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Note: This text was originally part
of a 1990 essay, “Some Kind of Wonderful: An Introduction to the Contemporary
Teen Movie”. For the surrounding discussion of the teen genre as a whole, a
74-page PDF of heretofore unpublished material written in 1989-1990 is now
available exclusively to supporters of my Patreon campaign for this website: www.patreon.com/adrianmartin
A Complete Teen Movie
The contemporary teen movie exists
on a continuum that runs between the apparent extremes of this (loose) genre:
at the one end, the respectable teen dramas
(like Dead Poets Society, 1989), at
the other the dirty’ comedies (like Meatballs,
1979). How best to deal with such different kinds of films? Fortunately, the range of the
form can be illustrated within a single, handy example: Stand By Me.
Those who are primarily versed in
the literature devoted to teenage
experience – J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In the Rye, Carson McCullers’ Member
of the Wedding, S.E.
Hinton’s novels, and so on – would have no
problem approaching Stand By Me. It concerns itself with the classic theme of teen
literature, variously known as coming of age, loss of innocence, or rite of passage – in other words, the drama (or
comedy) of a teenager (or group of teenagers) growing up, acquiring
painful human experience, attaining a
measure of adult maturity. On TV, the series The Wonder Years (1988-1993) provided a perfect contemporary illustration of this perennial thematic concern.
Stand
By Me, like much
teen literature, is about the experience of
leaving behind, for the first time, the protective realm of childhood
fantasies and encountering the facts of adult life – primarily, in this case, the hard fact of human mortality, the reality
of death. The entire narrative is structured around the adventure, for a group
of kids, of going into the woods to track
down a dead body. Their literal journey into the dark unknown – marked by the
train tracks stretching far out in front of them – is also a metaphorical
journey, into themselves, their relationships with each other, and the mysteries
of adult life. As Tom Ryan astutely noted in the short-lived Australian
magazine Freeze Frame, the film can
be seen as a “bittersweet fable about the recognition of mortality, and about
the passing of time and of friendships”.
These kids
indeed lose their innocence, but the film ultimately takes a complex, ambivalent
attitude toward this movement into adult life. If they forfeit their childish
fantasies, one senses they also, in the process, lose their capacity to love
and be affectionate with one another in a free and naturally physical way. Are
they on their way to becoming the brutal
macho swaggerers incarnated in a mirroring group of older teens?
In its style, Stand By Me is a predominantly
naturalistic film. Its main characters, at least, are fleshed out psychologically, and they move about
in a believably real world. (Indeed, it was this verisimilitude that, for some reviewers, raised the film far above their idea of the average teen movie. I do not share that opinion!) The film’s tone of
seriousness, wistfulness and reflectiveness is guaranteed by the framing device
showing Richard Dreyfuss as Gordie, one of
the central boys in his adult years and now a writer by profession,
learning of the death of his best childhood friend (Chris played by River
Phoenix), and then proceeding to remember. As in The Wonder Years, the narrating adult voice, appearing at key
moments of the story, affords us a crucial perspective on events a
perspective by turns ironic, affectionate, indulgent and wise.
So here we
have, in respect to Reiner’ s teen movie, a certain kind of film appreciation that could
best be called classical, taking its inspiration largely from standard literary
or dramatic criticism and adapting it to the medium of film. That is, we looks
at a film in order to find its underlying theme, and how that theme has been expressed
through the character interactions and the events of the story. Crucially, we look for the attitude that the filmmakers are asking us to take towards
what we see and hear: are we meant to be
critical, ironic, indulgent, teary-eyed?
This attitude of the work will be
expressed not necessarily in the dialogue of the characters (a common
interpretative mistake), but rather in all
the gestures of the film’s style and
construction: the way the story has been ordered, the kind of shots, editing and
music chosen, and so on. This an honourable (if sometimes rote) manner of film
study, and can be used to uncover the riches of many fine teen movies, such as River’s Edge (1986), Risky
Business (1983), The Breakfast Club (1985), The Beat (1988), Sweet Lorraine (1987), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Amy Heckerling, 1982), The Outsiders (1983), Old Enough (1984), Purple Haze (David Burton Morris, 1982) and Permanent Record (1988), to name only a few.
However, there is a remarkable scene in the
middle of Stand By Me that forces us to see it as, at least
momentarily, a different kind of
teen movie, one that requires a different critical approach. Tellingly, it is a
scene that some reviewers
managed to ignore altogether in their praiseworthy accounts – as it were just
too bizarre, too out of character for the rest of the film. It is the scene
when Gordie tells the imaginary
story of a boy nicknamed Lardass at a pie
eating contest.
Reiner
visualises this story in
its full, grotesque splendour –
almost (I suspect) as a calculated affront directed at those cultured
filmgoers whose worst nightmare is to be trapped watching a typical gross-out teen flick. The scene condenses
everything that people hate in such movies:
gross motives (revenge), shamelessly stereotyped
characters (Lardass as the ultimate fat boy), exaggerated filmic style
(deliberately distorted sounds and overripe colours) and, finally, a spectacle
of unreal proportions and astonishing vulgarity – the “complete and total barf-o-rama” (as Gordie well describes
it) in which everyone on stage and in the crowd vomits uncontrollably
over each other. This scene can be profitably used as a cultural acid test on any given group of film viewers – people either
love it or hate it. (Count me among the lovers.)
In this way, Stand By Me provides a valuable lesson
in relativity. Realism,
naturalism, a subdued filmic style, believable characters, a period setting, a
serious theme – these are not always the elements that go to make up
interesting, lively or inventive popular cinema. A certain regime of cinematic
fantasy is just as central to the workings of our culture – what are
often called those pop films full of stereotyped characters,
wish-fulfillment scenarios and over-the-top stylistics. Into this
category go virtually all the teen movies of the prolific American filmmaker
John Hughes (including Sixteen Candles [1984], Weird Science [1985] and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off [1986]), and many others including Three O’Clock High (Phil Joanou, 1987), I Wanna Hold Your Hand (Robert Zemeckis, 1978), Joy of
Sex (Martha Coolidge, 1984) and Tuff Turf (Fritz Kiersch, 1984).
MORE Reiner: The Story of Us, Ghosts of Mississippi, The Sure Thing
© Adrian Martin
March 1990
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