With a Hall Pass in Hand: American Teen

American Teen was immediately criticized as it began generating attention at Sundance in 2008. The original promotional material featured the five teenagers at the heart of Nanette Burstein’s documentary in poses and costume nearly identical to those in the Breakfast Club. The previews even pre-defined their roles: The Geek, The Princess, The Jock, The Hearthrob and The Rebel, arousing suspicions that this reduced these people’s stories to palatable, packaged frames, symbolic of a disingenuous adult view of teenage life.

Generally, film-goers tend to hold documentarians to a level of scrutiny that assumes them to be objective observers of their subject. This is not a pure documentary in that sense, and in fact it might be better described as a pop documentary. The filmmaker’s placement does shape environment, and in all stages of production, there are deliberate choices of what to focus on. And for Burstein, it is the concept of the modern American teenager.

Early on, there were criticisms about lacking authenticity in a different regard. Namely, the noticeable lack of variety in the town’s residents, making a film who’s sociological importance could only be generalized to middle-class white American suburbia. In American Teen, there is only one non-white high school school student featured. And every other seemingly “taboo” subject from homosexuality to promiscuous sex to divorce is muted. The sprinkling of teenage drama in the briskly edited montage that made up the trailers suggested a “documentary” that sanitized taboo realities, only to fill the gap with sexier sensationalism.

These are valid critiques of flaws that are present, but not to any degree that should make the film dismissive in what it shows. Overall, American Teen, released to DVD in December 2008, provides genuine insight as it highlights five students in their senior year of high school in the small, Midwestern suburb of Warsaw, Indiana.

Among them is Colin, “The Jock,” a varsity basketball player who, amidst a slumping season for the team, is desperate for an athletic scholarship to pay for college. His father, a former Warsaw basketball player that now seems to make an unusual living performing as an Elvis impersonator at parties in chain hotels, makes it clear to his son that, while they live “comfortably,” they can’t afford to pay for his college tuition. He unilaterally decides for his son an alternative option of military enlistment.

Meghan is “The Princess,” one of the least likable among the five teens. It’s not because she is one of the popular kids steeped in privilege (she drives a Mercedes), but because she had a reputation for her merciless vengeance against anyone who dared to steal her thunder, prompting certainty that she was in for quite the rude awakening when life continuing in those high school walls suddenly became irrelevant to those that left. However, the origins of her bitchy behavior may not be surprising, especially giving the cold relationship with her father. Engaged in the ritual obsession of college admissions like Colin, she fear being ostracized by her family if she weren’t able to make Notre Dame, where her father and siblings attended.

Jake is “The Geek.” He has a mouth full of wire, a face full of acne, and is woefully awkward. Inspired by the idealized world of video games, he constantly imagines an opportunity to reinvent himself and, throughout most of the film, strives to find a girl that can make him happy. We don’t really know much about him outside of this. He is by far the most self-conscious of the five kids, and high school for him seems like a quiet nightmare that can be traced back to being a small kid frequently ridiculed in middle school for his size. (In appearances and interviews to follow the film’s release, it’s surprising to see what a handsome transformation he’s undergone – though he is still admittedly awkward (as he says in the afterword).

But it is Hannah, the outgoing “Rebel” who is desperate to escape the confines of her sleepy hometown where she lives with her grandmother and is occasionally visited by her father.These are the kind of kids who flee to cities they deem cultural Meccas. Hoping to go to film school and work in the industry thereafter, she applies to school in San Francisco, much to the chagrin of her parents, who think her too young and impressionable to make that kind of leap in independence so far from home. While attractive Mitch Reinholt was featured most prominently in a lot of the promotional materials after Sundance, Hannah actually turned out to be the most interesting, if not the most entertaining, as she exudes a hook of personality and emotion that we don’t see in the other characters to a similar extent. The outcome of her tale is perhaps the most alluring.

Mitch, “The Hearthrob” ironically isn’t in the film that much until the second half, probably having been necessary to be the fifth that would complete the group replica of their Breakfast Club counterparts, which becomes pretty obvious when, other than being linked to Colin as a basketball teammate and romantically linked to Hannah, there is little we ever learn about Mitch.

Ignore the fact that, if you’re of that age, that what you’re about to watch is a film about teenagers and remember that you too were one once. Given the extreme homogeneity of modern America, the experiences these teenagers share for that year during their lives, that critical rites of passage as they prepare to leave institutional comforts for either more institutional comfort, or something else entirely, is universal to most other American suburbs, and for the last couple of decades. Dealing with relationships, authority, idealism, escapism, popularity and so forth certainly isn’t anything new.

Moreover, these five kids may assume themselves to be alone in their struggles, but if The Breakfast Club (a title which will undoubtedly always be invoked in comparison) has taught us anything, it is that this is simply not so. In particular, the most apparent common underpinning is an extreme self-consciousness. That personal worth must always be demonstrated, and that ultimate value must always be defended.Jake was the obvious example. But Mitch was another, his relationship with Hannah, who belonged to a different social faction, almost perfectly mirrored Andy and Blaine’s relationship in Pretty in Pink. Meghan’s severe attitude was traced to her need for control, her determination to uphold a carefully guarded front. Hannah was aware of her peers’ self-consciousness and professed to avoid it. And even Colin, in the attempt to become the rising basketball star, feared the possibility of failure.

The teenager is quite an interesting specimen, and American Teen dissects some of the contextual underpinnings that makes adolescence so frustrating. Adolescence is a crossroads; that transitional point between childhood (protection) and adulthood (awareness) and high school is like an incubator. Aside from its roles as an educational institution, it was designed with no rubric regarding the customs and rituals that developed within its walls. But that’s what it has become (with these things very much commercially-driven), a somewhat independent environment where social and personal and political forces really develop and play out, and often times in competition of how others rationalize and synthesize those things.

As Hannah correctly observes, “We’ve spent four years here. It’s all we know.” Maybe it’s a kind of reality on a practice-level. With a couple hundred people or so.

Wil Wheaton Has a Posse

The shrilly-voiced imaginative boy of Stand By Me, Wil Wheaton, was once immortalized in the “So & So Has a Posse” craze. He’s also got a blog.

Rock n’ Roll in the Rising Sun: Tokyo Pop

Tokyo Pop is probably an unrecognized film title to all but a handful of people, most of whom are likely rabid 80s film fans. And without the transition to the more readily accessible DVD, it remains not a great film (pacing tends to be a problem), but still an overlooked, low-budget gem in the grand universe of obscure cult films.

Centering on young and naive aspiring American and Japanese musicians, Tokyo Pop contrasts the mid-80s new wave, punk and rock influences of urban Japan with the backdrop of idyllic tradition and historical roots; an obvious criticism of commercial globalization and the “Americanization” of a once-distinct Eastern identity. Rock, pop, punk and new wave (check out an early performance of “Rauken Rauken” by Japanese goof-girl rockers, Papaya Paranoia) – it’s all image and personality. Like the old photos of youth in 1980s post-Communist countries: a carefully manufactured young “cool”.

There are essentially two leading characters who, by fate (and the script!), cross paths. Carrie Hamilton, the late daughter of comedienne Carol Burnette (she may be more recognized as one of the instigating rivals in Shag), shares the lead as Wendy Reed, a struggling singer with no hope for security and mobility in the New York City dives scene. Inspired by a postcard of a friend who boasts of success in the business following a move to Tokyo, Wendy packs up her sparing belongs and decides to join her friend. Except things don’t go as plan. Stunned not so much by culture shock, but news of her friend having already moved someplace else, she sticks it out. And, on the advice of fellow nomadic gaijins (the romanticized gringo: Americans) she,  takes up residency in a group house plastered with Disney memorabilia and, in the closest thing to paying singer she could quickly find, entertains drunken entourages of Japanese businessmen in a karaoke bar with half-hearted renditions of corny American folk songs.

Stranded in the city one night, Wendy meets Hiro (Yutaka Tadokoro, the vocalist for the Red Warriors who is probably better recognized as the director of the whiskey commercial in Lost in Translation), another young, aspiring rock musician. Obsessed with American and British pop culture, especially the musical legends like Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles, this is basically the bulk of the limited English he can communicate to Wendy. His family is the same – in one scene, his grandfather, in traditional garb, scowls at his daughter who is attempting to follow the jazzercise routines she’s watching on television as they sit around the dinner table with Hiro and his sister. A big bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken crowds the table and Hiro’s mother is ironically bewildered that her son isn’t interested in more “Japanese” things. Even Hiro’s father, a divorcee (taboo no more!) specializes in the 80s novelty of synthetic food sculptures.

Hiro and Wendy’s first encounter is eventually miffed by a misunderstanding over the sharing of a hotel room, but eventually the two hit it off, much to the delight of Hiro’s band, a rock quartet, who want the newfound blond gaijin to be in their band, certain that this is just the gimmick they need to get recognized by the country’s most famous producer, since sneaking trying to sneak him demo tapes hasn’t worked. Reluctant at first, Wendy seems unable to find any other band to meaningfully support a singing career (X of Japan briefly appear in their massive coifs, and delegate Wendy, the new band mate for about a second, the back up singer’s tambourine).

Hiro’s band is basically a cover band, churning out live performances of corny American pop songs like Three Dog Night’s “Do You Believe in Magic?” Amazingly, they do achieve major public recognition, but only through some trivial event – a photographer happened to capture a backstage spat between Wendy and someone else. Suddenly, the cover band is topping the country’s charts. And yet, both Wendy and Hiro, at the helm of  a thriving gimmick band, aren’t entirely happy with the expected definition of “success” (money and fame). In private, Hiro has performed for Wendy the songs he has written, which he sings in Japanese. Completely absent of the Western manufacture, the songs are sincere. Wendy, willing to walk away in order to get Hiro and his bandmates to abandon the gimmick, encourages Hiro to perform these songs for his audiences. In other words: art for the sake of art.

Released in 1988 and yet to be re-released, the film was co-written and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, though her 1992 directorial effort is more widely known: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tokyo Pop was a lot like the 1987 culture-clash dramedy, Living on Tokyo Time. Unfortuantely, there’s little net-recorded history on the movie, other than (surprisingly) a 2007 New York Times Review.