Historical Context

Abstract

This chapter presents the historical context conducted by Art Silverblatt and Richard Rosenfeld that follows genre analysis of tracing the evolution of the youth film between 1938 and 1986. The evolution of the youth culture film provides considerable insight into the changing power and status of young people in society and the role of popular culture in shaping and defining this social class. In Andy Hardy‘s world, generational relations are planted in traditional standards that support the authority and capacity of adults to socialize adolescents into adult roles. Generational conflict emerged as the dominant theme of postwar youth films such as Rebel without a Cause, which questioned the competence of adults to provide young people with effective direction, even the desirability of adulthood itself. By the 1980s, adolescence, even with its uncertainties, emerged as the center of popular culture, with adulthood reduced to irrelevance.