This weekend sees the release of New Moon, the latest film installment of Stephanie Meyer’s abstinence vampires saga. However, Twilight is just the latest in a long, glorious line of crazy pop culture phenomena aimed at teenagers. Here are some of Tangled Up In Wires’ favorite bits of teenage ephemera, presented in no particular order:
1. The Beatles – Its hard to remember now that The Beatles have become THE BEATLES, but there was a time when they were nothing more than a silly, passing fad, playing earnest pop songs for shrieking girls. My Dad went to go see them in 1966 and swears that you couldn’t hear the music over the yelling. The Beatles sparked a decade of bands with similar schticks pitched at similar audiences, ranging from prefab teen wonders like The Monkees to bands with similar artistic trajectories like The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones. Over time, The Beatles sound would evolve and the band would transcend mere phenomenon to become something even bigger, but, as captured in the film A Hard Day’s Night, there was a time when The Beatles were nothing more than the Edward Cullen of their day.
2. Animorphs/Goosebumps – Two sides of the same glorious 1990s coin, Animorphs and Goosebumps developed many a young person’s sense of science-fiction and horror. Neither has held up great (except in the sepia tone of nostalgia), but Animorphs had an engaging, ongoing narrative and mythology while Goosebumps was, at times, legitimately terrifying. Neither inspired the same levels of hysteria as Twilight, but its nice to remember a time when children’s literature could still be scary.
3. TGIF – Television has long been an outlet for teen sensations, but, given the ages of Tangled Up in Wires’ contributors, we’re partial to ABC’s TGIF block of sitcoms. Featuring light, frothy comedy that younger audiences could enjoy with their parents, TGIF launched such token bits of 1990s culture as Boy Meets World, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Full House, and Family Matters. In retrospect, they all seem overly simplistic and gentle, but just mention Urkel or Cory Matthews in a conversation with someone in their 20s and then dig in for a half hour of hardcore reminiscing.
4. The WB/Prime Time Soaps – On the other end of the television spectrum, soapy dramas like Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place became phenomena by aiming at a more glamorious, yet darker picture of the teenage experience. Those shows were so popular that they inspired an entire network: The WB. The WB doubled down on the teen soap trend of the 1990s, creating minor superstars like James Van Der Beek and Keri Russell and carving out a niche for itself. They also took a chance on a quirky high school drama that filtered mopey teen angst through the lens of supernatural horror; Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s take on high school drama provided an outlet for high school outcasts and became its own off-beat phenomenon.
5. Comic Books – Before Art Spiegelman and Alan Moore, comic books were the realm of the teenager. Hours and hours of school bus trips were filled with debates over whether Superman would beat Batman in a fight (for the record, Bruce Wayne is a billionaire, do you think he would have a hard time finding some kryptonite?), while Marvel found a market by tapping into the fears and malaise of the average high schooler. Even as they’ve advanced artistically, its been hard for comics to shake their image as a phase for teenage boys to grow out of.
6. AIM – Now that Time Magazine has done an article about Twitter and your Mom is on Facebook (not a lame insult, but a fact), its hard to remember back when only young people used the Internet for social networking. AIM was in many ways a predecessor to the flood of social networking sites, giving users the ability to interact with friends without leaving the comfort of their desktop. The program has now been overtaken by Facebook and Gchat, but buddy icons and that high pitched chime were a crucial part of many a post-millenial adolescence.
7. Elvis – One important element of most teen phenomena is that they shock and horrify parents. Looking back now, Elvis seems so innocent, a twangy charmer who just wants a nice girl and a clean pair of blue suede shoes. But the hysteria and frenzy he inspired among 1950s youth terrified parents, who had never seen anything quite like him or his swiveling hips. His mix of innocence and sexual power is not unlike a certain group of teen idols who wear purity rings while spraying white foam all over concertgoers (the actual link on Idolator isn’t working b/c of the change of hands there, but the Elbo.ws thing gives you the jist).
8. Titanic – You can spend hundreds of millions of dollars and work for years on a movie, but at a certain point it’s up to fate to decide how much you can connect with an audience. Even the most optimistic predictions for James Cameron’s epic telling of the doomed cruise ship (and there weren’t many) couldn’t have predicted the way Leonardo DiCaprio would capture the imaginations of 13-17 year olds. Titanic went on to make over 1 billion dollars worldwide, inflate Jim Cameron’s ego to the size of a continent, and make an unwilling superstar out of Dicaprio, who leverged his success into a series of increasingly challenging roles, but still hasn’t shed his “teen heartthrob” status.
9. James Dean – But in many ways, DiCaprio was just following the first part of 50-year-old script. Few icons have the lasting, cross-generational appeal of Dean, who only starred in three films, but made them count. His most lasting contribution, the leather clad, disaffected Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause, is as resonant today as in 1955. Part of Dean’s appeal is the way his teenagers are invested with an anxiety and tragedy, a quality that would unfortunately become prophetic when Dean died in a car accident with nothing but a bright future ahead of him.
10. Eminem – Now removed from the early millennium firestorm that was Eminem, its very easy to see him as, in many ways, a 2000s Elvis. Decried by parents, banned from “legitimate” outlets, and working in a musical style that older people looked down on with disdain, Marshall Mathers brought hip hop to the suburbs by finding a seething anger that reached beyond mere disaffection. His drop in quality has been pretty great, but The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP still hold up as more than just public spectacle.
11. Star Wars – For his third feature, George Lucas channeled all the stories that entertained him in his youth and merged them into a movie that felt both comfortably familiar and unlike anything you had ever seen. Young people lined up around the block on opening day and then kept coming back to see it again and again. Now a genuine industry that manufactures books, games, and toys, its hard to remember that, even in 1977, Star Wars was never just a movie.
12. Sweet Valley High – According to Wikipedia, there have been over 152 books in the Sweet Valley High series. That’s just a mind-blowing number and its a testament to the workmanlike simplicity of those stories that they can have such an extensive reach. While its picture of sweet, uncomplicated teenage life has gone out of vogue over the years, Sweet Valley High remains a touchstone of young adult fiction.
13. Arcades – Arcades were once so popular among youth, parents’ demanded they station a police officer out front to make sure kids weren’t skipping school. Serving as a transition between the simplistic, Pong-style games of the late 1970s and the console video games of today, arcades served as a gathering place for young people and an affordable way for video game designers to experiment with their medium. Arcades are now pretty much dead or dying, but without them, video games might not be nearly as popular as they are today.
14. Hanson – One word, six letters. There had been plenty of teen sensations before “Mmmbop,” but three brothers from Oklahoma set off what may end up being the last great boom time for the record industry. In their wake was a field of boy bands and pop sensations who would go on to outlast Hanson, but who may not have risen at the same rate were the path not already cleared.
15. MTV – Of course, if you’re talking about music sensations after 1980, the conversation pretty much starts and ends with MTV. Originally seen as a larky, wild-card, MTV grew into a behemoth, feeding on pop stars, scared parents, and hysterical cultural commentators, providing one ratings-ready controversy after the next. For two decades, MTV was the face of awkward puberty-stricken teenagers and, even if its buzz has cooled significantly in the 2000s, the network remains a fascinating turning point in the commodification of youth.
16. Clueless/She’s All That/10 Things I Hate About You/Romeo + Juliet – From 1995 to 2000, filmmakers turned to literary classics and realized that their big emotions, catty character interactions, universal themes, and commentary on social boundaries translated to a high school setting really well. From Baz Luhrmann’s direct reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, to more subtle and altered takes on classic stories like Emma, Pygmalion, and Taming of the Shrew, Hollywood briefly struck a chord with teens by raiding their English I syllabi.
17. John Hughes – Any discussion of pop culture aimed at teenagers would be incomplete without mentioning John Hughes. Originally a comedy writer for National Lampoon, Hughes shifted to a completely new gear as the 1980s moved on and he explored the complex, clashing emotions that come with high school. Combining brilliant writing, an eye for talented young actors, and soundtracks so distinctive that albums released today are described as “John Hughes music,” Hughes found that the universal high school experience is one of alienation, regardless of whether you were weirdo, a nerd, a jock, or the prom queen. The impassioned response to his untimely passing earlier this year shows how Hughes didn’t just comment on high school, he changed how we experienced it.
Michael
ulyssesworkman
awarshauer
