Ferris Bueller took the day off. The Breakfast Club found friendship in detention. The Outsiders didn’t play by the rules. The Heathers lost their cool. Karate Kid stood up to his rivals. The Teen Wolf became a hero.
The teens of the 1980s films did what they wanted. They didn’t conform or follow. They embraced what made them different and they ran with it. They were their own characters – their own people.
Sophomore Elaina Cole, a computer science major with minors in film studies and mathematics
And Elaina Cole, for one, is determined to give them the credit they deserve.
“I wanted to legitimize the 1980s teen film as a genre – to show that it matters,” says the Honors College sophomore, who – tasked with researching any specific film genre for her Studies in American Film course last fall – ended up taking on a genre that wasn’t even recognized as a genre. “When I chose to write about teen films of the 1980s, I had no idea how difficult it’d be! The lack of academic research did make it a little more difficult, but, honestly, it just made me more determined to show that this is a genre that’s just as legit as screwball comedies or anything else out there.”
And so – in her paper,“Teenage Wasteland: The 1980s Teen Film as a Revitalized Screwball Comedy” – Cole compares two 1980s films, Pretty in Pink and Valley Girl, to three screwball comedies released between 1934 and 1940: It Happened One Night, My Man Godfrey and His Girl Friday. The result is pretty convincing.
“The narrative patterns of both of these genres are rooted in the financial climate of their times,” says Cole, noting that Reaganomics, box stores and big businesses of the 1980s were taking their toll on small business, class unity and families. “The economy contributed to class division in the ’80s, and – as parents struggled to keep up – kids were left on their own more. This is when the whole latchkey kid trend started, so there’s this whole generation that’s feeling alone – like their parents are failing them. The family lost its centrality. So, there’s rejection of family, rejection of adulthood, of conforming. The 1980s were all about utilitarian individualism, self-interest, making oneself better.”
The 1980s was also all about the movie business: The big-budget blockbusters that were being shown in the suddenly ubiquitous multiplexes were geared for all those latchkey kids who were spending so much time on their own.
“Pop culture reflects the people of the time and what they’re going through,” shrugs Cole. “I showed that the 1980s teen movie is a distinguished genre that accepts consumerism, promotes adolescent individuals and rejects classes and adulthood. Even if you’re not a fan of these movies, as a social creation, they are still important.”
And, apparently, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies agrees: Cole is one of only 30 undergraduates in the country to be invited to present research at the SCMS-Undergraduate conference in Boulder, Colo., which runs from April 14-17, 2016.
“I’m really, really excited. I’m very conference hungry,” the William Aiken Fellow laughs, explaining that she has attended several academic conferences over the years, including the Southeast Women in Computing conference. “I like the sense of empowerment you get at conferences. Everyone supports the same cause; they all want one thing. I really like that community feeling.”
The computer science major is grateful for the public speaking course she took at the College – something she thinks all computer science majors should be required to do, because, as she says, “The successful programmers and engineers out there are the ones who can talk! It’s important to have balance.”
And Cole certainly has that. Sure, she develops algorithms for the College’s CIRDLES Community and creates cyber infrastructure for the National Science Foundation–supported EARTHTIME and EarthChem initiatives. She’s also a Leading Edge Scholar, the social chair for the College’s Women in Computing Club, the treasurer for its Cybersecurity Club and an active member of its Film Club.
“I have a lot of interests,” laughs the Louisiana native whose high school curriculum was reading/writing intensive. “I rebelled against that when I came to the College. Chris Starr [then chair of the computer science department, now associate professor of supply chain and information management] was the first person I met at the College, and he convinced me that computer science was where I needed to be.”
But Cole isn’t your typical computer science major. She also double minors in math and film studies. And speaks to crowds. She’s into arts and culture, travel, language, human rights. She doesn’t conform. She doesn’t play by the rules. She does what she wants.
So, if what she wants is to make the 1980s teen film a real, recognized, legitimate genre, well, then, she’ll make it happen. And – at this week’s SCMS-U conference – she will be getting the credit she deserves.
