Teenage (2014) - Review

Teenage Documentary - The Kids Just Wanna Have Fun

Teenage is a documentary - an unsatisfactory one - from Matt Wolf based on Jon Savage's book Teenage: The Prehistory of Youth Culture: 1875-1945. It starts with the premise that in the early 20th Century (it starts in 1904) child labor laws were passed and suddenly youths that had been consigned to field or factory work were left with lots of time and little to do. The result: youth culture.

Wolf takes us through various signposts in history from 1904 through the beginning of the nuclear age in 1945, threading together a waveform narrative where teenagers attempt to define themselves culturally but find themselves confronted by events such as World War I, the Depression, and World War II that bring all of the fun to a temporary close.

The basic theme of Teenage is that when left to their own devices, teenagers will try to live vibrant and free, but adults won't let it last for long before they either try to reign the kids in or they screw things up so badly that the kids no longer have time for fun.

The style of the film is mainly archival footage and photographs set to music, with some original material (not marked as such but fairly apparent) designed to look like period film to tell the internal narratives of certain selected characters. Ethereal narration is provided from the perspective of either the characters or what Wolf imagines as the collective mindset of teenagers.

Teenage is, at its best, sweet candy but it is mostly empty calories. It tells such a narrowly selected set of narratives that it comes off as too precious for its own good. It's too interested in how the kids were dancing and dressing and not interested enough in their struggles.

As one example, the film's suggestion at the outset that governments just out of the blue enacted child labor laws is silly and gives short shrift to the struggle of so many (and ignores the impact of the labor and progressive movements - watching the opening one would think politicians were just being gratuitously generous). You can't really understand youth culture at that time unless you fully understand the crucible from which it was formed (and the same for future generations as well). Teenage gives such subjects all too simplistic or fleeting treatment. It races too determinedly toward the party when it needs to stop and smell the picket lines.

The film looks at World War I, but does it so briefly that it feels like just an annoying break from all the good times. Although the narration suggests teenagers felt betrayed by the war, Wolf fails to draw the line between that and that fact that 21 years later those teenagers were part of the adult crowd when World War II started. There has to be some irony from that, but the film does not visit upon it. Instead, when we watch the later segment, Wolf simply repeats himself seemingly with more affection for the sound of the flowery words than their import.

The film also waits far, far too long to incorporate anyone but white kids. They're obviously an after-thought. Well into the movie Wolf talks about African-American impacts on music and dance, and then injects a narrative about a young African-American teenager's struggle with oppression, but it feels like a throw in - inserted at a time when the film's whiteness was becoming too overwhelming not to notice and then inserted briefly and unresolved. There was so much struggle (even among many whites) during the forty some years that this documentary covers, but Wolf is far more interested in popular culture of the time. And, sorry anyone from Asia, Africa, or South America - you're invisible here - this is strictly American and Western European culture here (not American Indians, though - Latinos get slight notice with a passing mention of the Zoot Suit Riots).

Alas, even as an exploration of American and European popular culture, it feels incomplete. It tries to cover too much ground in its 78 minute running time, and so all we're left with is fleeting impressions of flappers, swing kids, and sub-debs, but we don't truly understand any of them other than the generic suggestion that teenagers throughout time have struggled with being stuck in a twilight zone between childhood and adulthood. That's not a particularly thundering insight.

What we really want to understand is why and how flappers and others came about, what their culture was about - not just what it was - and how it affected things to come. We really don't get any of that beyond what you likely already know if you have a decent memory of what you learned from high school textbooks (indeed, this film's highest and best use is perhaps for high school teachers looking for an A/V day).

I suppose the point is probably to be just a photo album of youth culture for that forty year period, but that's too unsatisfying as history - politically, socially, or culturally. With the tools at Wolf's disposal in the film medium, he could have done more. But it never happens. The result is 78 minutes of survey history that is more or less a commercial for being a teenager. If you're desperate for some nostalgia of when you were a cool teenager, by all means enjoy. If you want to really learn something, look elsewhere.

Screened in the theater at the Noho 7.