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Arts and Entertainment

The decline of the raunchy teen comedy

Bianco

Last weekend, I decided to watch a double feature of “Sixteen Candles” (1984) and “Superbad” (2007), two teen comedies that connected with two different generations of young audiences and still maintain cult followings today, though not without their controversies.

The former was a staple in my middle school years as an early ’00s tween enamored with ’80s teen culture; the latter was released the summer after my senior year of high school, when I was the same age as Superbad’s protagonists.

It’s not a new observation that the number of teen movies has decreased in the last decade, particularly R-rated teen comedies, which have become almost obscure.

There has been the occasional teen flick, such as “Easy A” (2010), “Project X” (2012) and, most recently, “The Duff” (2015), but they also take many cues from and pay homage to the older teen movies.

From about 1984 to 2004, the pop-culture teen film movement was much like movie musicals or Westerns were for old Hollywood. In 2015, what is the equivalent for teens in a PG-13 era?

Musicals and Westerns losing popularity makes some sense, because trends go in and out of style all the time. But the lack of teen comedies is surprising, because teenagers always will be around in the world to be entertained.

One theory could be that movie studios and younger audiences currently prefer the more dramatic, coming-of-age stories such as “Perks of Being a Wallflower” (2012) or “The Spectacular Now” (2013) over silly or raunchy humor.

After “American Graffiti” (1973) and before John Hughes broke through as a filmmaker, many teen films were dirty romps such as “Porky’s” (1981), “The Last American Virgin” (1982) and “Revenge of the Nerds” (1984) – much like “Sixteen Candles” and “Superbad” but with less respect for character development and mostly looking for a quick laugh.

Broad, racy humor that was accessible in comedy three decades ago in “Candles,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982) or “Heathers” (1989) also has become more marginalized and condensed over time. In a contemporary teen comedy, you’d have difficulty finding casual uses of a character such as Long Duk Dong in “Candles” or Heather No. 2 seen getting date-raped or Stacy in “Fast Times” getting an abortion. “Mean Girls” (2004) and “Superbad” have proven comedies still can be edgy, though with a certain amount of tone and irony.

Many teen movies in the ’90s focused not only on having sex but also on friendship, such as with “Dazed and Confused” (1993), “Clueless” (1995), “All I Wanna Do” (1998) and even “American Pie” (1999), making it even more curious that fun teen movies have lost relevance.

Forty years ago, the film industry thought selling movies with teen leads would get parents to send their kids to movie theaters, and the filmmakers pushed the envelope to see how far they could go with their adolescent content. But now, crude teen comedies have become more like a time capsule of a past period that young and old movie fans like to revisit when Hollywood isn’t dishing out a new attempt at amusing youths once in a while.

mbianco@durangoherald.com. Megan Bianco is a movie reviewer and also contributes other entertainment-related articles and features.



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