Who knows why this bothers me so much, but tell me I'm not the only one who thinks teen television and movies in which the teens are more cultured than a Harvard professor are as annoying and fabricated as I think they are.I was a fan of Juno when it came out, though that was because I could ignore the big elephant in the room: that Juno represented an American teenager about as much as Family Guy's Stewie represents you average drooling infant.
After seeing this freakishly cultured, educated, and loquacious teen theme on shows such as Gossip Girl - where none of the actors is every without a witty retort, and speaks at length sans a single stutter, misplaced modifier, or even the slightest hint of insecurity - I now have an eye for it whether I like it or not.
Read my review of Nick and Norah to see how these new BS-detector goggles ruined any enjoyment I could squeeze out of that hyper-cultured teen fantasy. Christ, why didn't they all just have inductions into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, be knighted, and have honorary degrees from Oxford for crying out loud?
How about Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, where magically you have the gamut of all things creative coming to full fruition: the writer gets published, the filmmaker gets into NYU and directs her own movies, the actor who's not even an actor makes Kenneth Branagh look clumsy, and the artist gets into any art school she pleases and gets to travel with her art at will.
When the hell did the liberal arts become so easy?
At my alma mater, the liberal arts buildings were code red, meaning that - at any moment - they might collapse and bury our sorry, artistic asses under a few hundred tons of rubble. We were lucky if someone used what we'd written as a tissue to blow their nose into. Yet modern teen film and shows would have you believe that writing, art, and movies are as easy to get into and master as flipping burgers.
If I'd have known getting published in The New Yorker was as easy as sending some stream-of-consciousness drivel off on a whim, I would have sent them stories years ago.
And then - with these new goggles of disgust at this utterly unrealistic trope - I switched on HBO while at my hotel to find Juno right in the middle of it.
"Juno," I said to myself. "You like Juno. Just sit and enjoy it."
And then Juno rattles of her favorite bands - none of which you're supposed to have heard of, directors and movies you're just not smart enough to know, and other prattle that would never, ever spew from a teenager's mouth. I switched it off, now secure in the unintentional, ineffable knowledge that I can no longer stomach Juno or its ilk.
Is this all my fault? Has this always been there, and I've been to willfully blind to see it? Or do movies and shows that portray teens as intellectual, social, and cultural powerhouses do us all a disservice?
I'm shooting for the latter.
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This comment was sent via email, so I'll slide it in under my name. It was sent by Biz of the Grandin Film Review.
ReplyDeleteWow. I definitely think you're on to something here, but don't loose hope. Let me try to wipe some smudge from your BS goggles. Even though Juno may think Pixies rule over Sonic Youth, which I would heartily agree with, and she may know a lot about obscure horror flicks, her character is at the core still a scared young woman with a lot of bad choices and raging hormones.
Charlie Barlett may seem to fall too easily into the role of amateur psychoanalyst, but his character is at the core, just a kid who wants everyone to like him. These teen characters, written by adults, are engaging & entertaining, we cry with them & laugh with them, because we still see a little of ourselves in them, no matter what contrived circumstances the writer put them into.
Would we really want to watch a real teens drive around in their car giggling and making immature references to their body parts? Oh yeah, that was "Superbad," & that was kinda funny.
Anyway, toss off those goggles, lighten up and give "Juno" another try. "