Dreams are sold to us. Reality is the antidote.
In the 1980s, there was an explosion in the creation of teenage films. They were instant hits — both commercially and critically successful. As a result, a new genre emerged, spearheaded by movies such as The Breakfast Club (1985) and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). There is something so potent about the teenage years of life. In that short breadth of time between childhood and adulthood, there is a certain type of liminality that manifests, begging to be explored. It’s what makes teenage life so captivating to view on the screen. But is the teenage narrative we consume truly representative of real life?
The teenage years are a rich time for discovery, feeling, and exploration. Arts teacher Mr. Moshe Quinn coins this passage of life as “unique.” He states that they are “not necessarily the best years, but unique, as they represent a time of coming into your own as an individual.” This is a time when each and every one of us is faced with choices of how we want to live our lives and the people we wish to become. Through this, the deepest contemplations of self often arise. “It’s nice,” Mr. Quinn continues, “not to have so much responsibility as you enter into young adulthood.”A lack of responsibility refers to how teenagers are not burdened with the financial struggles, the relentless job market, and the growing imbalances in work and personal life that accompany adulthood. But teenagers still retain a vast expanse of mental and psychological responsibilities in this period of development. The way art speaks to that and the way teens can discover themselves through art is exceptionally powerful.
Films and TV shows about adolescence are so high-grossing because there is a large demographic of teens who are figuring out who they wanna be. But sometimes, these films do nothing more than make us feel worse about ourselves. In the 2007 film, Superbad, two “unpopular” high school seniors hope to party and finally lose their virginities before college. It’s a very widely seen movie among the teenage age group, yet most of the students in my Sacred Heart film class cited it as a very unrealistic representation of teenagers. Marcus To ‘26 says, “Films like Superbad sell this idea [commonly found in media] that you gotta live it up when you’re young. That in the teenage years, it’s the time to go wild and adventure — drugs, sex, partying, that type of stuff.” It can be hard for teenagers when they view this type of mainstream representation on the screen. Because it is so normalized, it feels like reality. As a result, many teenagers put so much pressure on themselves to live their “best lives,” because they aren’t meeting those standards.
Movies can easily make us feel bad for being boring and feeling bored. But in fact, boringness is a part of life. That’s why it’s easy to be bored in real life even when it appears as if characters on the screen are consistently living packed lives at every turn. To elaborates on this, saying, “Everything we consume and say should never be boring. So when you feel bored, it feels lacking and wrong.” But this is because boredom can never be packaged as a product even if it is the reality. No one wishes to spend their time watching something that doesn’t feel entertaining or interesting. As To puts it, “If I watch a movie and it’s just the dude doing homework, I’m turning that [movie] off immediately.”
The hardest part of being a teenager is often rooted in sentiments of isolation. Thalia Cheung ‘26 says, “It’s so common for people to talk about romantic struggles, body image, people having more fun than you socially, everyone being more academically successful than yourself which can lead to feelings of depravity and suicidality.” When teenagers endure these forms of struggle, it’s easy to feel alone. It’s easy to feel as if there is no one to turn to and nowhere to belong within. And within all forms of media, everything seen is carefully crafted to convey a specific message to a certain audience. Oftentimes, popular teenage shows such as Gilmore Girls (2007) and Never Have I Ever (2020) display glamorized depictions of doing whatever you want as a teenager. Teenagers who can often do immoral things and get away with it. Teenagers who appear to live perfect lives filled with just the right amount of drama. Experiencing reality reveals that these portrayals of teenage life are not representative of reality.
But there is a flip side. There are multitudes of films that attempt, at their core, to connect meaningfully with their teenage audiences. Cheung says “I deeply resonate with characters who are deeply human. And while you can feel represented through any form of media, cinema is a different form because people can see things visually that they are unable to see reading a book.”
One portrayal of teenage life in recent years is Lady Bird (2017) which follows the turbulent, but ultimately loving relationship between a mother and daughter. Concerning Lady Bird, English teacher Ms. Colleen O’Donnell says, “that movie was a gift.” One of the things that Lady Bird gets so right is its depiction of a teenager who is fiercely opinionated, reckless, and entirely flawed. Yet, she never becomes a caricature. She always remains grounded in the reality of both the deep perils and overflowing joys of being a teenager. She is not drawn up to be either a likeable or unlikeable character, just a character we have all been at one (definitely more than one) moment in our lives. She is the encapsulation of the pent-up frustration that comes with being a teenager. It’s hard to be a teenager.
In the time following the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020, reintroduction into a school environment after adjustment into remote learning was a complex experience. Ms. O’Donnell cites that during this time, “the former US surgeon general issued an advisory about the rise in anxiety and depression among adolescents. I attribute this to the change in socialization and developmental support during crucial moments.” Many people in high school experience these mental health issues on a daily basis. We all have our own unique struggles. At Sacred Heart, it might not seem like everyone is going through such problems, and it becomes easy for comparison to take center stage. But it’s pertinent to remember that deep down, everyone does. It’s just hard to tell. To states “through going to Heart 2 Heart Peer Allies, I realized that not a lot of people show up because there is not a lot of awareness that we have this space and because mental health is still stigmatized.” While it can be hard to rid mental health of its bad rap, the most significant way to cultivate a comfortable space where all teenagers can discuss their own set of difficulties is through talking. Sharing and learning to be open about these experiences can generate greater discourse about uniquely adolescent struggles.
Being a teenager is a direct subscription for succumbing to future nostalgia. It’s why most adults look back fondly on those years of adolescence, no matter how painful it might have been. And it’s most prominently why such a vast array of movies emphasize and profit off of these teenage experiences so readily. But ultimately, this teenage “dream” is nothing more than a fantasy. We wake up each day and we are simultaneously insecure and boring. We compare ourselves to others and we feel bad about our social lives, our academics, our everything. It’s especially hard when so many narratives we consume on the screen tell us that we should be someone else, or that we should approach teenage life differently. But reality is not just an antidote to fantastical dreams, it’s also a cure. Teenage life may be imperfect, but it’s real. Just as every struggle we endure is real, so is the good — the love we learn to share with others, the ways in which we learn to express ourselves, and the profound understanding that difficulty in life only enhances our capacity to hold empathy and warmth for others.
