Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in American Cinema Since 1980

Generation Multiplex (2002) was the first comprehensive study of the representation of teenagers in American cinema since David Considine’s Cinema of Adolescence in 1985. This updated and expanded edition reaffirms the idea that films about youth constitute a legitimate genre worthy of study on its own terms. Identifying four distinct subgenres--school, delinquency, horror, and romance--Timothy Shary explores hundreds of representative films while offering in-depth discussion of movies that constitute key moments in the genre, including Fast Times at Ridgemont High, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Breakfast Club, Say Anything . . . , Boyz N the Hood, Scream, American Pie, Napoleon Dynamite, Superbad, The Twilight Saga, and The Hunger Games. Analyzing developments in teen films since 2002, Shary covers such topics as the increasing availability of movies on demand, which has given teens greater access to both popular and lesser-seen films; the recent dominance of supernatural and fantasy films as a category within the genre; and how the ongoing commodification of teen images in media affects real-life issues such as school bullying, athletic development, sexual identity, and teenage pregnancy.

TIMOTHY SHARY is the author of Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen, coeditor with Alexandra Seibel of Youth Culture in Global Cinema, and editor of Millennial Masculinity: Men in Contemporary American Cinema. An independent scholar with a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Massachusetts, he has been a film studies professor at Clark University and the University of Oklahoma. He lives in Millsboro, Delaware.