Teen Angst
Rebel Without a Cause( 1955), The Breakfast Club(1985) and The Perks of Being a Wallflower(2012)
What causes Teen Angst , and how do the teen characters deal with it?
In Rebel without a cause, our main character Jim's main cause of Teen Angst is his parents. His father, a submissive man towards the women in the household and seemingly has no backbone. His mother, the controlling housewife who's opinion matters more than the fathers and is supposedly helping keep Jim's image in the one scene where Jim wants to go to the police to indicate that he was involved in the other boy's murder. Both parental figures don't want him to confess about this because " Why do you have to be the only who tells the police, there are others". He deals with this by disobeying his parents and attempting to inform the police. There we have another example at the police station. When Jim attempts to inform the police, they ignore him and when he searches for the police officer who said that he could talk to him about anything, was no where to be found. I feel that this is called Rebel without a Cause because the title is a view of Jim's parents and they see his rebellion as not having a cause because he is disobeying their wishes.
In the Breakfast Club, all of our main characters have parental issues. This is significant to our time because of how high divorce rates are now and other factors contributing to parental issues. The "Jock" has issues with his father where his father wants him to be the best. We aren't given any detail what he does permanently about this but he does speak his mind to the other characters. The " Rebel" has parental issues of having this tough family life. Again no details on long term solutions but short term by speaking with the other characters. The principal also is a main cause of teen angst for the teens. He was a man who is supposed to teach discipline to the students but instead attempted to abuse his powers to harm the students mentally and physically such as his confrontation with the Rebel.
In the Perks of being a Wallflower, the cause of Charlie's teen angst is his aunt. This is seen in him blaming himself for her death and never coming on full terms of it was her fault that she touched him. This is one of the many effects of being sexually abused at a young age such as depression and being dysfunctional. He got past this through his friends who were there with him throughout his freshman year and his one teacher friend.
In all three movies, I find that the main problem in the teen angst is that parents are the root cause. Not to say all parents cause it, but there are a few who don't understand how they affect their child or if they should be more involved in their child's life. I feel that even though teens often fight with other teens, with parents, we show more resentment because they are a parental figure and make it seem like we're below them as people and often they do condescend us because they feel as if they've experienced everything that we have but in some cases they haven't and make it seem like they're all knowing.
