From Reaganomics to Nirvana: Teen Movies of the 1980s, Featuring The Brat Pack

This course is a media studies, genre-based look at the movies of the 1980s as a way of understanding the way the era’s youth, who would come to be known as Generation X, defined their identities amidst the turbulent political climate of the 1980s.  Fundamental to this era is the “Brat Pack”—a group of young actors placed together in a sarcastic nod to the earlier “Rat Pack.”  While the Rat pack was coolness personified, the Brats of the Brat pack were more angst-filled, more slacker-ish, less polished.  The term was first popularized in a 1985 New York Magazine cover story, which described a group of roughly interchangeable, but already highly successful and rich, teen stars.Common themes of the brat pack were coming of age, high school/college/young professionalism, love stories, and outsider vs. insider cliques. One very important issue to discuss is the issue of class and race in defining Gen-X.Why is Gen-X largely seen in the movies as upper-class (or is it?) and white?Are there exceptions to this rule, and if so, why and how?How much of the group is gendered female and/or feminist?Finally, what happened to the Brat Pack?According to some, it was replaced in the late 90s by the “Frat Pack”—movies starring actors like Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell.Does the teen-angst movie get replaced by the more sophomoric humor of movies like Old School for a reason?

The course is a FILM course.This means we will primarily watch films (most of which are easily rentable on DVD).We will not, however, watch the films DURING class (except to watch clips that are important to the day’s discussion).You will be expected to watch the movies.We will have a screening of the week’s movie at an alternate time to class, which will be as convenient as possible to people’s schedules.The movies will also be available on Library Reserve for an overnight check out.There will also be critical articles that you will read, which are required to pass the course.

This is NOT a “film appreciation” slacker course.It will be significantly grounded in film theory, media studies and cultural philosophy.Rigorous intellectual development is a requirement for success in the course.Merely “showing up” will not get you a good grade.Since this is an era-based course, we will watch the movies in chronological order.Sometimes the chronology works for us and sometimes against us.Sometimes, the construct of “The 80s” isn’t quite accurate, either.We will discuss how eras are both part of and an extension of the era that comes before and after.

Grades:
Essays:2, out of class, 20% each
Mid Term Exam:multiple choice, short answer, textual IDs 20%
Final Exam:multiple choice, short answer, textual IDs 20%
Class participation:10%
Critical Theory Article Review Presentation:10%

Required Texts (all are available on Course Reserve)

Generation X: Tales For an Accelerated Culture.Douglas Copeland 1991.
Course Packet:Selected Critical Readings
Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
The Outsiders (1983)
Sixteen Candles (1984)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
St. Elmo’s Fire (1985)
Pretty in Pink (1986)
Less Than Zero (1987)
Heathers (1989)
Say Anything (1989)
Singles (1992)
Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

Week One: Course Intro.

Watching: Fast Times at Ridgemont High Reading, Packet: Hugh H. Davis. “I Was a Teenage Classic: Literary Adaptation in Turn-of-the-Millennium Teen Films” The Journal of American Culture 29 (1), 52–60.

Week Two:

Watching: The Outsiders Reading, Packet: Scott Snyder. “Epidemiology and Criminology.” Adolescence, 30 (1995) pp.

Week Three:

Watching: Sixteen Candles Reading, Packet: Ann DeVaney.“Pretty in Pink? John Hughes Reinscribes Daddy’s Girl” from Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood.Frances K. Gateward, Murray Pomerance, Eds. 2002.pp.

Week Four:

Watching: The Breakfast ClubReading, Packet: Reading From: Timothy Shary. Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. pp

Week Five:

Watching: St. Elmo’s Fire Reading, Packet: Karutani, Michiko. “What Is Hollywood Saying About the Teenage World Today,” The New York Times, April 22, 1984, Section 2, pp. 1 and 22.

Week Six:

Watching: Pretty in Pink

Paper One Due

Week Seven:

Watching: Less Than ZeroReading, Packet: Nicki Sahlin “‘But This Road Doesn’t Go Anywhere’: the Existential Dilemma in Less Than Zero” Critique.33(1991).pp

Week Eight:

Watching: Heathers Reading, Packet:Lawrence Grossberg “Rockin’ with Reagan, or the Mainstreaming of Postmodernity.” Cultural Critique 10(1988)123-149.

Week Nine:

Watching: Say Anything Reading, Packet: Sherry B. Ortner. “Generation X: Anthropology in a Media-Saturated World” Cultural Anthropology, 13:3(1998) 414-440.

Week Ten:

Reading Generation X:Douglas Copeland

Week Eleven:

Watching: Singles Reading, Packet: Kristin Schilt.“Riot Grrrl Is:Contestation Over Meaning in a Music Scene.” From:Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual Andy Bennett, Richard A. Peterson. Eds.115-130.

Paper Two Due

Week Twelve:

Watching: Not Another Teen Movie Reading, Packet:Selection from EG Traube Dreaming Identities: Class, Gender, and Generation in 1980s Hollywood Movies. 1992.

Final Exam: TBA