Thursday, June 16, 2011

Essay on Youth in Movies

Youth in Movies - Essay

Films are a influential medium. Many people in the American society teach themselves using films as their lead. The films, "Rebel without a cause", "Grease", and "Valley Girl", all are films which create perspectives of the nature of youth. Each of these films has stereotypes to show a view of youth according to the film that may hurt the view of youth today. A common stereotype these films share are that the students that seem that they party all the time are bad students.

A stereotype is an image made from a person just by looking at some other person. When a person sees someone and makes his opinion at the moment for what the person is like, he's stereotyping; (molding a stereotype of the person in his head). The stereotypes can be divided among the sub groups in the movie and other youth. The partying side of the film's youth is observed by most people as youth with no life that are bad students because they don't use their time on anything else but parties.

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Most likely, if a person sees James Dean part in "Rebel without a Cause" (Jim), he'd see him at the beginning of the movie as a drunk and troublesome person. From here that person would think that Jim is on drugs and alcohol and it makes him a perspective of a bad student at school. The gang in the movie shows to be the same. The scene when Jim and the boy are fighting with knives shows that they are violent and immature people whom care nothing about their education, and instead they get more involved with violence.

In the film "Grease", the youth is more involved with partying instead of violence. They're shown as youth who skip school to hang out with their group. From here, most people would get the idea that those characters in the movie are bad students. John Travolta's scene of the car racing shows he has nothing better to do but to race cars and forget school.

"Valley Girl" is a movie that is combined with stereotypes from both "Rebel Without a Cause", and "Grease". The sub groups in this movie were the students from Hollywood, and the students from the Valley. The students from the Valley look as if they're sharp looking people taking care of their school and going to parties as a normal person would, but then the students from Hollywood are shown oppositely. When they come into the movie with colored, spiked hair, it displays to the viewer that they are the punks of the movie whom are flunking school.

"Grease", "Rebel Without a Cause", and "Valley Girl" show a similar stereotype of youth, but they are expressed differently in different degrees. Each movie shows a group of kids that are stereotyped as people flunking school, and hanging out with their buddies rather than taking care of their schoolwork. In "Grease", it shows a typical youth that skips school to be with their buddies. "Rebel" is not as typical as "Grease", because students skipped school for reasons having to do with violence rather than friends. "Valley Girl" is a combination of "Grease", and "Rebel" because the stereotypes seen in both other movies combined are like the degree of stereotypes seen in "Valley Girl". The stereotype basically shows that all youth who are involved in a group which party and go out with their friends, or dress or look differently are bad students at school.

The way people view youth in these films is the same way people observe youth in reality. The youth in the films, which showed to dress differently or go to parties left and right, didn't demonstrate at any moment in the film to be good students, but were just shown as youth that didn't care at all about their school. Even if a person in reality dresses a little different or if he makes time to go to parties, he may be a good student at school dividing his time for having fun and doing school work.

These films give youth a bad image. From the violence and gangs portrayed in the movies, youth is given this bad image. A person should keep in mind that these were just movies. Youth shouldn't be treated at that level of how people stereotype them or youth in films. A person may look like a punky styled guy, but he may be very good person in character and at school. Youth needs to be understood for the way they are, not the way they're stereotyped.

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