The Movie: Puberty Blues cast and produced in
(1982)
Puberty Blues is an iconis film that based itself on the brutal and honest
view of teenage life, showning two best friends in there mid teen years growing
up on the surf and in the surf culture of Cronulla during 1970’s
It was based on the semi-autobiographical
book by Kathy Lette and Gabriele
Carey, it was made into a popular film directed by Bruce Baresford by using the
same title and was released in 1981. Puberty Blues is really about a friendship between
two young girls. The kind of friendship that means you share everything. It
portrays the kind of friendship you really only ever have at that young age (
the crazy years). In the background of this intense friendship is the macho
surf culture of 1970‘s Australia.
To me this world would be about the intense
friendship and the wide eyed innocence of these girls desperate for acceptance
colliding with the casual brutality of a world that values surfing above all
else, including the girls themselves. This in a way constrasting with the film
Mean girls, where the key role in Mean girls is played by Lyndsay Lohan and her
need for acceptance is not depicted by the friendship that means you share
everything. A world of youth gangs with specific rules.
To me this world is a boys world were at all times
the boys call the shots, the boys can boss around who they like, sleep around
and they seem to value surfing above all else, including the girls themselves.
The film is a
honest approach to the stereotypes that were protrayed In the 1970s. Young
woman trying desperately to fit into a social circle, doing anything to any
exterme behavour. The Stereotypes of this film shows young girls trying
desperately to be socially accepted not only by their own peers but the men
back in those days, also in order to do this they had to smoked, had sex, took drugs, and showed a general
disrespect for there parents wishes.
For those who have watched this film is it shows
to be all about what we don’t wish as stereotypes for our young teenage girls,
a sense of rebellion, the need to share there bodies to gain acceptance, the
willingness to smoke cause that’s what everyone else is doing. As a young teenager writing this It is
impossible to judge if this is how those in the 70’s behaved, I would imagine
that the film shows a very real example of teenage life in those times, the 70s
were a time of rock and roll, drugs, high teenage pregnancy and all things that
this movie shows The girls in this film attempt to create a social status of
acceptabiliy in their time. Was it easier being a teenager
in the seventies? If this is how teenage girls think is okay to act by what is represented
in this film, it shows that teenage girls were free and easy with sex, had little or not respect for there
parents attitudes and beliefs and that smoking drugs particularly cannibas was
apart of the culture of being cool.
In this flm Most
males had little or no respect for their female counterparts, other than for
sex and good times. I can’t believe even in this age that woman allowed themselves
to be portrayed in this way in the media, and it must have been extremly
damaging to teenage girls of this area who were considered the popular girls,
i.e the ones who slept around, kiss and tell, smoked freely and considered life
at the beach the ultimate lifestyle.
 |
| http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/southern-stars-puberty-blue-for-channel-ten-with-claudia-karvan-to-go-ahead-with-sutherland-shire-councils-blessing/story-e6frewz0-1226309652554 |
The smoking by
teenage girls in the film must
have been a great seller for tobacco companies, and at 4.56 in the above clip
shows a young boy with a cigarette in his mouth, puffing away, not a good
representation for teenagers and certainly not a good stereotype for young teenagers that to be cool and
accepted they need to be smoking and having casual sex.
The film shows a
sense of being too perfect, of
course – the waves, the sun. It was only a matter of time before pollution and
skin cancer spoiled the party.
Puberty
Blues -Are the challenges of
growing up easy for teenage girls? If we looked at this
film now and compared it with how teenage girls are in todays day and age we would find that the stereotype of
girls of our time would be very
different. Sex: I hope that this is not a true reflecion of this and in our time and that it seems that the media in
the fim portrays them as sexually ignorant individiuals.I believe that the
media has portrayed this very well
as it was an area where there was a different level of communciation
between parents and their children, topics of sex, drugs and relationships were
simply not something you discussed with your parents.
Did kids in this
time really listen to their parents? Like today many of us teenage girls wait
till a dramatic problem has occurred before we run to our parents for edvice
and how we could have stoped this, and how to stop. It shows in the film
puberty blues that they have protrayed this well being time of sex in the back
of a van, listening to your friends about sex and ignoring the consequences of
your actions, and for what to just be accepted? To these two girls this is all
they wanted and to them it was a major goal in life, why set strandads like
that?. Alcohol is still the same in these days and they are used to reduce
stress and to lighten up a day, once again the consequences didn’t matter.
Growing up for these two girls was hard and they lost many things in the
progress just to be “popular” and to media they protrayed in this film as
popularity was measured on who you slept with.
In the film Mean
Girls the main character is played by Lindsay Lohan a 16 year old girl that was
homeschool in South Africa is not ready for her first day at a high school does
not know the unexpecting. She is helped by two less popular kids at the school
were she is shown the cliques and who she is to hang out with and who not to
for example she is told to avoid the girls named as the Plastics, which is led
by a girl named Regina George, they invite her to sit with them and join in
their after school activties. When Janis discovers that Cady has been society
been accepted she makes up a plan to get revenge on Regina using Cady as in a
way a “lad rat”
Through out
the movie you watch Cady develop
to be a mini Regina and become bitchy and abandons her two first true friends (
Janis and Damien ) as they do not fit in the image she is made to hold up and
she loses her individual personality and gives more about the way she may
appear and the way she is to act around others when a out blast occurred at
school invovling all teenage girls which attened this school and a few
teachers, to which this was all related to the ‘burn book’ that was writen by
the plastics, Regina makes a sexuality comment toward Janis and is no longer
wanting to be stepped over and treated unfairly she takes a stand and confesses
in front of all students(girls) her plan and the fact that Cady was involved.
Cady is shown to
grow up after telling everone she was the one and only one that wrote the burn
book and that it was a mistake, she shows to wake up to what she has actuallu
caused and she knows deep down what she needs to do, she turns back to the old
Cady and the girl that was smart and shy. She joins the team at the Mathletes
event and is involved in their competition, There Cady stands forced to compete
against a girl in her eyes that is unattractive and realising that no matter
how much fun she makes out of the girl and her appearance, it would not stop
her from beating Cady and winning the competition, After winning the team went
to the Spring Fling where Cady was elected Queen and she makes a speech about
the meanings of people being judged and that everyone is special in their own
ways and that the crown is meanless and everyone has their quaitles and why not
inbase them inside of hiding behide someone to protect the fact of possible
rejection.
As the film
turns to a end the three main plastics split their pathways and actually
discover things that they were holding and you notice that Regina joins the
lacrosse team were she is shown to take out all her angry and in a way it shows
that she will possible not always be the leader nor the best because there is
always someone out there somewhere that is a step ahead however it is a postive
image to show through the media. Karen becomes the school weather girl,Gretchen
joins the “cool asians” and Cady rejoines her patches with Aaron, Damien and
Janis.
This film is in Contrast to the film of Puberty
Blues, the stereotype representation portrayed by the media in this film is
still that of teenagers seeking social acceptance but in a different type of
way, there is less use of the sexual content and although there is a portral of
teenagers throughout the film seeking acceptance through their willingness to
take part in sexual activity it is only in the particular clique of the social
circle they are already formed in. There is less of an indication of social
circles taking part in drug related activity. The movie more or less portrays
an example of a girl who wants to be popular and move from one social circle to
another and the difficulties of doing this in an era when students found their
peer groups and tended to stay within them. It shows the difficulties of trying
to change groups, and in contrast to the film of Puberty blues, while there is
normally a challenge to change peer groups there is not the high level of
bullying that is experienced in puberty blues, where girls that aren’t what is
considered acceptable are verbally abused with word “mole”.
If teenagers
were to look at the stereotypes within this film they would certainly challenge
whether the benefits of changing peer groups was worth the risk and challenge
of not being accepted. In particular this film represents girls as needing more
so that the men to require acceptance in social circles and the acceptance is
measured however in this film by money and social status of parents, there is
more of an acceptance of boundaries set by parents in this film in contrast to
the film of puberty blues perhaps so as time has moved on and teenagers are
more aware of the consequences of their actions.
The reality of
the movie mean girls, is that teenagers are less harsh the bullying is I
believe less obvious, there is certain the bitchy attitude that is portrayed in
both films but when watching the film the the effects of this representation by
the media in this film are less obvious than that of puberty blues.
No comments:
Post a Comment