SEX AND THE SINGLE TEENAGER FMS 394 Lesson

SEX AND THE SINGLE TEENAGER FMS 394 Lesson 4

GUIDING QUESTIONS What is a “pregnancy” melodrama and what is its significance to cinematic discourses of youth? How does a film like Splendor in the Grass both express anxieties about teens’ sexuality and use teen sexuality to express broader social anxieties emerging in the early 1960 s? How does the “Sexual Revolution” shape discourses about teens and adolescence including those circulated in film and other media texts?

THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION Late 1950 s and early 1960 s § Simultaneous courting and containment of young female desire § Average first marriage dips to ~20 for women, 22 for men in 1960 § Hormonal birth control pills approved in US in 1960 April 7, 1967

THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION Rumblings in the Media § Cleanpics and exploitation pics § Music § Rock and Roll consumption § Girl Groups § Pregnancy Melodramas The Shirelles in 1961

THE PREGNANCY MELODRAMA Melodrama as a subgenre: § Heightened emotion § Struggle between vice and virtue § Intended and/or assumed female audience Pregnancy melodrama § Hybrid of the women’s film and the teenpic § American Puritanism vs. new morality § Acknowledged female desire A Summer Place, 1959 Dir. Delmer Daves

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS (1961) Set in the late 1920 s-early 1930 s in Kansas Contemporary anxieties about sexuality set in past Consequences of denying desire Not just about teens

NEXT TIME ON FMS 394 Affluence, Malaise, and the Search for Authenticity