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This is by no means the first book on this topic, and it is most unlikely to be the last. There are several useful surveys, especially of US youth films; some valuable, more in-depth studies, focusing on particular time periods; monographs based around single films; and other books looking at specific aspects of representation, especially gender and sexuality. (In place of a ‘review of the literature’, I offer a short guide to some of these publications in the Further Reading section at the end of the book.) Rather than offering a comprehensive survey, my aim here is to provide a set of historical case studies, presented in roughly chronological sequence. Running through these particular examples are several broader themes and critical debates, which I briefly flag up below.

This book does not assume any knowledge of (or interest in) the outer reaches of film theory. My aim has been to write as clearly as possible, at a fairly introductory level, for students and general readers. I do not ask the reader to wade through a forest of academic references; footnotes simply refer on to the references at the end of the book. I have deliberately spent very little time engaging with what other researchers and critics have said about the texts I discuss. Although I have aimed for depth rather than breadth, I avoid spending too long on any single text, not least because readers are unlikely to have seen all of them.

Inevitably, there are absences here. Unlike some other books in this area, the aim is not to catalogue and categorize the many thousands of relevant film and television titles. While each of the chapters does provide some account of the wider field of media and the social and historical contexts of the period, the primary emphasis is on detailed discussions of specific texts. With a couple of exceptions, the films and TV programmes chosen for close attention are British and American; while some of the American films have been discussed by generations of film scholars, the British ones have attracted much less attention.

Many of my choices are probably predictable, although others are more obscure. Chapter 2, for example, begins with some ‘classic’ American juvenile delinquent movies from the 1950s that are very widely discussed by film scholars – although I suspect that most readers will be rather less familiar with them. However, it then goes on to look at some British examples that are much less widely known. While there is an extensive ‘pre-history’ of youth in film, my account (like most others) begins in Hollywood in the mid-1950s.⁸ I have deliberately avoided some ‘classic’ films and TV shows that the reader might expect to find and included some that might seem surprising. For example, I don’t consider the well-known and widely discussed youth movies directed by John Hughes; but I do talk about some films – from the USA and particularly from the UK – that some would regard as deservedly obscure.

Chapters 2 and 3 cover what might be called ‘sub-genres’ or ‘cycles’ of films about youth. Chapter 2 looks at the idea of juvenile delinquency and how it was constructed in British and American cinema in the late 1940s and the 1950s. It begins by considering how well-known US films such as The Wild One (1953), Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Rebel Without a Cause (1956) responded to moral panics, both about youth crime and about the effects of film viewing itself. It then compares this with how the ‘troubling teenager’ was represented in British films, from Good Time Girl (1948), Boys in Brown (1949) and Cosh Boy (1953) through to Violent Playground (1958). It explores how, in the process of representing the ‘problem’ of youth crime, films both reflected and helped to set the terms of wider public debate about age relationships.

Chapter 3 focuses on pop films featuring more or less well-known performers from the late 1950s and the 1960s. It outlines the broader context of these films and then considers several examples: three films featuring Elvis Presley (Loving You, Jailhouse Rock and King Creole, 1956–8) and two with Cliff Richard (The Young Ones and Summer Holiday, 1961 and 1962); the first two Beatles films, A Hard Day’s Night and Help! (1963 and 1965); and a couple that are more obscure, Catch Us If You Can (featuring the Dave Clark Five, 1965) and Head (1968), starring the American band The Monkees. I explore the ambivalent ways in which these films represent youth and youth culture; how they portray the media and the music business; and how they explore the process of representation itself.

Chapters 4 and 5 are more thematic in approach and range across broader time periods. Chapter 4 explores the issue of retrospect and nostalgia in cinematic images of youth through a discussion of three pairs of Hollywood films from the last fifty years, all of which are set in the past: American Graffiti and Badlands, both released in 1973; two time-travel films, Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Pleasantville (1998); and two directed by Richard Linklater, Dazed and Confused (1995) and Everybody Wants Some!! (2016). The analysis suggests that, while retrospection may entail nostalgia, it can sometimes challenge it, and that nostalgia itself may have several dimensions, motivations and consequences, not just personally but also socially and politically.

While gender is an issue that recurs through several of the chapters, it comes to the fore in chapter 5. Here I consider five very different films that all represent adolescent girlhood in troubling and mysterious ways. Two recent films, The Falling (2015) and The Fits (2015), are considered alongside three older films, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Heavenly Creatures (1994) and The Virgin Suicides (1999). These films mostly dwell on ‘Gothic’ themes of sexuality and adult repression and on sickness, contagion and death. In different ways, and to different degrees, they all blur the boundaries between reality and illusion. In doing so, they challenge the constraints of the conventional ‘coming of age’ movie, showing the development of gender identity as a source of disruption, not just for the girls themselves but also for adults.

In chapters 6 and 7, the focus shifts to television; and here I consider a couple of British examples in greater detail. Chapter 6 begins with Shane Meadows’s film This is England (2006), a coming-of-age story set in the UK in the early 1980s. It goes on to discuss the three television mini-series, made between 2010 and 2015, which traced the lives of the characters at two-yearly intervals between 1986 and 1990. While the film is more explicitly political, focusing on the appeal of right-wing racist movements at the time, the television sequels address more personal questions about growing up, the passing of time, and the relationship between the present and the past.

Chapter 7 looks at Skins (2007–13), one of the most successful UK youth television dramas of all time. It analyses Skins in the light of broader questions about ‘youth television’ – and, in particular, the issue of authenticity. I explore how the programme claims to speak on behalf of youth, not least through its claim to realism, and how the youth audience is addressed and defined. The final sections of the chapter look at how the producers attempted to draw in youthful audiences, especially through the use of social media, pointing to some of the possibilities and limitations of digital technology.

Chapter 8 concludes by reflecting on the historical dimensions of the various case studies and briefly considering the potential for representing youth in the digital age. Despite the rise of short-form online video, it suggests there is also growing interest in immersive, long-form material, and that film and television fiction will continue to be central to our understanding both of the idea of ‘youth’ and of young people’s lived experience.