What's The Truth About Youth?

     I find youth and the way that youth is portrayed to be a fascinating part of our culture. While looking for a piece of media to use for this blog I realized that there are so many representations of youth and they all carry a similar theme, young people are foolish, can't be taken seriously and don't understand the consequences of their actions. One of the many forms of media that portray this idea is Easy A. Easy A is a film about a girl named Olive who pretends to have sex with a guy to stop the rumors that he is gay and then she begins to pretend to do stuff with other guys to help make them seem cooler and she gets money in return. In a very short time Olive is known as the school slut and hasn't even done anything. 

     One of the most common things looked at when portraying youth, and especially young girls is sexuality and sexual desire. As Harris talks about in Future Girl, good girls are girls that don't have sex unless they are in a loving relationship with a boyfriend and they are typically white and upper class. Bad girls are ones that do slutty sexual things with random people or talk about enjoying and having sex and are typically girls of color and lower class. Olive is definitely a can-do girl, she is rich, white, smart, a virgin and has a good family. Olive is the perfect can-do girl until she becomes an at-risk girl by becoming a slut in the eyes of the public. One scene that keeps popping into my head that very strongly connects with the idea that youth is ignorant and makes bad choices is the scene with Olive and her guidance counselor, in this scene the guidance counselor talks to Olive about the rumors she has been hearing and tells Olive that he doesn't know what she is doing and that she obviously wasn't thinking. In this film youth are mostly shown as people whose emotions cannot be taken seriously, however Olive's family does a good job treating Olive as an equal rather than as a child. One of Olive's teachers also did a good job treating her as a person rather than a foolish child, but once she became the school slut he talked to her and told her that she didn't know what she was doing or what she really wanted. Olive is also portrayed as a consumer, as discussed in Producing Girls by Mary Kearney, girls are simply seen as consumers and Olive very easily fits that view. One scene that is used to show this is when Olive goes out to buy new cloths to fit her new persona as the school slut. I think that race and class has a big effect on how the film comes across to the viewers. If Olive was not an upper-class white girl this film would have come across as a negative view of race and the lower-class rather than a humorous look at sex and the rumor mill in high school. As we discussed in class, satire is a great way to look at sex in youth because it makes it easier to see an issue that people don't really want to look at because there is humor involved. 

     This film mostly just reinscribes discourses surrounding adolescence and slightly challenges them. This films most definitely makes youth look innocent and stupid. The film shows this stupidity as strictly about sex. Olive is a very smart girl and does a good job in school, however when it comes to sex and relationships she knows very little. However the film also shows the guidance counselor as overly sexual and somewhat stupid when it comes to sex. I think that the film is trying to use satire to show that people need more education on sex and that the issue of sex mixed with adolescence is a recipe for disaster. 

Brown, Adriane. Class Lecture. Introduction to Youth Studies. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. 3March 2011.

Harris, Anita. Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Kearney, Mary Celeste. "Producing Girls: Rethinking the Study of Female Youth Culture."Delinquents and Debutantes: Twentieth-century American Girls' Cultures. New York: New York UP, 1998.   285-306.

Does Anyone Really Know What the Norm is Anymore

 wanted to look at Universalizing and Minoritizing on sexuality. So while trying to find an episode for this blog assignment I decided to look up shows that were/are on television and had at least one homosexual character in it. I found lists that were over one hundred shows long from the 1980s to the present. In the more recent shows, the gay characters have more lead roles. I think that people are actually starting to look at homosexuality with a Universalizing discourse. I decided to pick a show that had two lead characters that are in a lesbian relationship together because I knew that it would have both views in it. The show I choose was South of Nowhere, a show about a family that moves to Los Angeles and their daughter Spencer becomes friends with a known lesbian at school, Ashley. Over time that friendship changes into a romantic relationship and Spencer finally realizes that she is gay. The show deals with what it means for spencer personally that she is a lesbian and what it means to her family, and she gets an array of responses. 

     The episode that I am going to be looking at is titled "Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are". In this episode Spencer decides that she is ready to come out to her parents. Something that she has had to work up courage for because her mother feels that being a homosexual is wrong and deviant. She thinks that Ashley turned Spencer gay and if they had never met she would still have her perfect, normal straight daughter. However in contrast Spencer's dad knows that his daughter was born this way and is very accepting, he even helps explain it to Spencer's mom. 

     South of Nowhere, and specifically this episode draw upon a minoritizing discourse because there are some characters that feel very strongly that being gay is wrong. These characters are people such as Spencer's mom, her brother and people from their high school. They make heterosexuality the norm and they feel that society should be situated around heterosexuality and that all other sexualities should be pushed aside. Minoritizing discourse feeds into the ideas of hegemony that Lull discussed in his article. Hegemony is the power or dominance that one social group holds over others. Minoritizing discourse has the idea that heterosexuality is the norm and that it has power over other forms of sexuality. 

    This show also draws upon a universalizing discourse through characters such as Spencer, Ashley, Spencer's dad, and Ashley's friend Aden. They realize that sexuality is on a spectrum and that situating heterosexuality as the norm takes away rights and resources from homo/bisexuals. This idea is one that needs to be spread throughout society. Without characters like these this show would not be progressive, but would rather reaffirm stereotypes about homosexuality. I think it is very important to have characters that call upon universalizing discourse because they are the ones that help portray homo/bisexuality in a good way and are helping make it more commonly seen and less taboo. While most shows that have prominent gay characters are criticized for the ways that they deal with those characters, I fell that South of Nowhere handles homosexuality and the relationships between the homosexual characters and others. It accurately shows the struggles that homo/bisexuals  deal with when coming out and what that means for their future. I also think that the show does a good job portraying intimate scenes between Ashley and Spencer, where as in shows like Will and Grace they try not to show intimate scenes staring the homosexual characters.