This book helps readers understand Moonlight’s profound political and social importance, the innovative technical choices adopted by director Barry Jenkins and the film’s adoption and disruption of traditional coming-of-age themes through the specific prism of Chiron’s childhood and youth. Moonlight (2016) is an intensely moving and poetically rendered coming-of-age story about a young gay Black boy, Chiron. Highly praised by both critics and audiences internationally, it garnered a surprise Best Picture win at the 2017 Academy Awards, enshrining its significance within a global cinematic canon. This book provides an account of how Moonlight can be situated in relation to African American youth films, contemporary queer cinema and its appeal to the youth market and representations of non-normative childhood and adolescence. It analyses the reception of Moonlight in terms of its form and profound emotional impact on spectators offerning new visions of African American boyhoods while also contributing an extended exploration of the social and political context of the film in relation to Obama, Trump and diversity in filmmaking.Highlighting to students and scholars the powerful emotional pull of Moonlight and why it is a highly significant film, this book is ideal for those interested in critical race studies, queer theory, youth cinema, African American cinema and LGBTQ cinema.

This book provides an examination of Big Wednesday as an unconventional film that employs a mythic sensibility in its representation of the loss of youth and young manhood.Critically and commercially unsuccessful on its original release, the coming-of-age, surf drama Big Wednesday (1978), has undergone a significant reappraisal. It is now considered not only an important contribution to youth cinema, but also the most important film that John Milius ever made. Over six chapters, the book considers questions of authorship, commerce, genre, stardom, and myth, and explores how these ideas intersect with the film’s status as a significant youth movie and collectively how these ideas have contributed to its recent critical rehabilitation. In doing so, the book also provides a much-needed reassessment of an important and overlooked entry in the New Hollywood canon.Exploring Big Wednesday’s subsequent resonance and relevance, this unique study will appeal to students and scholars in film studies, popular culture studies, youth studies, sociology, and media studies.

This concise yet comprehensive study explores the emblematic journey by four young men from Liverpool from the epicentre of teen-led youth culture to the experimentation of the counterculture and beyond. Beginning with the celebration of Britain’s own ‘youthquake’ in the joyous and genre-shifting A Hard Day’s Night (1964), the author delves into how the Beatles’ film work allows us to chart their subsequent musical maturation and retreat from the tribulations of stardom in Help!, their tentative attempts at improvised filming in the televised Magical Mystery Tour (1967), their acceptance of cartoon representations as leaders of the hippie counterculture in Yellow Submarine (1968), and the final implosion of their musical dynamic in the recording studios of Let It Be (1970). The book analyses how, as they grew with their fanbase, the Beatles’ films alternate stylistically between mimetic representation and allegorical interpretation, and switch narratively between fan-filled and welcoming worlds, to films relaying introspection and isolation.Offering an in-depth case study of the successes and failures of British youth culture in a volatile decade, The Beatles and Film is an engaging text for both scholars and general readers alike.

This book examines The Commitments (Parker, 1991) for the first time as a film, rather than an adaptation of Roddy Doyle’s bestselling novel, and as a significant cultural event in 1990s Ireland.A major hit in Ireland and around the world, the film depicts the short-lived attempts of an ensemble of young working-class Dubliners to achieve success as a soul covers band, playing the hits of Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and others, on a mission to ‘bring soul back to Dublin’. Drawing upon interviews with key figures involved in the film and its music, including Roddy Doyle, Angeline Ball, and Bronagh Gallagher, as well as archival research of director Alan Parker’s papers, the book explores questions of authenticity associated with youth, music, class, and culture, and assesses the film’s legacy for the Irish film industry, Irish music scenes, and Irish youth. It also examines the film’s status as a truly transnational production.This concise, yet interdisciplinary case study will be of interest to students and researchers in popular music, cultural studies, and sociology, as well as film and media studies.

This study of Kevin Smith’s debut film breaks new ground by exploring how Clerks sits at the intersection of political and cultural trends relevant to alternative youth cultures in the early 1990s.Clerks (1994) was born of and appeals to a specific youth subculture, with the multimedia ‘View Askewniverse’ developing out of the film’s initial release. Drawing on existing texts and movements such as Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991), Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and alternative rock subcultures that had developed during and since the 1980s, the film presents a comedic take on working as a young person in 1990s America in a manner that was praised for its authenticity. Filmed on a miniscule budget, the roughness of the film’s aesthetic, combined with a hard rock soundtrack comprised of mostly independent bands, convinced many that it could speak for young Americans, much more than polished, corporate Hollywood productions. The book situates the film within this wider cultural movement and cultural zeitgeist and explores the role of working-class youth and employment in the years following Reaganomics and its consequences, as well as providing insight into the film’s presentation of consumption and of its representation of masculinity and sexuality.Clear, concise and comprehensive, the book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in youth cinema, American independent film, Cult Film, Subcultures and Counterculture, as well as both Film and American Studies more broadly.

This book positions King Creole in the disputed territories of 1950s youth culture. It is one of Elvis’s best regarded films, but one of his least financially successful. It is a portrait of youthful alienation and juvenile delinquency made at a time when these topics were becoming less fashionable in teenpics.The author argues that King Creole's release during the death throes of rock and roll in America helps to position it as an outlier among youth films of the time in three distinct ways. First, the author demonstrates how the post-rock and roll release of the film allowed for a better harnessing of the star's 'Elvisness.' Second, the author conducts an extensive examination of the film's production records, which show how the film's portrait of youth alienation and delinquency pre-dated America's big screen fixation on these topics, making the film not wholly bound by concurrent youth conventions. Third, the author challenges the dominant reading of the film as being about intergenerational conflict and asserts that it is about shared grief. This nuanced approach distinguishes King Creole from other 1950s youth-oriented films and explains its enduring critical acclaim despite commercial underperformance.Rich on archival research and textual analysis King Creole: The Disputed Territories of 1950s American Youth Culture will interest both film studies scholars and students. Beyond film studies, this interdisciplinary text is valuable for scholars and students of popular music, American pop culture, celebrity studies, and social history.

Combining a detailed film analysis with archival research and social science approaches, this book examines how American Graffiti (1973), a low-budget and star-less teen comedy by a filmmaker whose only previous feature had been a box office flop, became one of the highest grossing and most highly acclaimed films of all time in the United States, and one of the key expressions of the nostalgia wave washing over the country in the 1970s.American Graffiti: George Lucas, the New Hollywood and the Baby Boom Generation explores the origins and development of the film, its form and themes as well as its marketing, reception, audiences and impact. It does so by considering the life and career of the film’s co-writer and director George Lucas; the development and impact of the baby boom generation to which he, many of his collaborators and the vast majority of the film’s audience belonged; the transformation of the American film industry in the late 1960s and 1970s; and broader changes in American society which gave rise to an intense sense of crisis and growing pessimism across the population.This book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in youth cinema, the New Hollywood and George Lucas as well as both Film and American Studies more broadly.

This concise yet comprehensive study explores the emblematic journey by four young men from Liverpool from the epicentre of teen-led youth culture to the experimentation of the counterculture and beyond. Beginning with the celebration of Britain’s own ‘youthquake’ in the joyous and genre-shifting A Hard Day’s Night (1964), the author delves into how the Beatles’ film work allows us to chart their subsequent musical maturation and retreat from the tribulations of stardom in Help!, their tentative attempts at improvised filming in the televised Magical Mystery Tour (1967), their acceptance of cartoon representations as leaders of the hippie counterculture in Yellow Submarine (1968), and the final implosion of their musical dynamic in the recording studios of Let It Be (1970). The book analyses how, as they grew with their fanbase, the Beatles’ films alternate stylistically between mimetic representation and allegorical interpretation, and switch narratively between fan-filled and welcoming worlds, to films relaying introspection and isolation.Offering an in-depth case study of the successes and failures of British youth culture in a volatile decade, The Beatles and Film is an engaging text for both scholars and general readers alike.

This book provides a critically informed account of the Turkey-born France-based director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut film Mustang (2015), which tells the story of five orphaned sisters living with their grandmother and uncle in a remote Turkish village.The film’s familiar art-house style, and its universalising focus on female coming-of-age and feminist dissent, resulted in celebratory reviews from journalists and scholars of world cinema. Meanwhile, Mustang’s framing of youth in the Turkish national context, and its representation of gender, divided Turkish film critics and cultural theorists. These divisions led to a debate that questions the politics of transnational feminism by criticising the film’s failure to capture the local intricacies of the politics of gender and youth. While this book aims to locate Mustang within the intersection of emerging female and youth narratives in the cinema of Turkey, it also provides a critical understanding of the differences in Mustang’s local and global reception. This focus on the geopolitics of representation informs the diverse criteria this study uses to evaluate Ergüven’s stylistic choices.Engaging with both Anglophone and Turkish literature in youth cinema and gender studies, the book makes an original contribution to current debates on national/transnational cinemas and gender/youth studies and is an accessible reference for graduate and undergraduate study of contemporary film.Elif Akçalı is Associate Professor in Film and TV Studies at Kadir Has University, Turkey. Her research focuses on film aesthetics, videographic criticism, non-fiction film, and gender/sexuality studies.

This book provides a critically informed account of the Turkey-born France-based director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut film Mustang (2015), which tells the story of five orphaned sisters living with their grandmother and uncle in a remote Turkish village.The film’s familiar art-house style, and its universalising focus on female coming-of-age and feminist dissent, resulted in celebratory reviews from journalists and scholars of world cinema. Meanwhile, Mustang’s framing of youth in the Turkish national context, and its representation of gender, divided Turkish film critics and cultural theorists. These divisions led to a debate that questions the politics of transnational feminism by criticising the film’s failure to capture the local intricacies of the politics of gender and youth. While this book aims to locate Mustang within the intersection of emerging female and youth narratives in the cinema of Turkey, it also provides a critical understanding of the differences in Mustang’s local and global reception. This focus on the geopolitics of representation informs the diverse criteria this study uses to evaluate Ergüven’s stylistic choices.Engaging with both Anglophone and Turkish literature in youth cinema and gender studies, the book makes an original contribution to current debates on national/transnational cinemas and gender/youth studies and is an accessible reference for graduate and undergraduate study of contemporary film.Elif Akçalı is Associate Professor in Film and TV Studies at Kadir Has University, Turkey. Her research focuses on film aesthetics, videographic criticism, non-fiction film, and gender/sexuality studies.

Based on the best-selling novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides is director Sofia Coppola’s evocative debut feature of young love, sex, loss and family pressures in mid-1970s America. Acclaimed by both critics and audiences on release, the film is now viewed as a remarkable and bold feature by a significant female director addressing many issues related to youth, female sexuality and family.This book helps readers understand the film’s significance and the stylistic and storytelling choices made by director Coppola. The analysis of the film occurs around three interlocking arguments: the unusual structuring absence in the film, the intricate manner through which music is used in the drama, communication and character creation, and the film’s careful and specific referencing of advertising in the 1970s (the decade of the film’s narrative). The film’s enigmatic structure and unique storytelling devices and their relationship to female adolescence, sexuality and ideology are also considered in depth. Without solving the mysteries of the film, the book is designed to uncover the reasons why the film continues to fascinate viewers so many years after its release.

Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise examines the multiplicity of books, films, TV shows, and merchandise that make up the transmedia Gidget universe from the late 1950s to the 1980s. The book examines the Gidget phenomenon as an early and unique teen girl franchise that expands understanding of both teen girlhood and transmedia storytelling. It locates the film as existing at the historical intersection of numerous discourses and events, including the emergence of surf culture and surf films; the rise of California as signifier of modernity and as the epicentre of white American middle-class teen culture; the annexation of Hawaii; the invention of Barbie; and Hollywood’s reluctant acceptance of teen culture and teen audiences. Each chapter places the Gidget text in context, looking at production and reception circumstances and intertexts such as the novels of Françoise Sagan, the Tammy series, La Dolce Vita, and The Patty Duke Show, to better understand Gidget’s meaning at different points in time.This book explores many aspects of Gidget, providing an invaluable insight into this iconic franchise for students and researchers in film studies, feminist media studies, and youth culture.

Before the advent of the teenager in the 1940s and the teenpic in the 1950s, The Freshman (Taylor and Newmeyer, 1925) represented 1920s college youth culture as an exclusive world of leisure to a mass audience. Starring popular slapstick comedian Harold Lloyd, The Freshman was a hit with audiences for its parody of contemporary conceptions of university life as an orgy of proms and football games, becoming the highest grossing comedy feature of the silent era. This book examines The Freshman from a number of perspectives, with a focus on the social, economic, and political context that led to the rise of campus culture as a distinct subculture and popular mass culture in 1920s America; Lloyd’s use of slapstick to represent an embodied, youthful middle-class masculinity; and the film’s self-reflexive exploration of the conflict between individuality and conformity as an early entry in the youth film genre.

This study of Kevin Smith’s debut film breaks new ground by exploring how Clerks sits at the intersection of political and cultural trends relevant to alternative youth cultures in the early 1990s.Clerks (1994) was born of and appeals to a specific youth subculture, with the multimedia ‘View Askewniverse’ developing out of the film’s initial release. Drawing on existing texts and movements such as Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991), Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and alternative rock subcultures that had developed during and since the 1980s, the film presents a comedic take on working as a young person in 1990s America in a manner that was praised for its authenticity. Filmed on a miniscule budget, the roughness of the film’s aesthetic, combined with a hard rock soundtrack comprised of mostly independent bands, convinced many that it could speak for young Americans, much more than polished, corporate Hollywood productions. The book situates the film within this wider cultural movement and cultural zeitgeist and explores the role of working-class youth and employment in the years following Reaganomics and its consequences, as well as providing insight into the film’s presentation of consumption and of its representation of masculinity and sexuality.Clear, concise and comprehensive, the book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in youth cinema, American independent film, Cult Film, Subcultures and Counterculture, as well as both Film and American Studies more broadly.

The 2012 film The Hunger Games and its three sequels, appearing quickly over the following three years, represent one of the most successful examples of the contemporary popularity of youth-oriented speculative film and television series. This book considers "The Hunger Games" as an intertextual field centred on this blockbuster film franchise but also encompassing the successful novels that preceded them and the merchandised imagery and the critical and fan discourse that surrounds them. It explores the place of The Hunger Games in the history of youth-oriented cinema; in the history of speculative fiction centred on adolescents; in a network of continually evolving and tightly connected popular genres; and in the popular history of changing ideas about girlhood from which a successful action hero like Katniss Everdeen could emerge.

Part romantic comedy, part sitcom, part social drama, L’Auberge espagnole (The Spanish Apartment) recounts a familiar ‘youth’ ritual – the move from university to ‘the real world’, the often complicated personal, romantic and cultural encounters that ensue, and the moral uncertainties that characterize that key biological and physiological developmental stage between adolescence and adulthood. French director Cédric Klapisch showcases the extraordinary colour and beauty of Barcelona’s architecture, and places his hero Xavier at the heart of this smartly written film, which makes a series of wry observations on educational exchange programmes, multi-culturalism, and the direction European youth might take in the twenty-first century.This book addresses the topic of Europe’s youth generation, paying particular attention to the ways in which the film depicts the transition from adolescence to adulthood as allegory for the experiences of European society as it moves through periods of readjustment towards uncertain futures. It also looks into the ecosystem of contemporary French cinema, the Erasmus programme and its influence on youth experience, and identity politics in relation to ‘nationhood’ and ‘European-ness’. The book also examines the two sequels to the film – Russian Dolls (2005) and Chinese Puzzle (2013) – and how the complications faced by the main characters across the trilogy suggest that the move to adulthood is a never-ending process of growing up and reaching a level of self-actualization.

Easy A (2010) is the last significant box-office success in the high-school teen movie subgenre and a film that has already been deemed a ‘classic’ by many cultural commentators and popular film critics. By applying interdisciplinary insight to a relatively overlooked movie in academic discussion, Easy A: The End of the High-School Teen Comedy? is the first in-depth volume that places the movie within several key contexts and concepts of intertextuality, gender, genre and adaptation, and social discourse. Through the unpacking of a complex narrative that draws its plot from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and shares affinities with John Hughes’ paradigmatic films from the 1980s and key films from the 1990s, this volume presents Easy A as a palimpsest for the millennial generation. Clear and comprehensive, the book argues that Easy A marks the end of the commercially successful high-school teen comedy and discusses the reasons through a comparative synchronic and semi-diachronic historical comparison of the film with contemporary cinematic texts and those of the 1980s and 1990s.

This book traces the development of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood from its audacious concept through its tenacious production to its celebrated reception, placing it within the context of cinematic parables about children to demonstrate its distinctive vision. Timothy Shary, author of numerous studies on the history of teen cinema, evaluates the film’s many messages about youth and adolescence within the context of early twenty-first century American culture, illuminating how Linklater’s singular vision of the otherwise ordinary life of a boy reveals potent universal truths about all people.

This book offers the first in-depth look at the history, social context, and industrial practices behind this teen musical phenomenon to suggest that social change, especially in terms of gender and sexuality, comes to the surface despite the film’s retro setting, blockbuster business model, and apparent nostalgic tone. The vast audience for this film over the last thirty-five years and the various "hopelessly devoted" fandoms indicate that Grease exceeds both the confines of its period and the limits of any one ideological message.

Clueless: American Youth in the 1990s is a timely contribution to the increasingly prominent academic field of youth film studies. The book draws on the social context to the film’s release, a range of film industry perspectives including marketing, audience reception and franchising, as well as postmodern theory and feminist film theory to assert the cultural and historical significance of Amy Heckerling’s film and reaffirm its reputation as one of the defining teen films of the 1990s. Lesley Speed examines how the film channels aspects of Anita Loos’ 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the 1960s television series Gidget and Jane Austen’s Emma, to present a heightened, optimistic view of contemporary American teenage life. Although seemingly apolitical, Speed makes the case for Clueless as a feminist exploration of relationships between gender, comedy and consumer culture, centring on a contemporary version of the ‘dumb blonde’ type. The film is also proved to embrace diversity in its depiction of African American characters and contributing to an increase in gay teenagers on screen. Lesley Speed concludes her analysis by tracking the rise of the Clueless franchise and cult following. Both helped to cement the film in popular consciousness, inviting fans to inhabit its fantasy world through spinoff narratives on television and in print, public viewing rituals, revivalism and vintage fashion.

This in-depth study of one of the twenty-first century’s most acclaimed films, The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 considers the contribution of David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s film to the understanding of ‘youth’ in a contemporary, digital age. The book starts by situating The Social Network within the contexts of ‘youth film’, arguing that it challenges and reshapes the boundaries of this genre by rethinking the notion of ‘youth’ itself in the present century. It goes on to consider in detail the aesthetics at work in the film, arguing for its critical and reflexive use of an ‘accelerated’ audio-visual style, in order to capture both the new visual regimes of the personal computer era, and the ethical and intellectual ambiguities of Facebook itself as a creation. Finally, it locates the film within the broader visual styles and fashion codes of a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century consumer culture that incorporates and commodifies rebellion and dissent: qualities that underpinned Facebook’s emerging, paradoxical identity as at once the epitome of ‘hacker’ culture and also a multi-billion-dollar global company.Reframing the meaning of youth cinema, this volume in the Cinema and Youth Culture series is ideal for students, researchers and scholars of cinema studies, youth culture and digital cultures.

This in-depth study of one of the twenty-first century’s most acclaimed films, The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 considers the contribution of David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s film to the understanding of ‘youth’ in a contemporary, digital age. The book starts by situating The Social Network within the contexts of ‘youth film’, arguing that it challenges and reshapes the boundaries of this genre by rethinking the notion of ‘youth’ itself in the present century. It goes on to consider in detail the aesthetics at work in the film, arguing for its critical and reflexive use of an ‘accelerated’ audio-visual style, in order to capture both the new visual regimes of the personal computer era, and the ethical and intellectual ambiguities of Facebook itself as a creation. Finally, it locates the film within the broader visual styles and fashion codes of a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century consumer culture that incorporates and commodifies rebellion and dissent: qualities that underpinned Facebook’s emerging, paradoxical identity as at once the epitome of ‘hacker’ culture and also a multi-billion-dollar global company.Reframing the meaning of youth cinema, this volume in the Cinema and Youth Culture series is ideal for students, researchers and scholars of cinema studies, youth culture and digital cultures.

Exploring the dynamic genres of animation and comic book films, this book examines the transmedia role of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and its critical involvement in attempts to diversify representations in youth-oriented cinema and culture.Several years after the movie’s immense commercial and critical success, a look back on the innovative features of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse shows how the film’s force derives from its thoughtful depiction of Miles Morales – a young, Afro-Latino superhero who must face systemic obstacles his white predecessor nerver worried about. Engaging a web of pressing topics in the field – from transmedia storytelling to identity formation and minority representation – this book offers an accessible analysis of the hypertextual design and animation techniques, which help this film to sensitively confront the combustible dynamics of racial representation in contemporary American youth culture.Written in an approachable style, this book is suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates, and specialists in the field. It is a versatile resource for media studies, film studies, animation studies, and cultural studies courses, but will also appeal to fans seeking to investigate the thematic underbelly of Into the Spider-Verse.

Exploring the dynamic genres of animation and comic book films, this book examines the transmedia role of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and its critical involvement in attempts to diversify representations in youth-oriented cinema and culture.Several years after the movie’s immense commercial and critical success, a look back on the innovative features of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse shows how the film’s force derives from its thoughtful depiction of Miles Morales – a young, Afro-Latino superhero who must face systemic obstacles his white predecessor nerver worried about. Engaging a web of pressing topics in the field – from transmedia storytelling to identity formation and minority representation – this book offers an accessible analysis of the hypertextual design and animation techniques, which help this film to sensitively confront the combustible dynamics of racial representation in contemporary American youth culture.Written in an approachable style, this book is suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates, and specialists in the field. It is a versatile resource for media studies, film studies, animation studies, and cultural studies courses, but will also appeal to fans seeking to investigate the thematic underbelly of Into the Spider-Verse.

The Breakfast Club is a quintessential teen film. This book analyzes how multiple factors coalesced to solidify the status of The Breakfast Club as one of the most emblematic films of the 1980s and one of the most definitive teen films of the genre. The film brings together genre-defining elements – the conflicts between generations and peer pressure, archetypical characters and breaking down stereotypes, the celebration and survival of adolescence, and the importance of this time in life on the coming-of-age process – and became a significant moment for John Hughes as an auteur and for teen films in the 1980s. More than just embodying these elements of the genre, filmmaker Hughes and the Brat Pack stars helped introduce and popularize multiple generic features that would come to be expected with the teen film formula. The content of the film combined with its context of production in the middle of a boom in teen filmmaking in Hollywood. Meanwhile, the marketing that focused on contemporary music, peer group dynamics, and oppositions between Generation X and baby boomers, merged with an enthusiastic reception by youth audiences. Its endurance speaks to the way the film’s level of importance as a critical, commercial, and influential film with tremendous impact has grown since its initial debut.

Easy A (2010) is the last significant box-office success in the high-school teen movie subgenre and a film that has already been deemed a ‘classic’ by many cultural commentators and popular film critics. By applying interdisciplinary insight to a relatively overlooked movie in academic discussion, Easy A: The End of the High-School Teen Comedy? is the first in-depth volume that places the movie within several key contexts and concepts of intertextuality, gender, genre and adaptation, and social discourse. Through the unpacking of a complex narrative that draws its plot from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and shares affinities with John Hughes’ paradigmatic films from the 1980s and key films from the 1990s, this volume presents Easy A as a palimpsest for the millennial generation. Clear and comprehensive, the book argues that Easy A marks the end of the commercially successful high-school teen comedy and discusses the reasons through a comparative synchronic and semi-diachronic historical comparison of the film with contemporary cinematic texts and those of the 1980s and 1990s.

American Pie represents the most commercially successful example of the vulgar teen comedy, and this book analyses the film's development, audience-appeal and cultural significance.American Pie (1999) is a film that exemplifies that most disparaged of movie genres – the vulgar teen comedy. Largely aimed at young audiences, the vulgar teen comedy is characterised by a brazenly over-the-top humour rooted in the salacious, the scatological and the squirmingly tasteless. In this book, consideration is given to the relationship between American Pie’s success and broad shifts within both the youth market and the film business. Attention is also given to the film’s representations of youth, gender and sexuality, together with the distinctive character of its comedy and the enduring place of such humour in contemporary popular culture. While chiefly focusing on the original American Pie movie, the book also considers the development of the franchise, with discussion of the movie's three sequels and four direct-to-DVD releases. The book also charts the history, nature and appeal of vulgar teen comedy as a whole, providing the first concerted analysis of this generally overlooked category of youth film.Clear, concise and comprehensive, the book is ideal for students, scholars and general readership worldwide.

This book offers a fresh analysis of Before Sunrise that reframes its romance within the contexts of transnational culture and cinema. The book highlights the symbolic value of the film’s construction of transnational youth in the building of a trans-European culture.Engaging with the film’s critical history, this book focuses on its specific view of youth and young love. Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move examines young love within the cultural context of the 1990s in the US and its links with Generation X and the slacker culture. Within a wider scope, it also looks at the history and theory of romantic comedy and its connections with independent cinema. In considering the film a transnational text, this analysis underlines the parallels between a narrative of young love at the end of the 20th century and the construction of a young, or rejuvenated, Europe.Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move provides an invaluable insight into this beloved film for students and researchers in film studies, transnational cinema and youth culture.

This book offers a fresh analysis of Before Sunrise that reframes its romance within the contexts of transnational culture and cinema. The book highlights the symbolic value of the film’s construction of transnational youth in the building of a trans-European culture.Engaging with the film’s critical history, this book focuses on its specific view of youth and young love. Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move examines young love within the cultural context of the 1990s in the US and its links with Generation X and the slacker culture. Within a wider scope, it also looks at the history and theory of romantic comedy and its connections with independent cinema. In considering the film a transnational text, this analysis underlines the parallels between a narrative of young love at the end of the 20th century and the construction of a young, or rejuvenated, Europe.Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move provides an invaluable insight into this beloved film for students and researchers in film studies, transnational cinema and youth culture.

This book helps readers understand Moonlight’s profound political and social importance, the innovative technical choices adopted by director Barry Jenkins and the film’s adoption and disruption of traditional coming-of-age themes through the specific prism of Chiron’s childhood and youth. Moonlight (2016) is an intensely moving and poetically rendered coming-of-age story about a young gay Black boy, Chiron. Highly praised by both critics and audiences internationally, it garnered a surprise Best Picture win at the 2017 Academy Awards, enshrining its significance within a global cinematic canon. This book provides an account of how Moonlight can be situated in relation to African American youth films, contemporary queer cinema and its appeal to the youth market and representations of non-normative childhood and adolescence. It analyses the reception of Moonlight in terms of its form and profound emotional impact on spectators offerning new visions of African American boyhoods while also contributing an extended exploration of the social and political context of the film in relation to Obama, Trump and diversity in filmmaking.Highlighting to students and scholars the powerful emotional pull of Moonlight and why it is a highly significant film, this book is ideal for those interested in critical race studies, queer theory, youth cinema, African American cinema and LGBTQ cinema.

This book provides an examination of Big Wednesday as an unconventional film that employs a mythic sensibility in its representation of the loss of youth and young manhood.Critically and commercially unsuccessful on its original release, the coming-of-age, surf drama Big Wednesday (1978), has undergone a significant reappraisal. It is now considered not only an important contribution to youth cinema, but also the most important film that John Milius ever made. Over six chapters, the book considers questions of authorship, commerce, genre, stardom, and myth, and explores how these ideas intersect with the film’s status as a significant youth movie and collectively how these ideas have contributed to its recent critical rehabilitation. In doing so, the book also provides a much-needed reassessment of an important and overlooked entry in the New Hollywood canon.Exploring Big Wednesday’s subsequent resonance and relevance, this unique study will appeal to students and scholars in film studies, popular culture studies, youth studies, sociology, and media studies.

This concise yet comprehensive study explores the emblematic journey by four young men from Liverpool from the epicentre of teen-led youth culture to the experimentation of the counterculture and beyond. Beginning with the celebration of Britain’s own ‘youthquake’ in the joyous and genre-shifting A Hard Day’s Night (1964), the author delves into how the Beatles’ film work allows us to chart their subsequent musical maturation and retreat from the tribulations of stardom in Help!, their tentative attempts at improvised filming in the televised Magical Mystery Tour (1967), their acceptance of cartoon representations as leaders of the hippie counterculture in Yellow Submarine (1968), and the final implosion of their musical dynamic in the recording studios of Let It Be (1970). The book analyses how, as they grew with their fanbase, the Beatles’ films alternate stylistically between mimetic representation and allegorical interpretation, and switch narratively between fan-filled and welcoming worlds, to films relaying introspection and isolation.Offering an in-depth case study of the successes and failures of British youth culture in a volatile decade, The Beatles and Film is an engaging text for both scholars and general readers alike.

This book examines The Commitments (Parker, 1991) for the first time as a film, rather than an adaptation of Roddy Doyle’s bestselling novel, and as a significant cultural event in 1990s Ireland.A major hit in Ireland and around the world, the film depicts the short-lived attempts of an ensemble of young working-class Dubliners to achieve success as a soul covers band, playing the hits of Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and others, on a mission to ‘bring soul back to Dublin’. Drawing upon interviews with key figures involved in the film and its music, including Roddy Doyle, Angeline Ball, and Bronagh Gallagher, as well as archival research of director Alan Parker’s papers, the book explores questions of authenticity associated with youth, music, class, and culture, and assesses the film’s legacy for the Irish film industry, Irish music scenes, and Irish youth. It also examines the film’s status as a truly transnational production.This concise, yet interdisciplinary case study will be of interest to students and researchers in popular music, cultural studies, and sociology, as well as film and media studies.

This study of Kevin Smith’s debut film breaks new ground by exploring how Clerks sits at the intersection of political and cultural trends relevant to alternative youth cultures in the early 1990s.Clerks (1994) was born of and appeals to a specific youth subculture, with the multimedia ‘View Askewniverse’ developing out of the film’s initial release. Drawing on existing texts and movements such as Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991), Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and alternative rock subcultures that had developed during and since the 1980s, the film presents a comedic take on working as a young person in 1990s America in a manner that was praised for its authenticity. Filmed on a miniscule budget, the roughness of the film’s aesthetic, combined with a hard rock soundtrack comprised of mostly independent bands, convinced many that it could speak for young Americans, much more than polished, corporate Hollywood productions. The book situates the film within this wider cultural movement and cultural zeitgeist and explores the role of working-class youth and employment in the years following Reaganomics and its consequences, as well as providing insight into the film’s presentation of consumption and of its representation of masculinity and sexuality.Clear, concise and comprehensive, the book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in youth cinema, American independent film, Cult Film, Subcultures and Counterculture, as well as both Film and American Studies more broadly.

This book positions King Creole in the disputed territories of 1950s youth culture. It is one of Elvis’s best regarded films, but one of his least financially successful. It is a portrait of youthful alienation and juvenile delinquency made at a time when these topics were becoming less fashionable in teenpics.The author argues that King Creole's release during the death throes of rock and roll in America helps to position it as an outlier among youth films of the time in three distinct ways. First, the author demonstrates how the post-rock and roll release of the film allowed for a better harnessing of the star's 'Elvisness.' Second, the author conducts an extensive examination of the film's production records, which show how the film's portrait of youth alienation and delinquency pre-dated America's big screen fixation on these topics, making the film not wholly bound by concurrent youth conventions. Third, the author challenges the dominant reading of the film as being about intergenerational conflict and asserts that it is about shared grief. This nuanced approach distinguishes King Creole from other 1950s youth-oriented films and explains its enduring critical acclaim despite commercial underperformance.Rich on archival research and textual analysis King Creole: The Disputed Territories of 1950s American Youth Culture will interest both film studies scholars and students. Beyond film studies, this interdisciplinary text is valuable for scholars and students of popular music, American pop culture, celebrity studies, and social history.

Combining a detailed film analysis with archival research and social science approaches, this book examines how American Graffiti (1973), a low-budget and star-less teen comedy by a filmmaker whose only previous feature had been a box office flop, became one of the highest grossing and most highly acclaimed films of all time in the United States, and one of the key expressions of the nostalgia wave washing over the country in the 1970s.American Graffiti: George Lucas, the New Hollywood and the Baby Boom Generation explores the origins and development of the film, its form and themes as well as its marketing, reception, audiences and impact. It does so by considering the life and career of the film’s co-writer and director George Lucas; the development and impact of the baby boom generation to which he, many of his collaborators and the vast majority of the film’s audience belonged; the transformation of the American film industry in the late 1960s and 1970s; and broader changes in American society which gave rise to an intense sense of crisis and growing pessimism across the population.This book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in youth cinema, the New Hollywood and George Lucas as well as both Film and American Studies more broadly.

This concise yet comprehensive study explores the emblematic journey by four young men from Liverpool from the epicentre of teen-led youth culture to the experimentation of the counterculture and beyond. Beginning with the celebration of Britain’s own ‘youthquake’ in the joyous and genre-shifting A Hard Day’s Night (1964), the author delves into how the Beatles’ film work allows us to chart their subsequent musical maturation and retreat from the tribulations of stardom in Help!, their tentative attempts at improvised filming in the televised Magical Mystery Tour (1967), their acceptance of cartoon representations as leaders of the hippie counterculture in Yellow Submarine (1968), and the final implosion of their musical dynamic in the recording studios of Let It Be (1970). The book analyses how, as they grew with their fanbase, the Beatles’ films alternate stylistically between mimetic representation and allegorical interpretation, and switch narratively between fan-filled and welcoming worlds, to films relaying introspection and isolation.Offering an in-depth case study of the successes and failures of British youth culture in a volatile decade, The Beatles and Film is an engaging text for both scholars and general readers alike.

This book provides a critically informed account of the Turkey-born France-based director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut film Mustang (2015), which tells the story of five orphaned sisters living with their grandmother and uncle in a remote Turkish village.The film’s familiar art-house style, and its universalising focus on female coming-of-age and feminist dissent, resulted in celebratory reviews from journalists and scholars of world cinema. Meanwhile, Mustang’s framing of youth in the Turkish national context, and its representation of gender, divided Turkish film critics and cultural theorists. These divisions led to a debate that questions the politics of transnational feminism by criticising the film’s failure to capture the local intricacies of the politics of gender and youth. While this book aims to locate Mustang within the intersection of emerging female and youth narratives in the cinema of Turkey, it also provides a critical understanding of the differences in Mustang’s local and global reception. This focus on the geopolitics of representation informs the diverse criteria this study uses to evaluate Ergüven’s stylistic choices.Engaging with both Anglophone and Turkish literature in youth cinema and gender studies, the book makes an original contribution to current debates on national/transnational cinemas and gender/youth studies and is an accessible reference for graduate and undergraduate study of contemporary film.Elif Akçalı is Associate Professor in Film and TV Studies at Kadir Has University, Turkey. Her research focuses on film aesthetics, videographic criticism, non-fiction film, and gender/sexuality studies.

This book provides a critically informed account of the Turkey-born France-based director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut film Mustang (2015), which tells the story of five orphaned sisters living with their grandmother and uncle in a remote Turkish village.The film’s familiar art-house style, and its universalising focus on female coming-of-age and feminist dissent, resulted in celebratory reviews from journalists and scholars of world cinema. Meanwhile, Mustang’s framing of youth in the Turkish national context, and its representation of gender, divided Turkish film critics and cultural theorists. These divisions led to a debate that questions the politics of transnational feminism by criticising the film’s failure to capture the local intricacies of the politics of gender and youth. While this book aims to locate Mustang within the intersection of emerging female and youth narratives in the cinema of Turkey, it also provides a critical understanding of the differences in Mustang’s local and global reception. This focus on the geopolitics of representation informs the diverse criteria this study uses to evaluate Ergüven’s stylistic choices.Engaging with both Anglophone and Turkish literature in youth cinema and gender studies, the book makes an original contribution to current debates on national/transnational cinemas and gender/youth studies and is an accessible reference for graduate and undergraduate study of contemporary film.Elif Akçalı is Associate Professor in Film and TV Studies at Kadir Has University, Turkey. Her research focuses on film aesthetics, videographic criticism, non-fiction film, and gender/sexuality studies.

Based on the best-selling novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides is director Sofia Coppola’s evocative debut feature of young love, sex, loss and family pressures in mid-1970s America. Acclaimed by both critics and audiences on release, the film is now viewed as a remarkable and bold feature by a significant female director addressing many issues related to youth, female sexuality and family.This book helps readers understand the film’s significance and the stylistic and storytelling choices made by director Coppola. The analysis of the film occurs around three interlocking arguments: the unusual structuring absence in the film, the intricate manner through which music is used in the drama, communication and character creation, and the film’s careful and specific referencing of advertising in the 1970s (the decade of the film’s narrative). The film’s enigmatic structure and unique storytelling devices and their relationship to female adolescence, sexuality and ideology are also considered in depth. Without solving the mysteries of the film, the book is designed to uncover the reasons why the film continues to fascinate viewers so many years after its release.

Gidget: Origins of a Teen Girl Transmedia Franchise examines the multiplicity of books, films, TV shows, and merchandise that make up the transmedia Gidget universe from the late 1950s to the 1980s. The book examines the Gidget phenomenon as an early and unique teen girl franchise that expands understanding of both teen girlhood and transmedia storytelling. It locates the film as existing at the historical intersection of numerous discourses and events, including the emergence of surf culture and surf films; the rise of California as signifier of modernity and as the epicentre of white American middle-class teen culture; the annexation of Hawaii; the invention of Barbie; and Hollywood’s reluctant acceptance of teen culture and teen audiences. Each chapter places the Gidget text in context, looking at production and reception circumstances and intertexts such as the novels of Françoise Sagan, the Tammy series, La Dolce Vita, and The Patty Duke Show, to better understand Gidget’s meaning at different points in time.This book explores many aspects of Gidget, providing an invaluable insight into this iconic franchise for students and researchers in film studies, feminist media studies, and youth culture.

Before the advent of the teenager in the 1940s and the teenpic in the 1950s, The Freshman (Taylor and Newmeyer, 1925) represented 1920s college youth culture as an exclusive world of leisure to a mass audience. Starring popular slapstick comedian Harold Lloyd, The Freshman was a hit with audiences for its parody of contemporary conceptions of university life as an orgy of proms and football games, becoming the highest grossing comedy feature of the silent era. This book examines The Freshman from a number of perspectives, with a focus on the social, economic, and political context that led to the rise of campus culture as a distinct subculture and popular mass culture in 1920s America; Lloyd’s use of slapstick to represent an embodied, youthful middle-class masculinity; and the film’s self-reflexive exploration of the conflict between individuality and conformity as an early entry in the youth film genre.

This study of Kevin Smith’s debut film breaks new ground by exploring how Clerks sits at the intersection of political and cultural trends relevant to alternative youth cultures in the early 1990s.Clerks (1994) was born of and appeals to a specific youth subculture, with the multimedia ‘View Askewniverse’ developing out of the film’s initial release. Drawing on existing texts and movements such as Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991), Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture and alternative rock subcultures that had developed during and since the 1980s, the film presents a comedic take on working as a young person in 1990s America in a manner that was praised for its authenticity. Filmed on a miniscule budget, the roughness of the film’s aesthetic, combined with a hard rock soundtrack comprised of mostly independent bands, convinced many that it could speak for young Americans, much more than polished, corporate Hollywood productions. The book situates the film within this wider cultural movement and cultural zeitgeist and explores the role of working-class youth and employment in the years following Reaganomics and its consequences, as well as providing insight into the film’s presentation of consumption and of its representation of masculinity and sexuality.Clear, concise and comprehensive, the book is ideal for students, scholars and those with an interest in youth cinema, American independent film, Cult Film, Subcultures and Counterculture, as well as both Film and American Studies more broadly.

The 2012 film The Hunger Games and its three sequels, appearing quickly over the following three years, represent one of the most successful examples of the contemporary popularity of youth-oriented speculative film and television series. This book considers "The Hunger Games" as an intertextual field centred on this blockbuster film franchise but also encompassing the successful novels that preceded them and the merchandised imagery and the critical and fan discourse that surrounds them. It explores the place of The Hunger Games in the history of youth-oriented cinema; in the history of speculative fiction centred on adolescents; in a network of continually evolving and tightly connected popular genres; and in the popular history of changing ideas about girlhood from which a successful action hero like Katniss Everdeen could emerge.

Part romantic comedy, part sitcom, part social drama, L’Auberge espagnole (The Spanish Apartment) recounts a familiar ‘youth’ ritual – the move from university to ‘the real world’, the often complicated personal, romantic and cultural encounters that ensue, and the moral uncertainties that characterize that key biological and physiological developmental stage between adolescence and adulthood. French director Cédric Klapisch showcases the extraordinary colour and beauty of Barcelona’s architecture, and places his hero Xavier at the heart of this smartly written film, which makes a series of wry observations on educational exchange programmes, multi-culturalism, and the direction European youth might take in the twenty-first century.This book addresses the topic of Europe’s youth generation, paying particular attention to the ways in which the film depicts the transition from adolescence to adulthood as allegory for the experiences of European society as it moves through periods of readjustment towards uncertain futures. It also looks into the ecosystem of contemporary French cinema, the Erasmus programme and its influence on youth experience, and identity politics in relation to ‘nationhood’ and ‘European-ness’. The book also examines the two sequels to the film – Russian Dolls (2005) and Chinese Puzzle (2013) – and how the complications faced by the main characters across the trilogy suggest that the move to adulthood is a never-ending process of growing up and reaching a level of self-actualization.

Easy A (2010) is the last significant box-office success in the high-school teen movie subgenre and a film that has already been deemed a ‘classic’ by many cultural commentators and popular film critics. By applying interdisciplinary insight to a relatively overlooked movie in academic discussion, Easy A: The End of the High-School Teen Comedy? is the first in-depth volume that places the movie within several key contexts and concepts of intertextuality, gender, genre and adaptation, and social discourse. Through the unpacking of a complex narrative that draws its plot from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and shares affinities with John Hughes’ paradigmatic films from the 1980s and key films from the 1990s, this volume presents Easy A as a palimpsest for the millennial generation. Clear and comprehensive, the book argues that Easy A marks the end of the commercially successful high-school teen comedy and discusses the reasons through a comparative synchronic and semi-diachronic historical comparison of the film with contemporary cinematic texts and those of the 1980s and 1990s.

This book traces the development of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood from its audacious concept through its tenacious production to its celebrated reception, placing it within the context of cinematic parables about children to demonstrate its distinctive vision. Timothy Shary, author of numerous studies on the history of teen cinema, evaluates the film’s many messages about youth and adolescence within the context of early twenty-first century American culture, illuminating how Linklater’s singular vision of the otherwise ordinary life of a boy reveals potent universal truths about all people.

This book offers the first in-depth look at the history, social context, and industrial practices behind this teen musical phenomenon to suggest that social change, especially in terms of gender and sexuality, comes to the surface despite the film’s retro setting, blockbuster business model, and apparent nostalgic tone. The vast audience for this film over the last thirty-five years and the various "hopelessly devoted" fandoms indicate that Grease exceeds both the confines of its period and the limits of any one ideological message.

Clueless: American Youth in the 1990s is a timely contribution to the increasingly prominent academic field of youth film studies. The book draws on the social context to the film’s release, a range of film industry perspectives including marketing, audience reception and franchising, as well as postmodern theory and feminist film theory to assert the cultural and historical significance of Amy Heckerling’s film and reaffirm its reputation as one of the defining teen films of the 1990s. Lesley Speed examines how the film channels aspects of Anita Loos’ 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the 1960s television series Gidget and Jane Austen’s Emma, to present a heightened, optimistic view of contemporary American teenage life. Although seemingly apolitical, Speed makes the case for Clueless as a feminist exploration of relationships between gender, comedy and consumer culture, centring on a contemporary version of the ‘dumb blonde’ type. The film is also proved to embrace diversity in its depiction of African American characters and contributing to an increase in gay teenagers on screen. Lesley Speed concludes her analysis by tracking the rise of the Clueless franchise and cult following. Both helped to cement the film in popular consciousness, inviting fans to inhabit its fantasy world through spinoff narratives on television and in print, public viewing rituals, revivalism and vintage fashion.

This in-depth study of one of the twenty-first century’s most acclaimed films, The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 considers the contribution of David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s film to the understanding of ‘youth’ in a contemporary, digital age. The book starts by situating The Social Network within the contexts of ‘youth film’, arguing that it challenges and reshapes the boundaries of this genre by rethinking the notion of ‘youth’ itself in the present century. It goes on to consider in detail the aesthetics at work in the film, arguing for its critical and reflexive use of an ‘accelerated’ audio-visual style, in order to capture both the new visual regimes of the personal computer era, and the ethical and intellectual ambiguities of Facebook itself as a creation. Finally, it locates the film within the broader visual styles and fashion codes of a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century consumer culture that incorporates and commodifies rebellion and dissent: qualities that underpinned Facebook’s emerging, paradoxical identity as at once the epitome of ‘hacker’ culture and also a multi-billion-dollar global company.Reframing the meaning of youth cinema, this volume in the Cinema and Youth Culture series is ideal for students, researchers and scholars of cinema studies, youth culture and digital cultures.

This in-depth study of one of the twenty-first century’s most acclaimed films, The Social Network: Youth Film 2.0 considers the contribution of David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s film to the understanding of ‘youth’ in a contemporary, digital age. The book starts by situating The Social Network within the contexts of ‘youth film’, arguing that it challenges and reshapes the boundaries of this genre by rethinking the notion of ‘youth’ itself in the present century. It goes on to consider in detail the aesthetics at work in the film, arguing for its critical and reflexive use of an ‘accelerated’ audio-visual style, in order to capture both the new visual regimes of the personal computer era, and the ethical and intellectual ambiguities of Facebook itself as a creation. Finally, it locates the film within the broader visual styles and fashion codes of a late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century consumer culture that incorporates and commodifies rebellion and dissent: qualities that underpinned Facebook’s emerging, paradoxical identity as at once the epitome of ‘hacker’ culture and also a multi-billion-dollar global company.Reframing the meaning of youth cinema, this volume in the Cinema and Youth Culture series is ideal for students, researchers and scholars of cinema studies, youth culture and digital cultures.

Exploring the dynamic genres of animation and comic book films, this book examines the transmedia role of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and its critical involvement in attempts to diversify representations in youth-oriented cinema and culture.Several years after the movie’s immense commercial and critical success, a look back on the innovative features of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse shows how the film’s force derives from its thoughtful depiction of Miles Morales – a young, Afro-Latino superhero who must face systemic obstacles his white predecessor nerver worried about. Engaging a web of pressing topics in the field – from transmedia storytelling to identity formation and minority representation – this book offers an accessible analysis of the hypertextual design and animation techniques, which help this film to sensitively confront the combustible dynamics of racial representation in contemporary American youth culture.Written in an approachable style, this book is suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates, and specialists in the field. It is a versatile resource for media studies, film studies, animation studies, and cultural studies courses, but will also appeal to fans seeking to investigate the thematic underbelly of Into the Spider-Verse.

Exploring the dynamic genres of animation and comic book films, this book examines the transmedia role of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) and its critical involvement in attempts to diversify representations in youth-oriented cinema and culture.Several years after the movie’s immense commercial and critical success, a look back on the innovative features of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse shows how the film’s force derives from its thoughtful depiction of Miles Morales – a young, Afro-Latino superhero who must face systemic obstacles his white predecessor nerver worried about. Engaging a web of pressing topics in the field – from transmedia storytelling to identity formation and minority representation – this book offers an accessible analysis of the hypertextual design and animation techniques, which help this film to sensitively confront the combustible dynamics of racial representation in contemporary American youth culture.Written in an approachable style, this book is suitable for undergraduates, postgraduates, and specialists in the field. It is a versatile resource for media studies, film studies, animation studies, and cultural studies courses, but will also appeal to fans seeking to investigate the thematic underbelly of Into the Spider-Verse.

The Breakfast Club is a quintessential teen film. This book analyzes how multiple factors coalesced to solidify the status of The Breakfast Club as one of the most emblematic films of the 1980s and one of the most definitive teen films of the genre. The film brings together genre-defining elements – the conflicts between generations and peer pressure, archetypical characters and breaking down stereotypes, the celebration and survival of adolescence, and the importance of this time in life on the coming-of-age process – and became a significant moment for John Hughes as an auteur and for teen films in the 1980s. More than just embodying these elements of the genre, filmmaker Hughes and the Brat Pack stars helped introduce and popularize multiple generic features that would come to be expected with the teen film formula. The content of the film combined with its context of production in the middle of a boom in teen filmmaking in Hollywood. Meanwhile, the marketing that focused on contemporary music, peer group dynamics, and oppositions between Generation X and baby boomers, merged with an enthusiastic reception by youth audiences. Its endurance speaks to the way the film’s level of importance as a critical, commercial, and influential film with tremendous impact has grown since its initial debut.

Easy A (2010) is the last significant box-office success in the high-school teen movie subgenre and a film that has already been deemed a ‘classic’ by many cultural commentators and popular film critics. By applying interdisciplinary insight to a relatively overlooked movie in academic discussion, Easy A: The End of the High-School Teen Comedy? is the first in-depth volume that places the movie within several key contexts and concepts of intertextuality, gender, genre and adaptation, and social discourse. Through the unpacking of a complex narrative that draws its plot from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850) and shares affinities with John Hughes’ paradigmatic films from the 1980s and key films from the 1990s, this volume presents Easy A as a palimpsest for the millennial generation. Clear and comprehensive, the book argues that Easy A marks the end of the commercially successful high-school teen comedy and discusses the reasons through a comparative synchronic and semi-diachronic historical comparison of the film with contemporary cinematic texts and those of the 1980s and 1990s.

American Pie represents the most commercially successful example of the vulgar teen comedy, and this book analyses the film's development, audience-appeal and cultural significance.American Pie (1999) is a film that exemplifies that most disparaged of movie genres – the vulgar teen comedy. Largely aimed at young audiences, the vulgar teen comedy is characterised by a brazenly over-the-top humour rooted in the salacious, the scatological and the squirmingly tasteless. In this book, consideration is given to the relationship between American Pie’s success and broad shifts within both the youth market and the film business. Attention is also given to the film’s representations of youth, gender and sexuality, together with the distinctive character of its comedy and the enduring place of such humour in contemporary popular culture. While chiefly focusing on the original American Pie movie, the book also considers the development of the franchise, with discussion of the movie's three sequels and four direct-to-DVD releases. The book also charts the history, nature and appeal of vulgar teen comedy as a whole, providing the first concerted analysis of this generally overlooked category of youth film.Clear, concise and comprehensive, the book is ideal for students, scholars and general readership worldwide.

This book offers a fresh analysis of Before Sunrise that reframes its romance within the contexts of transnational culture and cinema. The book highlights the symbolic value of the film’s construction of transnational youth in the building of a trans-European culture.Engaging with the film’s critical history, this book focuses on its specific view of youth and young love. Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move examines young love within the cultural context of the 1990s in the US and its links with Generation X and the slacker culture. Within a wider scope, it also looks at the history and theory of romantic comedy and its connections with independent cinema. In considering the film a transnational text, this analysis underlines the parallels between a narrative of young love at the end of the 20th century and the construction of a young, or rejuvenated, Europe.Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move provides an invaluable insight into this beloved film for students and researchers in film studies, transnational cinema and youth culture.

This book offers a fresh analysis of Before Sunrise that reframes its romance within the contexts of transnational culture and cinema. The book highlights the symbolic value of the film’s construction of transnational youth in the building of a trans-European culture.Engaging with the film’s critical history, this book focuses on its specific view of youth and young love. Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move examines young love within the cultural context of the 1990s in the US and its links with Generation X and the slacker culture. Within a wider scope, it also looks at the history and theory of romantic comedy and its connections with independent cinema. In considering the film a transnational text, this analysis underlines the parallels between a narrative of young love at the end of the 20th century and the construction of a young, or rejuvenated, Europe.Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move provides an invaluable insight into this beloved film for students and researchers in film studies, transnational cinema and youth culture.