How the Film & TV Industry is Starting to Really Get Teens

Hollywood has always had a difficult time portraying teenagers in an accurate manner. Granted, movies and television generally present fantastical lives of all kinds of people that don’t resemble anything close to reality. Actual doctors don’t get so intrinsically involved in their patients’ personal lives, cops don’t play elaborate cat and mouse games with suspects, and struggling college grads don’t live in spacious New York apartments. But teenagers especially get painted in ways so far off the norm that it borders on the ludicrous.

Back in the ’50s and ’60s, teen films became a big thing as the targeting of niche audiences started to take place in the business plans of major studios. Despite that, most of the actors who were cast as teens in the likes of Rebel Without a Cause and Blackboard Jungle were well into their 20’s. Sometimes, the leads were even in their early 30’s. Much of this had to do with unions, and the longer hours adults could work versus teens, but often it was just laziness. Russ Tamblyn was closer to 30 than 20 when he played teen gang leader Riff in West Side Story. Olivia Newton-John was 30 when she played Sandy in 1978’s big-screen version of Grease. And the receding hairlines of the teens in Porky’s and Revenge of the Nerds were almost as overt as the farcical elements of those comedies.

John Hughes is credited with starting the trend towards savvier teen films in the 80s. His films like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club presented detailed portrayals of teens that rang truer than most anything Hollywood had done before. Nonetheless, many of his screenplays were still chock full of laughable improbabilities. In Some Kind of Wonderful, teenage lead Keith (Eric Stoltz) withdraws his entire college fund to buy diamond earrings for a rich girl (Lea Thompson). With that kind of thinking, Keith probably should’ve taken some remedial math classes before thinking of furthering his education. Some psychology classes, too.

In the new Millennium, ABC’s Glee advanced the cause of serious teen stories, particularly with its sensitive treatment of gay characters like Kurt (Chris Colfer). Yet on what planet would a high school football team allow a kid in a wheelchair like Artie (Kevin McHale) to suit up and take the field? In such moments, Glee rang utterly false.

Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why has made valiant attempts to treat teen suicide with immediacy and sensitivity yet was still dunderheaded enough to showcase a gaggle of girls posing together in front of the locker of the show’s suicide victim and then joyously uploading the pic on Instagram. Such a move would have been reviled by their peers and most kids would’ve been savvy enough to avoid such horrid behavior. Still, the show tried to be relevant and accurate about a very difficult subject. It’s just that in such ventures, two steps backwards often accompany a significant step forward.

Films have done better in the last few years with the portrayal of teens, highlighted by such indie hits as Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird and Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. Both films truly raised the bar and were hits with audiences young and old. Both were comedies too, yet neither movie laughed at its female protagonist more than it laughed with them. Empathy was the discriminating factor, and both of the young filmmakers behind these sublime efforts made sure that their characters learned from their mistakes without ever being wholly humiliated by them.

In Lady Bird, high school senior Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) is head-strong and smart-mouthed, and such hubris leads her to make a number of genuinely misguided decisions. She pretends to be a one-percenter to get in good with the rich kids, as well as throws herself at a blasé classmate named Kyle (Timothee Chalamet). Kyle acts “too cool for school” which makes him catnip for Christine. Then, in a somewhat rash decision, she goes to bed with him after he’s told her they’re both virgins. After the awful sexual experience, he confesses to her that he’s done the deed with a number of partners already. She’s pissed, but she’s not punished irrevocably for her mistake. No STD, no unwanted teen pregnancy, no humiliation amongst her peers. Life isn’t always that dramatic and Lady Bird found the story in the quieter reactions after that debacle.

It’s moments like this that help such teen-themed films ring truer. In many teen films, such a betrayal would have sent the heroine reeling, but not Christine. Instead, she has a good cry with her mom and then picks herself right back up and goes on living, enjoying her life as a teen. She even ends up gleefully going to the prom with her best friend, not worrying at all about showing up stag at the dance.

Burnham works similar wonders with his lead character Kayla (Elsie Fisher) in Eighth Grade. She’s trying to be a cool kid, one who gives out advice to others about surviving school in her homemade YouTube videos. Those vids are Kayla’s way of overcompensating as she’s just as insecure as everyone else in her class. Kayla is mortified by most of her daily interactions with others while desperately trying to present a  picture of composure, and that’s where Burnham laughs with her, not at her. Everything is a big deal at that age, and we laugh out of such experiences that are universal. She’s relatable to girls and boys as everyone has gone through it in school.

One of the funniest and most touching moments in the story occurs when Kayla attends a classmate’s pool party. She’s so worried about how she looks in her green one-piece, she almost can’t breathe. But then when Kayla finally makes her way down to the pool, no one pays her any real mind at all. They’re so self-absorbed, they don’t have time to consider this interloper in their midst. She is just another kid in the pool, nothing more, nothing less. It’s a reckoning for Kayla, but it doesn’t devastate her more than anything else in school. And by the end of her journey, she’ll be a little cooler than she was before, finally learning to walk the walk one step at a time.

This spring, first-time filmmaker Olivia Wilde struck comedy gold with Booksmart, the story of two A students (Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever) having a wild time out on the town the night before their high school graduation ceremony. Of course, they get involved in all sorts of shenanigans, from getting high to a run-in with a serial killer, but these two smart teens maintain most of their integrity and dignity throughout. Significantly, neither girl in the story is defined by a boyfriend, and it’s their friendship which is the key relationship at play here.

Perhaps one of the keys to telling a well-told teen story is to focus on female characters as the three aforementioned films have done. Girls mature faster than boys do, of course, and that likely allows for smarter character arcs. No matter though, the presentation of these characters and their worlds were all more grounded and recognizable than is the norm. Even with some of the same cliquish stereotypes at play around the leads that have permeated every teen comedy from Animal House to American Pie to Mean Girls, Gerwig, Burnham, and Wilde presented these tropes with more nuance and complexity. In doing so, their comedies never became too cartoonish.

That’s not to say that teen-themed films or series cannot push the boundaries of genre. Shows like Riverdale, the modern, angsty take on the beloved Archie comics characters, play exceedingly well in the melodramatic mystery space. Some of its soapier elements rival the best of the primetime soaps from the 80s and 90s, but the series presents subtler moments with equal aplomb. Despite being adapted from the funny pages, no character in the show comes off like a caricature. And because of that, it’s one of the CW’s biggest hits.

HBO’s new show Euphoria is melodramatic too. Its story of a teen girl returning home from drug rehab has stirred a ton of controversy, mostly due to plenty of full-frontal male nudity and overt sexual situations. Those elements are really just window-dressing, and its portrayal of addict Rue (Zendaya) and her classmates is where the real meat of the show lies, as well as a large part of the controversy.

It has a genuine edge and it comes mostly from the fact that Rue is an antihero, one as flawed as the likes of Don Draper or Jessica Jones. In the first half of the season, she hasn’t given up drugs at all and lying is as much a part of her life as craving a high. Zendaya, the talented former Disney TV star, refuses to sentimentalize her portrayal of Rue and keeps her at arms’ length from the audience. It’s daring for a show to center around such an antagonizing protagonist as Rue, but it makes for a teen tale that is more much compelling than most.

Euphoria also succeeds in its portrayal of the teens surrounding Rue. Each is flawed in ginormous ways, yet while they can be repellant, they’re also wholly recognizable. Interestingly, one of the most admirable characters happens to be Rue’s drug dealer Fezco (Angus Cloud). He may be making a killing selling all sort of illegal substances to his classmates, but he feels haunting guilt over hooking his friend Rue.

The show also does a brilliant job in its handling of the trans teen Jules. Played by trans actress Hunter Shafer, the show makes no attempt to present the character as a saint. Jules may be smart, funny, and empathetic, but she’s got a bad habit of picking up dangerous men online and such peccadilloes have led to her being abused and blackmailed. She’s like the rest of the characters in the show, neither good nor bad, but human.

Schafer happened to be discovered via a casting call that went out for the series on Instagram, and not surprisingly, the series is equally adroit in showcasing the impact social media has on its characters. Texting, sexting, sharing explicit photos, it’s all part of their narrative, but the show doesn’t overly scold their ripe sexual behavior. These teens may be 16 going on 40, but they’re still kids in most ways. They want to be liked, loved, and find worthy experiences in a world that seems to be lying in ruins around them.

None of this is driven home more than by the adult characters in the series. Show creator Sam Levinson knows apples don’t fall far from the tree, and indeed, most of the parents in the show are just as flawed as their kids. Levinson, who has written and directed most of the episodes, is a masterful storyteller, adding layers upon layers to the multitude of characters that his story juggles. He also ensures that each episode is shot, cut, and scored just as richly.

Euphoria is the sharpest of teen shows currently running, but it never feels exclusively aimed at them. Its under 21 audience is huge, of course, but the series has been a hit with adults too. It proves that when it comes to attracting an audience, human stories are human stories, and they’re eminently relatable no matter the age, sex, color, or creed of the characters.