This month in movie history.
While art in any form, be it films or books or music, is sometimes mired in the current or even the next big thing, looking back can afford a glimpse into that very present and future. So this month, I decided to take a little stroll down memory lane and see how things have progressed since my teenage years and what affect the films of yesterday have had on films of today.
25 YEARS AGO:
- The Breakfast Club: Since James Dean bawled “You’re tearing me apart!” in Rebel Without a Cause in 1955, high school teenagers had, for the most part, been largely ignored on the big screen. Sure, you had the thirty-somethings posing as teenagers in the gleeful sex musical Grease, but that was hardly an honest representation of teen angst in the 70s. You had The Graduate and American Graffiti but those were movies about teenagers entering adulthood as they egressed the relative safety their high school years. Not until John Hughes defined the 1980s high school experience with this examination of the multi-clique social structure did teenagers inside the rough-and-tumble world of high school get fair representation. Even if you didn’t identify with any of these characters, continue reading…