Ever since the 1980s, Hollywood has been antagonizing teenagers and placing them in a negative light, depicting them as the devils themselves.
Modern culture and movie production companies, such as Hollywood, commonly label teens as rebellious, irresponsible, rude, and arrogant. In reality, teenagers are nothing like this.
Movies have normalized the “rebellious teen” character trait and embedded it into every single character they produce in the age range.
Every time I watch a series or movie, I always see the basic character archetypes in teenagers: the nerd, the bully, the popular mean girl, the best friend, the jock, the love interest, the outcast, the angsty teen, and the rebellious character.
Hollywood is yet to recognize this, but these character archetypes have harmed teenagers and demonized their perceptions of their own images in too many ways to count. These repetitive tropes are fundamental, boring, and inaccurate. Almost every movie about teenagers that I have watched has ended the same: with the main character winning over the love interest, beating the bully, and being promoted from an “outcast” to the most popular kid in the school after a makeover montage.
Inaccurately portraying teenagers in modern media creates various insecurities and anxiety in real teens. Adolescents begin to believe that they are not beautiful or handsome enough to fit into the norms and standards set by this harmful media.
These movies also create unrealistic beauty standards that teenagers feel they should follow, even though the actors portraying them are often older than 20.
Movie productions, especially those in Hollywood, employ this common trope in almost every single movie about teenagers they produce. One good example of this is the show “Euphoria”, which is a television series based on the psychological behaviors of teenagers, and is supposed to be relatable to most viewers.
However, many viewers have claimed that the show completely portrays teenagers incorrectly for the sake of entertainment purposes and does not clearly explore the real struggles that adolescents endure.
The show has multiple characters, all of whom fit the overused archetypes listed above.
Euphoria has left nothing but a bad light on our generation. Entertaining or not, it isn’t exaggerating if we call out shows when they become too unrealistic.
This phenomenon has been around for the past few decades, taking control and placing an overused title on adolescents. This behavior has resulted in real people around the world labeling teenagers as “douchebags,” rude, rebellious, and overall angsty for no reason.
Nobody actually takes into account that the teens who do behave like this in real life do not act like this for no reason. They act like this because they have suffered through so much trauma that it has affected their mental health. Teenagers already have to deal with so much, including academic studies, stress, social lives, and just the pressure placed on them overall. When people label every teen as “moody” and “rebellious,” it’s as if more fuel was added to the already burning fire.
Ages 12-20 are the most important years in a person’s life, because that is when their brain begins to develop, their body grows, and they begin to experience new emotions, stress, and feelings of crippling anxiety.
High school, especially, is one of the most pivotal points in a person’s life. These years can be either extremely fun or terribly awful, depending on what the environment is like.
The repetitiveness and overuse of these character archetypes have misled multiple parents, including my own, into believing that everyone our age has it out for each other. Hollywood has normalized bullying in teenage films so much, to the point that everyone believes that every cheerleader or football player is a bully simply for being a part of a sport that is known for being rude in pop culture.
Antagonizing cheerleaders and football players has been around since the 1900s, and for some reason, Hollywood has not bothered to change it, severely impacting the image of both extracurricular activities.
Yes, bullying is a major issue in our society, and yes, it should be recognized and stopped, but so far, almost all the movies I have seen that were produced in the early 2000s don’t even bother trying to fix the issue.
Instead of confronting the bully head-on or dealing with the situation and informing an adult, the victim always undergoes a “makeover” that helps them look more attractive than the bully.
After the makeover, the victim instantly gains popularity and dethrones the queen or king bee of the school. Whether it is direct or not, Hollywood implies that to be liked in high school, a teenager has to be attractive. Otherwise, they cannot redeem themselves from being an outcast and make any new friends.
Somehow, in all of these stories, the bully, or the antagonist, is always a snobby, rich white kid who always flexes their wealth to other kids.
In reality, bullies do not have to be rich, poor, or middle class to find a victim to antagonize.
One other common factor that Hollywood employs in their films is alcohol, drug abuse, and adultery. It’s as if movie companies praise smoking, drinking, and sexually active teens. They act as if this is normal and that every adolescent has either dabbled in adultery or drug abuse.
Although these are real issues in our society, they should be brought to light in a way that helps extinguish the issue, not praise it and encourage it. By inaccurately portraying teenagers in Hollywood films, Hollywood has indirectly created a stereotype that all teenagers are sick, twisted, and cruel people. Hollywood’s depiction of teenagers in movies is, honestly, nothing more than disturbing. The way that Hollywood praises this behaviour and attempts to normalize it is sickening.
Only a small portion of real teenagers actually behave like this, making this idea illogical and just blatantly biased. It’s as if the producers and scriptwriters are terrified of people younger than them.
Newer movies about this generation should be either made by younger people or the directors should actually research how teenagers actually behave, because so far, older people directing films about younger generations just isn’t cutting it.