Photo: Courtesy Paramount Vantage
I saw American Teen this weekend, the documentary about high school kids in small town Indiana that's being advertised as a mix between Juno and the Breakfast Club and Laguna Beach -- but realer! harsher! awkwarder!
And it was, basically, all of those things -- a smartly assembled crew of teenagers in the midst of their senior year, trying to figure out what (if anything, please God, let there be something) comes after high school. There's the painfully clueless geek, the amiable jocks and the bitchy queen bee, and then there was my favorite -- Hannah Bailey (above), the moody, medicated, artsy misfit with her eye on the prize: anywhere but there, but especially California.
Not only does Hannah bear an uncanny physical resemblance to Ally Sheedy (her obvious antecedent in the Breakfast Club), she delivers the most compelling queer-ish narrative of the film. That's because -- other than a few predictable girl-on-girl kisses (spin the bottle, drunken exploits in Mexico), there's not actually an identified queer character. There is Hannah's best friend, Clarke, who dons a mint-green suit for the prom (see above), rocks out with her in their semi-punk band, and holds her when she cries because her loser boyfriend dumped her post-sex.
Here's hoping the DVD has extras of other kids who weren't ultimately a focus of the film, beacuse whether or not Clarke is queer, I can't quite think of how to ask this question better than NPR's reviewer already did:
[W]hy is the most interesting student on screen -- the rebel's best friend -- not ready for his close-up? Reticent, not a camera-hog, he stays on the fringes of the screen, either smart enough not to crave unearned celebrity, or lucky enough not to get it.
At one point, his eyes brim with tears, and suddenly you realize...you can't help wanting to know more.
Mostly now I'm jonesing for some more regular, and even more real, stories from the front lines of American adolescence. My two favorite reliable sources:
> MTV True Life: The hourlong documentary series, launched in 1998, is somewhere between the Real World and the Hills, and has included several queer topics. Watch full-length previous episodes here.
> Current: The TV network and online community founded by Al Gore, packed chock full of youth-made media. Easily searchable by tags for content (try gay or sex and love, for starters).
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