By Kayla Hoang, Staff Writer
Today, movies, TV shows, and other forms of media are a crucial part of what information we consume as a society. It’s no surprise that a lot of these types of media are aimed at high school students today, despite the often exaggerated and inaccurate portrayals of modern-day youth.
When I watch something with teenagers involved, I’m expecting to see someone close to my age or dealing with the same obstacles in everyday life. Despite the rare actually good coming-of-age examples here and there, most of what we’re given is a poorly written cliche of what grown-ups expect us to look and act like.
For most teenagers, we see most of these examples lying in the TV shows and movies we watch, especially in how adults attempt to depict the youth. A major problem that most people have already pointed out is the noticeable age gap between actors and the characters that they’re supposed to be playing.
TV shows have Gossip Girl or Thirteen Reasons Why where the actors are all range from early 20s to 30s, much too conspicuous a difference for people playing characters a decade below their actual age. Even in iconic high school movies like Mean Girls, for example, had actresses in their mid-20s playing the main characters!
Hollywood tends to glamorize the people in their movies and shows, so it’s no surprise that they’ll do the same to teenage characters in the entertainment industry.
However, the issue here is that most teenagers in the real world still lie in that awkward phase between prepubescence and adolescence. Having 20-something-year-old models with ideal figures, clear skin, and designer clothing give off the impression that they’re supposed to look like us does nothing to quell that insecurity.
General appearance isn’t the only problem. Let’s also pay attention to what adults assume kids seem to be doing in their free time. There seems to be two types of story lines when it comes to media and their teenage characters.
We have the one where they focus only on the teenagers and their journey through life and school in general, yet without realistic events like homework or tests.
Instead, these characters have deep connections with their teachers (do any of us actually talk to our teachers about anything other than grades outside of class?), and are separated by ridiculously over-simplified cliques (there are like, five cliques that apparently define the whole teenage population). High school is difficult, yes, but it’s definitely doesn’t require some kind of battle strategy to figure out your social standing.
True, bullying and cliques are things that totally exist in high school, but they aren’t nearly as exaggerated or segregated as the media seems to constantly play it out to be.
Back when Breakfast Club first released in 1985, the trope on cliques and bullying may have been accurate, but most adults fail to realize that the high school complex changes over time. Not everyone can be simply separated into “a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, or a criminal” anymore, and plenty of us fall into more than one sub-group.
The other type we see are the high-school-based shows and movies where the characters spend 1% of their time in high school and the rest of their time solving some murder mystery (i.e. Riverdale, Pretty Little Liars) or figuring out some strange supernatural event (i.e. Teen Wolf, Vampire Diaries) in their small, East-coast town where “nothing ever happens”.
What is it with Hollywood and small towns in the eastern side of the US always being a premise for these?. These are the same shows and movies that make the kids seem like complete geniuses while the adults are completely incompetent to take care of their kids.
It’s not just what the entertainment industry is portraying what teenagers look like and their actions, but also their personalities are so incredibly unrealistic. Writers seem to believe that anything teenagers say falls into some overly-deep and profound dialogue (I’m looking at you, John Green) or overdresses a character’s words to the point of pretentiousness (cough Riverdale cough).
There are still plenty of good examples where writers and actors can accurately portray teenagers of this day and age. But towards those that still struggle with representing its teenage demographic, maybe its a good idea to attempt understanding their audience first before jumping into a predictable stereotype.
