Reframing (Im)Maturity
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Susan Pearlman Reframing (Im)maturity: Interrogating Representations of the Transition to Adulthood in Contemporary American Film and Television Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Film, Television and Media Studies University of East Anglia 17th May 2013 © This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Abstract At the turn of the twenty-first century, institutional and cultural changes caused adolescence as a life stage to become increasingly overdetermined, while simultaneously blurring its definitional boundaries. Although the concept of youth as a culturally defined category is of relatively recent origin, adolescence is culturally recognized as a biological and social necessity; a process one must go through in order to negotiate the passageway from childhood to adulthood. Problematically, the very existence of adolescence depends on the fixity of childhood and adulthood, life stages that are themselves highly contestable. Fascination with those individuals who did not conform to culturally sanctioned ideas of adolescence during this decade, classified by such terms as “emerging adulthood,” “twixters,” and “rejuveniles,” evinces the tenuous nature of life-stage categorizations and their fluctuating role in cultural understandings of individual psychosocial formation. This thesis argues that adolescence, and consequently the subject position of the adolescent, should be understood as an assemblage of a wide array of practices employed in the management and regulation of a specific population. Accordingly, this project asserts that a shift occurred in the representation of adolescence at the beginning of the twenty-first century that worked to legitimize one particular depiction of adulthood, consequently positioning adolescents as something worth obviating and marginalizing through the censure of the performance of certain immature behaviors and attitudes. Through the exploration of “threshold moments” as represented in American film and television from 1999-2008, moments at which individuals are depicted as struggling to reach autonomy, this thesis uncovers the mechanisms that naturalize the figure of the adolescent as an attenuated individual possessing partially formed identities and skills, considering the ways in which this discursive formation operates in the new millennium as a means by which a certain type of privilege is negotiated, controlled and reasserted. 2 Contents Title Page 1 Abstract 2 Contents 3 List of Images 4 Acknowledgements 5 Introduction 6 Chapter One: 35 Theorizing Transitions and their Subjects: A Cultural Semiotics of Maturity Chapter Two: 64 What is an Adolescent?: Tautological Subjects and Natural Constructions Chapter Three: 116 Destiny as Destination: The Fantasy of Stability and the Mature Self Chapter Four: 163 Under Pressure: Education, The Transition to Adulthood, and the American Dream Chapter Five: 183 The Cost of Becoming an Adult: The Socio-Economic Reality of Contemporary Adolescence and the Changing Labor Market Chapter Six: 226 Invisible Transformations: Sexual Maturity and the Elusive Threshold Conclusion: 253 Bibliography: 267 Filmography: 287 Word Count: 100,375 3 List of Images Fig 1: Graph, U.S. Immigration by Decade Fig 2: Sam, screen grab, Reaper Fig 3: “A kid,” Screen grab, The Perfect Score Fig 4: “Average,” Screen grab, The Perfect Score Fig 5: South Harmon Institute of Technology Curriculum, Screen grab Fig 6: Screen grab, Elizabethtown Fig 7: Carter, screen grab, In Good Company Fig 8: Airline Executive, screen grab, The Loop Fig 9: Promotional Poster, Employee of the Month Fig 10: Promotional Poster, Step Brothers Fig 11: Dale and Alice, screen grab, Step Brothers Fig 12: Promotional Poster, The 40 Year-Old Virgin Fig 13: Andy and Trish, screen grab, The 40 Year-Old Virgin Fig 14: Comparing Time Covers Fig 15: Cover of Time Magazine Fig 16: Variations on Time Cover Fig 17: Screen grab, Bridesmaids Fig 18: Promotional Poster, Bad Teacher 4 Acknowledgements Like all contemporary life-staged subjects stuck somewhere in the transition to adulthood, my journey would not have been possible without the help, patience, and support of several individuals. This thesis would not exist if it were not for the tireless support and guidance from my supervisor, Professor Yvonne Tasker. Thank you for consistently challenging me to push my analyses further. I am forever grateful for your insightful suggestions, questions, and indispensable editorial comments. Thank you for your willingness to meet in coffee shops in various parts of the world to make this happen. I am also grateful to Professor Diane Negra whose valuable comments on early versions of this thesis helped steer this project in a direction it may not have otherwise. And thank you to Tracey Gaskin for your help over the last few months. A great many friends, relatives and acquaintances have supported me in a variety of different ways over the last six years, two continents, and five cities. Thanks to Joe Arton, Kate Holeywell, and Louise Fitzgerald for your support and insight during my time in England. Thank you to Julie Barton for all the encouragement and Skyping. And thank you to Kara Wentworth and Lauren Berliner for all the sushi and invaluable writing help and encouragement. I am very fortunate to have an exceptionally talented editor and best friend for a sister. NG, you know how grateful I am for everything; too much to say in words. Thank you to my parents: without whose love, encouragement and support, this endeavor would not have been possible. Thank you for supporting this Boomerang Kid, and thanks for letting me be your sometime KIPPERS (Kid In Parents’ Pockets, Eroding Retirement Savings). And lastly, thank you to Matt. Throughout all our international and cross-continental moves, unemployment, temporary employment, graduate programs, adult roommates and all the other (mis)adventures, you have been my rock and my best friend. There is no one with whom I’d rather be stuck somewhere between adolescence and adulthood. 5 Introduction Saul: Look at us. I’m in my 60s and we’re, like, in high school at a slumber party. Kevin: Does high school ever end, Uncle Saul? Saul: No, Kevin. It’s like taxes. We’re doomed to repeat it year after year.1 --Kevin to his Uncle Saul in Brothers and Sisters There comes a point in your life when you’re officially an adult. Suddenly, you’re old enough to vote, drink, and engage in other adult activities. Suddenly, people expect you to be responsible, serious, a grown-up. We get taller. We get older. But do we ever really grow up?2 --Meredith’s Voiceover Narration in Grey’s Anatomy The two above quotes, taken from two popular prime-time U.S. television dramas airing in 2007, suggest that a cultural shift has occurred that has obscured the line between adolescence and adulthood. Moreover, they imply that there are no longer clear, culturally sanctioned markers that establish when one has finished “coming-of-age,” or successfully completed the transition to adulthood. This sentiment was echoed in popular magazine cover articles and popular books published in the first decade of the twenty- first century, articulating a growing concern with the apparent changes in the transition from childhood to adulthood. Adam Sternbergh’s 2006 New York Magazine feature, “Up With Grups,” discusses what Sternbergh saw as a new phenomenon in which a group of 1 “All in the Family,” Brothers and Sisters, ABC, 1 Apr 2007, Television. 2 “Forever Young,” Grey’s Anatomy, ABC, 15 Nov 2007, Television. 6 thirty and forty-year old adults whom he calls “Grups” (a conflation of the words grown- ups) were still maintaining the same lifestyle choices, attitudes, aspirations, and apparel as their twenty-year-old counterparts.3 Unlike youthful trends of the past in which individuals simply refused to grow up, Sternbergh explains, this cascade of pioneering immaturity is no longer a case of a generation’s being stuck in its own youth. This generation is now, if you happen to be under 25, more interested in being stuck in your youth.4 Sternbergh thus describes a group of adults who do not refuse to grow up in the traditional sense, these individuals maintain successful jobs and have children. Yet, they have not only clung to the markers of youth that once separated them from the previous generation, but have continued to appropriate markers of youth delineated by the generation that followed. For Sternberg this is, evidence of the slow erosion of the long-held idea that in some fundamental way, you cross through a portal when you become an adult, a portal inscribed with the biblical imperative, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: But when I became a man, I put away childish things.5 Sternbergh’s observations suggest that contemporarily, adulthood no longer signals the end of the maturation process: “Grups” make the statement that entering adulthood may mean adopting certain adult responsibilities, such as sustaining jobs and starting families, without relinquishing certain aspects of adolescence. Christopher Noxon chronicled this same occurrence, referring to this group of age-defined adults as “rejuveniles,” a term he uses to describe individuals that “cultivate