I am not in any way attempting to make myself a martyr. Rather, I just feel it to be necessary to re-inform the ill-informed of a generation that has been exploited by its preceding generations. This generation is my generationthe teenager. Teensploitation is the exploitation of teenagers by the producers of teen-oriented films. This word is an offshoot of the word blaxploitation, which was coined in the 1970's to refer to the exploitation of blacks by film producers (Gurunet.com). Teensploitation landed itself a spot in Websters dictionary just this year, but still has received very little documentation or explanation. If the word is important enough to be put in the dictionary, why isnt it important that people understand it? Although adult filmmakers and the general public may not want to admit it, teensploitation exists very prevalently in the world today. The filmmakers objective to make money off of the exploitation of teenagers is wrong and it undermines the values that many teenagers hold to very high esteem. Mary Louise Pratt, in her essay Arts of the Contact Zone, uses Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, an unknown but apparently literate Andean who wrote a twelve hundred page letter to King Philip III of Spain, as an example to explain some very abstract concepts as well as words that parallel considerably with teensploitation. While the concepts are a lot easier to understand than the words, I feel it necessary to include both, as they are important to the contents of this essay. The first and easiest of the words is the contact zone. Pratt refers to this as the social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power (607). In reference to teensploitation, there are numerous contact zones that could be discussed, but the focus here is that between the filmmakers and teens who choose not to co-opt the lifestyle that the filmmakers portray in their movies that document actual teen lives. As a member of the latter group, Im appalled by the stereotypical characterization of my age group as well as the glorification of under-aged drinking, pre-marital intercourse, and drug useall of which are associated first and foremost with teenagers. All of these actions are encompassed in films that target the teenage age group. As a point of reference, Im going to use the popular film American Pie which was released in 1999 and gained $18.709 million on its opening weekend in the box office. The basic premise of the movie is about a group of seniors in high school that, after a party (that of course has alcohol) where the boys get no action, make a pact to all have sex by their graduation:
JIM The rest of the movie follows each of their separate escapades in trying to find a girl to have sex with. Its actually a pretty generic idea, but since the filmmakers are sitting on an opening weekend gross of almost $19 million, the dominant class apparently bought into it. So speaking of this in the context of dominant and subordinate classes, the dominant class would be the filmmakers and the ones who accept this behavior as normalcy and the subordinate or marginalized class would be the teens who do not subject themselves to these actions. Filmmakers are giving a modern day example of hegemony, that Dick Hebdige describes in his book, Subculture, as, a situation in which a provisional alliance of certain social groups can exert total social authority over other subordinate groups, not simply by coercion or by the direct imposition of ruling ideas, but by winning and shaping consent so that the power of the dominant classes appears both legitimate and natural (16). In other words, the filmmakers have gained social authority over the teenaged community because the portrayal of the teenagers on film are accepted widely by the dominant classincluding adults, younger children, the partaking group of teenagers, and the filmmakers themselves. To give an example of what these people think is acceptable, here is another excerpt from American Pie:
JESSICA These are the morale that the dominant group buys in to and considers normal for teenagers and because of this, the marginalized group of teenagers are subjected to it. Hebdige goes on to explain that:
Hegemony can only be maintained so long as the dominant classes succeed in framing all competing definitions within their range, so that subordinate groups are, if not controlled; then at least contained within an ideological space which does not seem at all ideological: which appears instead to be permanent and natural, to lie outside history, to be beyond particular interests (16). Its actually a large paradox where the marginalized teens are permanently fixed into a stereotypical space that they cannot escape from. Although its inescapable, the consensus can be fractured, challenged, overruled, and resistance to the groups in dominance cannot always be lightly dismissed or automatically incorporated (Hebdige, 16). In the case of Guaman Poma, his resistance was his letter to King Philip III and in the case of teensploitation; my resistance is my lifestyle, but also this very essay. This resistance is given a lengthy word and definition by Pratt. She refers to it as autoethnographic text, a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them (608). So if ethnographic texts are those in which filmmakers represent dominant-group teenagers to their others (the marginalized group of teens), autoethnographic texts are representations that the so-defined others construct in response to or in dialogue with those texts (Pratt 608). Guaman Pomas autoethnographic text consists of a conquered subject using the conquerors language to construct a parodic, oppositional representation of the conquerors own speech. He wrote in Spanish to the Spanish people an image of themselves that they often suppressed and therefore surely recognized (Pratt 610). This autoethnographic text is a response to the films that exploit teenagers like myself and although this essay may never constitute [this] marginalized groups point of entry into the dominant circuits of print culture, it can at least give one persons insight to the feelings of this exploited group of people (Pratt 609). It would be a lie to say that teensploitation hasnt allowed a new venue of esteem for exploited teenagers. Pratt describes this venue as transculturation, processes whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture (612). By using this method of transculturation, we are allowed the opportunity to make ourselves look more credible and accomplished. I can tell adults and interested youngsters that Ive never experimented with drugs or tried any alcohol and Im still a virgin, to which they tend to reply with some exclamation of Are you serious? Ive actually noted on a number of occasions where Ive said that Im a sort of rarity among teens because I still hold on to my virginity proudly and can say that Ive never done anything illegal. Though the dominant group of teens may not find these qualities of any esteem, I have no qualms with naming them as such and neither do the others Ive spoken to in this marginalized group of teenagers. Though its few perks may be enough to subside exploited teens for the time being, a battle is going to be needed to overcome this exploitation, much like the African-American men and women did. I believe the exploitation is close to one and the same and apparently so does the world since the term of teensploitation was invented from the earlier term of blaxploitation. Its easy now to use the exploitation to make myself look like a better person, but in the end, people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and the reality of this situation is that we cannot allow ourselves to be so falsely represented by the film industry (Baldwin 233). So in the words of James Baldwin in his essay Stranger in the Village, which I relate very closely to the teensploitation issue: In this long battle, a battle by no means finished, the unforeseeable effects of which will be felt by many future generations, the white mans motive was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity (Baldwin). All we want is to be able to establish our own identity.
Works Cited Baldwin, James. Stranger in the Village. The Brief Arlington Reader. Ed. Nancy Perry. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2004. 224-233. Gurunet.com. http://www.gurunet.com. 4 December 2004. Hebdige, Dick. Subculture. New York: Routledge, 1979. 14-19. Pratt, Mary Louise. Arts of the Contact Zone. Ways of Reading. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky, eds. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2002. 605-618.
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