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Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie
Gender, Genre and Identity
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Book Presentation:
An analysis of the Hollywood Teen Movie from a variety of key theoretical perspectives
Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie is the first academic monograph to consider the aesthetic and narrative potential of this highly popular, yet often overlooked, film genre. Reconsidering tropes such as the male juvenile delinquent figure, the makeover and the teen vampire, the book uses a series of detailed case studies of key films like Rebel Without a Cause, Grease, Heathers and Twilight to explore the genre’s relation to key critical concepts of intersectionality, postfeminism and the posthuman, and provides an innovative overview of the Hollywood teen movie and its construction of teen identity.
Case studies include:
• Rebel Without a Cause (Nicolas Ray, 1955)
• Grease (Randel Kleiser, 1978)
• Heathers (Mark Lehmann, 1989)
• Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986)
• She’s All That (Robert Iscove, 1999)
• Mean Girls (Mark Waters, 2004)
• American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973)
• Dirty Dancing (Emile Ardolino, 1987)
• Easy A (Will Gluck, 2010)
• Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2001)
• Twilight (Catherine Hardwicke, 2008)
• Chronicle (Josh Trank, 2012)
About the Author:
Frances Smith is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Sussex. She is the author of 'Rethinking the Hollywood Teen Movie' (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), which combines close textual analysis and critical theory to argue that the genre possesses a distinct narrative and aesthetic.
Press Reviews:
Smith’s work here is distinctively knowledgeable, and it will be highly valued among the evolving studies of youth cinema. The genre needs some rethinking, and Smith delivers in her analysis with cogent insights, solid research, and significant aesthetic perspectives that other surveys have elided.– Timothy Shary, author of Generation Multiplex (2002; 2014) and Teen Movies (2005)
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
> From the same author:
Bande de Filles (2023)
Girlhood Identities in Contemporary France
Trans Representations in Contemporary, Popular Cinema (2022)
The Transgender Tipping Point
by Niall Richardson and Frances Smith
Subject: Sociology
The Films of Amy Heckerling (2016)
Dir. Frances Smith and Timothy Shary
Subject: Director > Amy Heckerling
> On a related topic:
Hollywood High (2025)
A Totally Epic, Way Opinionated History of Teen Movies
by Bruce Handy
Subject: Countries > United States
Dirty Real (2024)
Exile on Hollywood and Vine with the Gin Mill Cowboys
Subject: Countries > United States
Stealing the Show (2016)
African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood
Subject: Countries > United States
A Divided World (2011)
Hollywood Cinema and Emigré Directors in the Era of Roosevelt and Hitler, 1933-1948
by Nick Smedley
Subject: Countries > United States
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