It's almost a shameful admission to serious film buffs, but I loved the teenage movies of the 1980s. Love might not even be a strong enough word for it. I adored them. They touched my soul in ways few works of creativity have done.
I grew up in a straight, whitebread existence. The problems of war, race, poverty, and pollution were a world away. Damn it, I was understood by my parents and teachers. All those other things came into the forefront of my attention years later.
In my mid-twenties when the teen movie phenomenon happened, I was a decade older than the targeted audience, but they were the perfect vehicles to help my progression from boy to man. You might say I was a late bloomer.
I liked them all, or nearly all of them, and of course the John Hughes productions were the cream of the crop. I was not unaware of the imperfections in the movies, but I mostly ignored them. Even when it was almost impossible, as when Emilio Estevez shattered the window of a door with a triumphant scream in The Breakfast Club.
I missed Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies when it came out. I finally obtained a used copy and read it over an afternoon.
First off, author Jonathan Bernstein knows his subject. He did his homework and has seen the movies. In some cases numerous times. He is obviously intelligent, and his observations are sometimes very funny. The entire book is very clever.
However, Bernstein gets too clever a lot of the time. He tries so hard to be hip that I got the unpleasant feeling he was showing off.
Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies was published in 1997, and it reeks of that decade more than The Lost Boys does of the 80s. Deconstruction was huge in the 90s, and Bernstein dismantles the movies in an unctuous manner that becomes off-putting very quickly. There were numerous occasions where I had no idea whether he genuinely disliked various movies, or if he was being oh so ironic. I could picture a slovenly, smug, repugnant clone of Ethan Hawke from Reality Bites writing the self-satisfied sentences in this book.
Oh, and there's a chapter about slasher and other teen-centric horror movies. Bernstein writes with confidence about gorehounds and what they liked and disliked about them. I daresay I know a bit more about that sort of thing than him. He misses the mark at almost every turn.
While I laughed here and there in the first third of Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies, by the time I got past the second half I found myself skimming over passages. The book began to make me physically sick.
I didn't hate Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies as much as Teen Movie Hell, by that McBeardo guy, but the definitive look at the much beloved, often reviled teen movie wave of the 80s still needs to be written. Maybe I should do it myself.
Written by Mark Sieber
I grew up in a straight, whitebread existence. The problems of war, race, poverty, and pollution were a world away. Damn it, I was understood by my parents and teachers. All those other things came into the forefront of my attention years later.
In my mid-twenties when the teen movie phenomenon happened, I was a decade older than the targeted audience, but they were the perfect vehicles to help my progression from boy to man. You might say I was a late bloomer.
I liked them all, or nearly all of them, and of course the John Hughes productions were the cream of the crop. I was not unaware of the imperfections in the movies, but I mostly ignored them. Even when it was almost impossible, as when Emilio Estevez shattered the window of a door with a triumphant scream in The Breakfast Club.
I missed Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies when it came out. I finally obtained a used copy and read it over an afternoon.
First off, author Jonathan Bernstein knows his subject. He did his homework and has seen the movies. In some cases numerous times. He is obviously intelligent, and his observations are sometimes very funny. The entire book is very clever.
However, Bernstein gets too clever a lot of the time. He tries so hard to be hip that I got the unpleasant feeling he was showing off.
Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies was published in 1997, and it reeks of that decade more than The Lost Boys does of the 80s. Deconstruction was huge in the 90s, and Bernstein dismantles the movies in an unctuous manner that becomes off-putting very quickly. There were numerous occasions where I had no idea whether he genuinely disliked various movies, or if he was being oh so ironic. I could picture a slovenly, smug, repugnant clone of Ethan Hawke from Reality Bites writing the self-satisfied sentences in this book.
Oh, and there's a chapter about slasher and other teen-centric horror movies. Bernstein writes with confidence about gorehounds and what they liked and disliked about them. I daresay I know a bit more about that sort of thing than him. He misses the mark at almost every turn.
While I laughed here and there in the first third of Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies, by the time I got past the second half I found myself skimming over passages. The book began to make me physically sick.
I didn't hate Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies as much as Teen Movie Hell, by that McBeardo guy, but the definitive look at the much beloved, often reviled teen movie wave of the 80s still needs to be written. Maybe I should do it myself.
Written by Mark Sieber
The author does not allow comments to this entry
No comments