Teenage Confidential: An Illustrated History of the American Teen
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Book Overview
When did those awkward, tormented creatures known as teenagers first crawl out of the primordial ooze and into American culture? Believe it or not, they didn't always exist. It was not until World War II, with grown men off fighting and grown women working in factories, that adolescents were left idle and unsupervised long enough to wreak havoc. In the forties, fifties, and sixties a new breed of youth evolved -- the juvenile delinquent -- and this state of emergency was quickly dramatized in every cultural medium. In "Teenage Confidential, " Michael Barson and Steve Heller conduct a guided tour through three decades of teen angst, displayed in shocking Technicolor on movie posters, paperbacks, comic books, advertising art, television shows, and Top Forty music paraphernalia. "From Father Knows Best" to "Youth Runs Wild, " this unflinching survey spotlights the sordid ways of our rebel youth.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0811815846
ISBN13:9780811815840
Release Date:October 1997
Publisher:Chronicle Books
Length:132 Pages
Weight:1.40 lbs.
Dimensions:0.3" x 8.6" x 11.1"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
terrific refutation to those who think anything has changed
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 26 years ago
This is a fantastic compilation of American adults' images of teenagers in those so-pure 1930s, '40s, and '50s showing (in my view) what a warped perspective grownups display toward adolescents. This book should be a text in modern film and sociology classes, where the first exercise can be: "find the Latino" and "find the African American." More than dry treatises, the visuals in this book show that America's so-called adults in this century have maintained an irrational terror of teenagers that speaks to the awful, anti-youth climate of the '90s as much as the latest newspaper headline-lie. Highly recommended.
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