Last week, I discovered the awesome Penny and Aggie webcomic (via). The archives only had 840 strips back then, so reading them all didn’t take too long. This is a good thing, because Penny and Aggie is one of the few webcomics where I’ve dropped everything to go and read the whole thing from the beginning. It has American high school teenagers, rich dollops of teen angst, pop culture references that aren’t overdone, and pretty good drawing.

Anyway, in the course of reading the archives I realised that there are hardly any successful teen movies these days. Starting from when I was in Class 9 or 10 to the time I was in third year of college, Hollywood cranked out teen movies almost endlessly. They spawned franchises and created superstars. You couldn’t go six weeks without seeing a new movie with scatological jokes and awkward sex and romance in the US Top 10. But these days, nothing. Even the teen movies that show on HBO and Star Movies these days are all from the 90s or early 2000s. Stuff like The Princess Diaries and 10 Things I Hate About You.

The simplest explanation for this is that as I’ve stopped watching movies and stopped being a teenager I no longer notice teen movies. But I notice and appreciate teen webcomics and old teen movies. And besides, what good is a simple explanation for a blogpost?

Sure, you can cite the High School Musical movies, but they are not teen movies despite being about teenagers. This is because they have no sex or references to bodily fluids. The High School Musicals are movies about teenagers for preteens. Similarly Juno is a movie about teenagers for adults.

Not only that, but if you look at parody or spoof as a measure of success – Not Another Teen Movie came out in 2001. Since then there’s been Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie and three Scary Movies, but no more teen movie spoofs. Clearly, on the Weird Al Standard of Arrival, teen movies have departed. 

Here, then, are three explanations for the Dark Age of the Teen Movie.

1. The Generational Cohort Theory: I would probably never have thought of this theory if I hadn’t started reading Penelope Trunk, and as a consequence, reading anti-baby-boomer blogs. But anyhow. According to this theory:
   • The traditional audience for teen movies now consists of post-Gen Y kids who prefer to get their entertainment from YouTube and MySpace instead of movies.
   • American kids these days go to college and then go to graduate school and then move back with their parents to discover themselves (you can really tell I’ve been reading too much Penelope Trunk now). Therefore adulthood starts later and later in life. So all coming of age movies have to be set in first jobs instead of high school. You can actually see this in Questionable Content, though that’s a webcomic, not a movie.
2. The Seeds of Its Own Destruction Theory: According to this theory, teen movie producers all thought Lindsay Lohan was the Next Best Thing and staked their hopes on her and inflated her salary to astronomical levels. The genre as a whole became dependent on Lindsay Lohan. Then, when she burnt out and had to stop doing movies, she dragged the whole teen movie industry down with her. Like Lehman Brothers, Lindsay Lohan became so big that her failure spread systemic risk to the entire industry. It’s horrifying.
3. The George W. Bush is Evil Theory: This theory basically pins the blame on the Bush tax cuts for the rich and the stimulus checks. When Americans got their enormous tax refunds or stimulus checks, they went out and bought new means of entertainment like iPods, Nintendo Wiis, Tivos, and HDTVs. Faced with this, the teen movie languished and died. So it’s all Dubya’s fault. But now Obama’s tax cuts for 95% of Americans, which provide a slow trickle of funds instead of one time windfalls will change the situation. With 20 extra dollars a month and a recession on, Americans will spend money not on expensive durable goods but on one-time luxuries like teen movies. And a thousand poop jokes shall bloom!