uses High School cliques to gain a
Ten things I Hate About You : Romantic Comedey
Never Been Kissed: Rom Com
She's All That: Teen make over/Rom Com film
The Wild One: Drama/Outlaw Film: Angst (For Lack of Better Word)
Subgenre
Carrie- Horror Film
Heathers- Dark Comedy
Don't Follow genre
Election- Villain is an over achiever not a BBQ
Romy and Michele's High School Reunion
Criticizes/ makes fun of the genre
Clueless- Subverts BBQ by making Cher nice
MAIN ARGUMENT: Teen movies rarely align with reality
Female Villain/BBQ:
Similes & Metaphors: "a Waist as supple as a willow" "Swirl of gold on one side of her face". Comparing her rule to that of a kingdom
Antithesis: Describes BBQ as a forties movie star but has bad fashion sense
Colloquialisms: Her insults
Why are they important?
Describes the character rather than showing
Beautiful but vain and vapid.
Shows the Predictability of the Character
The Jock:
Uses physical assaults rather than verbal
Less likely to get in trouble for his actions
Why is this important?
Shows how Men are portrayed as tough and rude in films with few if any redeeming qualities.
Rarely shows their true emotions unlike BBQ.
Shifts:
3-4: Intellectual Shift from describing common roles in film to how they compare to reality.
Atmospheric shift to Dark sub genre of films
Tone shift to upbeat whe talking about films that break the pattern
Creates shifts through spaces in between paragraphs
Do Genre Films Reflect Reality?
Answers the question by using extended metaphors (teen films to Western)
Reflect what it felt like to live emotionally through the time period, but not actually what happens,
Tries to make outsiders the heroes
possibly to make teen viewers insecure about themselves feel that they can be victorious
Major Appeals:
Logos
Uses scenes, characters and plot threads from teen films/the topic
Ethos
Denby is a film Critic.
He was a teen and knows how it felt
Pathos
The Genre commonly plays to teens emotions and insecurities
Uses cheap emotional tactics to make the Audience feel for the characters
Allusion:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man- a book expressing the subconscious of the author's alter ego
Portrait of the Filmmaker as a Young Nerd- Shows the character's self-pity and ultimate vindication and dives into their thinking.
Why is this important?
Most teen films try to live in the mind of a nerd
Connects with Teens who feel left out and angry like the character
But the motherless child
also, has powers, and will someday be a success, an artist, a screenwriter.
Shows that there's hope for teens who feel hopeless in a fictional reality
Geeks Rule:
Makes several references to the Columbine Boys were nerds
If they didn't shoot their school, they could have succeeded with technology
They possibly took inspiration form darker characters but forgot that geeks are commonly the winners in both reality and in film.
Basic characters learned form the darker elements and not lighter ones.
Three main Rhetorical Strategies
Figures of Speech
Comparisons
Metaphors
Swirl of gold on one side of her face
together they dominate their realm
The senior prom is the equivalent of the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral
Similes
she walks like a seal crossing a beach
Face like a Beer Mug
Waist as supple as a willow
Hyperbole:
Most hated woman in America is a blonde
Why?
More vivid than plain description and exposition
Allows for Audience to gain a better grasp on characters without paragraphs of stretched out words.
Vivid Imagery
#
In awful, spangled taste: her outfits could
have been put together by warring catalogues
a drill sergeant's sudden bellow.
Why?
Uses imagery to show rather than tell
Helps to evaluate a character's appearance and traits
Shows how the archetypes are normally perceived in the eyes of movie goers
Strong Rhetorical Appeals:
Logos
: Uses teen movies to further his argument, also uses real life people involved
TEEN MOVIES
Carrie, the pale, repressed heroine, played by Sissy Spacek, is courted at last by a handsome boy but gets violated - doused with pig's blood - just as she is named prom queen.
Explores the dark sub genre
Some one asks Marlon Brando's biker "What are you rebelling against?" and the biker replies "What have you got?"
Shows how teens films have evolved
REAL LIFE
Directors let their high school experiences bleed into the movie
Columbine Boys were possibly inspired by the dark character and anti heroes of Teen films
Why?
Build his argument on resources the public have knowledge of (Film and pop-culture impact)
Recent event that plagued the nation and shows the effects movies can have on their target demographic.
Proves his points logically and shows his argument has merit.
(duh)
Pathos
The Genre commonly plays to teens emotions and insecurities
Uses cheap emotional tactics to make the Audience feel for the characters ex. making the nerds the heroes
Makes exaggerated memories feel like the norm
High School Clique
Why?
Shows the emotional toll films can act on its audience
makes the older audience realize how iconic teen films to them have made them feel nostalgic.
Ethos:
Film critic
was a teen