coming of age boyz
DESCRIPTION
A powerpoint presentation for a Media Studies College level (CEGEP) class as a complement to showing "Rebel Without a Cause ", the 1955 film directed by Nicholas Ray. Discusses boy culture, masculinity, stereotypes and coming of age stories in media.TRANSCRIPT
Boy Trouble: Rebellion, Conflict and Coming of Age
Coming of age
Coming of age is the transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies. Such a change is sometimes associated with sexual maturity and/or associated with religious responsibility.
Coming of age
The term coming of age is also used in reference to different media such as stories, songs, movies, etc. that have a young character or characters who, by the end of the story, have developed in some way, through the undertaking of responsibility, or by learning a lesson.
How do we define masculinity? Who do we want men to be?
Who do we want boys to grow up to be?
How do we define Masculinity?
In 1999, Children Now, a California-based organization that examines the impact of media on children and youth, released a report entitled Boys to Men: Media Messages About Masculinity. The report argues that the media’s portrayal of men tends to reinforce men’s social dominance.
The report observes that:
• the majority of male characters in media are heterosexual
• male characters are more often associated with the public sphere of work, rather than the private sphere of the home, and issues and problems related to work are more significant than personal issues
• non-white male characters are more likely to experience personal problems and are more likely to use physical aggression or violence to solve those problems
How do we define Masculinity?
In Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity, Jackson Katz and Jeremy Earp argue that the media provide an important perspective on social attitudes—and that while the media are not the cause of violent behaviour in men and boys, they do portray male violence as a normal expression of masculinity.
How do we define Masculinity?
The portrayal and acceptance of men by the media as socially powerful and physically violent serve to reinforce assumptions about how men and boys should act in society, how they should treat each other, as well as how they should treat women and children.
How do we define Masculinity?
Rebel Without a Cause (USA, 1955) dir. Nicholas Ray
Rebel Without a Cause tells the story of a rebellious teenager played by James Dean, who comes to a town, meets a girl, disobeys his parents, and defies the local high school bullies. It was an attempt to portray the moral decay of American youth, critique parental style, and exploit the differences between generations.
Rebel Without A Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath is a book by psychiatrist Robert Lindner's, published in 1944.
The film Rebel Without a Cause takes its title from the book but has no other relationship to the book.
". . . the psychopath is a rebel without a cause, an agitator without a slogan, a revolutionary without a program: in other words, his rebelliousness is aimed to achieve goals satisfactory to himself alone; lie is incapable of exertions for the sake of others.”
Robert Lindner in Rebel Without A Cause: The Hypnoanalysis of a Criminal Psychopath
Rebel Without a Cause is most remembered as the film that best presented the talent of young charismatic cult star James Dean, shortly before his premature death in 1955. It opened at the Astor Theatre in New York on October 29th, 1955, about a month after the death of Dean (September 30, 1955) on a highway in his sports car.
Rebel affords a classic, semi-glamorized portrait of three troubled, frustrated, anguished, and identity-seeking teenagers - all outsiders, alienated and outcast from the world and values of parents and adults, who attain maturity through rebellion and tragic circumstances. In the film, Dean forms a friendly bond with the other two characters: Wood as confused teenaged Judy, and Mineo as a strange, adoring boy named Plato - the film's sacrificial lamb by film's end.
The reactionary film is considered Hollywood's best 50's film of rebellious and restless youth (sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll) that spawned many other lesser teen exploitation films. It has been surmised that Sal Mineo's teen-aged character in the film was obviously gay and troubled by typical problems of in-the-closet homosexuals in the 50s - the film disguises his problems, but hints at the possibility that he is seeking out Dean's character because he rejects fake machismo.
Partly inspired by Shakespeare's melodrama/tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the narrative film is neatly divided into 5 acts:
• the exposition of the dysfunctional conflict between parents and children - all 3 teens are experiencing serious problems due to a lack of a father figure
• interaction between the teenage characters, both befriending and taunting
• the climactic challenge of the daredevil 'chickie run'• the peaceful and loving, but transitory denouement
following the fatal challenge• and the final tragedy of the last act when the 3 young
people are brought together and only 2 survive to enter into adulthood and maturity
Blackboard Jungle (1955), dir. Richard Brooks
High School Confidential (1958), dir. Jack Arnold
The Graduate (1967) dir. Mike Nichols
Harold and Maude (1971) dir. Hal Ashby
American Graffiti (1973) dir. George Lucas
American Graffiti is a study of the cruising and rock and roll cultures popular among the Post-World War II baby boom generation. The film is a nostalgic portrait of teenage life in the early 1960s told in a series of vignettes, featuring a group of teenagers and their adventures in a single night in August 1962.
American Graffiti (1973) dir. George Lucas
American Graffiti (1973) dir. George Lucas
Themes in American Graffiti
The 1962 setting represents an end of an era in American society and pop culture. The musical backdrop also links between the early years of rock and roll in the mid-late 1950s (Bill Haley & His Comets, Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly) and the early 1960s British Invasion. The setting is also before the outbreaks of the Vietnam War and the Kennedy assassination.
American Graffiti evokes mankind's relationship with machines, notably the elaborate number of hot rods and teenagers' obsession with radio. The inclusion of Wolfman Jack also adds a mysterious and mythological analysis of teenage life in 1962. American Graffiti depicts multiple characters going through a coming of age, such as the decisions to attend college or live in a small town.
Themes in American Graffiti
Roger Ebert praised the film for being "not only a great movie but a brilliant work of historical fiction; no sociological treatise could duplicate the movie's success in remembering exactly how it was to be alive at that cultural instant."
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974) dir. Ted Kotcheff
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz(1974) dir. Ted Kotcheff
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a 1974 Canadian comedy-drama film directed by Ted Kotcheff based on the 1959 novel by Mordecai Richler.
Reluctant army cadet Duddy Kravitz is a brash Jewish kid from Montreal who is determined to "make it” whatever "it" takes. Taking to heart his grandfather's maxim that "a man without land is nobody", Kravitz schemes and dreams and hits on his idea: a lakeshore property in the Laurentian Mountains. To become successful, he often betrays the people who have loved and helped him. He finally gains the land he wants, but loses love and friendship.
The Outsiders is a coming-of-age novel by S. E. Hinton, first published in 1967. Hinton was 15 when she began writing the novel, and 18 when it was published. It is based on one of her friend's experiences.
The book follows two rival groups, the Greasers and the Socs (short for Socials), who are divided by their socioeconomic status.
A film adaptation was produced in 1983, and a short-lived television series appeared in 1990, picking up where the movie left off.
The Outsiders
In spring 1980, Jo Ellen Misakian, a librarian at Lone Star Elementary School in Fresno, California wrote to Francis Ford Coppola. She told him that the students and faculty of her school wanted him to make a movie from a book they all loved very much, The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton.
The Outsiders
• The Outsiders is noted for being the breakout film of many stars: C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, and Diane Lane.
The Outsiders (1983) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
The film centers on the relationship between
the Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke), a revered former gang leader, and his younger brother, Rusty James (Matt Dillon), who can't live up to his brother's great reputation, nor can his brother live it down.
Rumble Fish (1983) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Rumble Fish (1983) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Rumble Fish was directed, produced and co-written by Francis Ford Coppola. It is based on the novel Rumble Fish by S.E. Hinton, who also co-wrote the screenplay.
Coppola wrote the screenplay for the film with Hinton on his days off from shooting The Outsiders. He made the films back-to-back, retaining much of the same cast and crew.
The film is notable for its avant-garde style, shot on stark high-contrast black-and-white film, using the spherical cinematographic process with allusions to French New Wave cinema and German Expressionism. Rumble Fish features an experimental score by Stewart Copeland, drummer of the musical group The Police, who used a Musync, a new device at the time.
Rumble Fish (1983) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
• The theme of time passing faster than the characters realize is conveyed through time-lapse photography of clouds racing across the sky and numerous shots of clocks. The black and white photography was meant to convey the Motorcycle Boy's color blindness while also evoking film noir through frequent use of oblique angles, exaggerated compositions, dark alleys, and foggy streets.
Rumble Fish (1983) dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Footloose (1984) dir. Herbert Ross
Stand by Me (1986) dir. Rob Reiner
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) dir. John Hughes
Scholars have identified different aspects of how the film depicts teachers in popular culture. The authors of Education in Popular Culture write that in "the 1980s, Bauer argues films such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off... represented 'disciplinary intimacy' - the teacher imposes his/her authority, even if...this is masked by an eccentric individualistic persona.” For Martin Morse Wooster, the film simply "portrayed teachers as humorless buffoons.” Tara Brabazon writes that the "impact of...Ferris Bueller's Day Off serves to render invisible the female teacher from popular culture."
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) dir. John Hughes
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) dir. John Hughes
Regarding not specifically teachers, but rather a type of adult characterization in general, Art Silverblatt asserts that the "adults in Ferris Bueller's Day Off are irrelevant and impotent. Ferris's nemesis, the school disciplinarian, Mr. Rooney, is obsessed with 'getting Bueller.' His obsession emerges from envy. Strangely, Ferris serves as Rooney's role model, as he clearly possesses the imagination and power that Rooney lacks....By capturing and disempowering Ferris, Rooney hopes to...reduce Ferris's influence over other students, which would reestablish adults, that is, Rooney, as traditional authority figures.”
Nevertheless, Silverblatt concludes that "Rooney is essentially a comedic figure, whose bumbling attempts to discipline Ferris are a primary source of humor in the film.”
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) dir. John Hughes
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) dir. John Hughes
Silverblatt also remarks that casting "the principal as a comic figure questions the competence of adults to provide young people with effective direction--indeed, the value of adulthood itself.”
Adults are not the stars of the film; Roz Kaveney notes that what "Ferris Bueller brings to the teen genre, ultimately, is a sense of how it is possible to be cool and popular without being rich or a sports hero. Unlike the heroes of Weird Science, Ferris is a computer savvy without being a nerd or a geek - it is a skill he has taken the trouble to learn.”
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) dir. John Hughes
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) dir. John Hughes
Project Bueller, 2008
Artists Mina Karimi and Kara Suhey founded Project Bueller to recreate the parade scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Their project took place at the Village Halloween Parade, where costumed lookalikes stood in for Ferris, Sloane Peterson, Cameron Frye, and the "Beer Maid Brigade." Of course, they all sang "Twist and Shout." All in all, a rousing success.
The Lost Boys (1987) dir. Joel Schumacher
Dead Poets Society (1989) dir. Peter Weir
Boyz n the Hood (1991) dir. John Singleton
Dazed and Confused (1993) dir. Richard Linklater
Good Will Hunting (1997) dir. Gus Van Sant
Finding Forrester (2000) dir. Gus Van Sant
Drumline (2002) dir. Charles Stone III
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)Dir. Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess
C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) dir. Jean-Marc Vallée
Superbad (2007) dir. Greg Mottola
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) dir. Danny Boyle
The Blind Side (2009) dir. John Lee Hancock
The Blind Side (2009) dir. John Lee HancockThe Blind Side: Evolution of a Game is a book by
Michael Lewis released in 2006 about American football. It features 2 dominant story lines: The first is about how offensive football strategy has evolved over the past 3 decades.
The second storyline features Michael Oher, the former left tackle for the Ole Miss football team, and current right tackle for the Baltimore Ravens.
Lewis follows Oher from his impoverished upbringings through his years at Briarcrest Christian School, his adoption by Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy and on to his position as one of the most highly coveted prospects in college football.