Let's Talk About Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction

I can clearly remember the first piece of tween fiction I ever read, and it was Teacher's Pet, the second book in the Sweet Valley Twins series featuring Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield as sixth-graders.

I remember going to the local public library and asking if they had any Baby-Sitters Club, which I had not read yet, but that I knew that my older cousin read.  They didn't.  My brother pointed out Teacher's Pet to me because the girls were dressed like ballet dancers on the cover. I did not then, nor did I ever, take a ballet class; we lived in the country outside of a town of about 300 people, and there were no dance classes.  However, I knew people who went out of town to take them, and a couple of my cousins took them, so I was interested in the idea of dance classes.  Anyway, so I checked out the book, loved it, and read roughly a zillion more of them in the coming years (most of them had nothing to do with ballet, by the way).  I must have only been ten years old at the time; I remember my mom saying I was only allowed to read Sweet Valley Twins and not Sweet Valley High because she thought Sweet Valley High would be too mature, but eventually (I don't remember how old I was), we were at a bookstore that only had Sweet Valley High and not Sweet Valley Twins, so my mom was like, "Oh, fine, you can have one," and I'm pretty sure in the first one I read, an older guy takes Jessica to a bar and orders her a "boilermaker," which I guess is a shot of whiskey with a beer chaser, so yeah, my mom wasn't wrong about the "too mature" thing.

Regardless, I read both series for years and years, along with The Baby-Sitters Club and some lesser-known middle school series such as The Fabulous Five, Girl Talk, Sleepover Friends, Pen Pals, and eventually, young adult series with slightly older protagonists such as Sunset Island, which featured au pairs working for rich people during the summer between high school and college, and Boyfriends/Girlfriends, later renamed Making Out, my all-time favorite, which featured a group of Maine teens living with the aftermath of a car accident that had left one person dead, one person with amnesia, and one person confessing to a crime he didn't commit.  These books were fun, quick reads with often soap operatic plots, often featuring characters with lives I either related or aspired to.  I still love to read, but I don't know if I've ever had as much fun reading as I did back then, back when there were multiple series I followed with new books that came out literally every month.  There are still boxes of these books in my parents' basement.  My mom always says someday I'm going to have to do something with them.  It would be fun if I had enough bookshelf space to display them all.

It is these books-- both the more popular ones like Sweet Valley High and The Baby-Sitters Club, along with an impressive number of the more obscure ones, even some that I hadn't read-- that Gabrielle Moss chronicles in Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction.  Organized by the themes that were persistent in these books such as love, friends, family, etc., Moss explains the phenomenon of teen series fiction of the 80s and 90s, arguing that while some aspects of these books are problematic by today's standards-- they are mostly about middle- or upper-middle-class white girls, for example, alienating a large portion of their potential audience-- they were important in that they were both about and for young women, meaning that publishers acknowledged that girls' day to day lives were worth writing about and that, as an audience, pre-teen and teen girls were worth catering to.

The book even looks like some of the teen fiction from the 80s and 90s, or like a teen magazine from that era, with glossy pages featuring lots of pictures and bright colors.  It is a quick, nostalgic read, providing history and analysis of the books while also revealing some background facts, such as how the Baby-Sitters Club covers were created (fun fact: as a toddler, Kirsten Dunst modeled for Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls). 

Though I caught a couple of weird errors that should have been caught in the editing process, as a whole, the book is a great read for anyone who grew up reading these books.  Two thumbs up!

thoughts on Sex Education (spoilers; frank discussion of scene involving sexual assault)

Asa Butterfield stars as Otis Milburn, a British teen whose mother Jean (Gillian Anderson) is a sex therapist.  Though both single and a virgin at the beginning of the series, he becomes known as “sex kid” at his school and begins, with the help of his classmate Maeve (Emma Mackey) charging his classmates for sex advice.  Over the course of the two seasons, he helps his classmates navigate their relationships while beginning to explore his own.  We also get a look at Jean’s love life as she, after years of eschewing relationships in favor of one night stands (who Otis has gotten used to running into in the bathroom in his mother’s yellow bathrobe), begins an unlikely romance with a plumber named Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt).

I don’t know if teens really are having as much sex as the teens on this show are.  I do know that these particular teens seem incredibly responsible and mature about sex, being vigilant about condom use and seeking help on and working through issues that would make even some adults call it quits.  The relationships—both the teens’ and the adults’—are so real that it is painful to watch at times.  Jean confesses to Jakob that she kissed her ex-husband, and they break up.  When she later asks forgiveness, he tells her that she isn’t ready for the type of intimacy he needs.  She cries as soon as she is out the door.  Your heart breaks for her.  Sometimes, there is drama the likes of which is rarely seen in real life; people make drunken speeches where they tell people what they REALLY think of them and jump onstage during plays to make declarations.  Sometimes it’s too much like real life; sometimes it’s how you wish real life was.  It always is compelling, interesting television where you genuinely feel for most of the characters.

One particularly interesting storyline comes when Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood) experiences a sexual assault on a bus.  A man masturbates and ejaculates on the leg of her jeans; she is upset enough to get off of the bus and walk the rest of the way to school.  She seems flippant about the encounter when she tells her friend Maeve about it, primarily concerned that her jeans might be ruined.  Maeve has to explain to her that what she has experienced was a sexual assault and that she needs to report it to the police.  Though Aimee doesn’t understand the experience as sexual assault and is initially resistant to the idea of reporting it, she is nonetheless traumatized by it, avoiding the bus; thinking that she sees the man everywhere; and finding herself unable to enjoy sex with her boyfriend.  It provides a compelling look at the ways in which women are inclined to brush off such experiences as no big deal even as they have a serious impact on their ability to conduct their daily lives.

As a whole, it is both an entertaining and thought-provoking show.  A third season has been announced for 2021; I don’t think I’m the only one who can’t wait.

thoughts on Miss Americana (spoilers)

It's no secret to anyone who knows me that I'm a huge fan of Taylor Swift, though it took me a little while to come around on her when she first started.  Miss Americana, the recent Netflix documentary, takes us through Swift's career from the beginning, stopping at key moments to dig a little deeper and to get some commentary from Swift.  She says very early on that her guiding principle has always been wanting people to think she is good at what she does.  She is clearly very driven, motivated, talented, and has a support network that was dedicated to helping her develop that talent (her parents moved with her to Nashville when she was young so that she could pursue her music career).  As she has grown older, Swift has seemed to gain some perspective on how fragile basing your life on that guiding principle is.  

Looking back on the incident when Kanye interrupted her VMA acceptance speech, Swift says that when the crowd started booing, she, in the moment, thought that they were booing her.  She says that when your whole "moral code" (she uses that phrase more than once, even though I'm not sure that's what I would call it; I would call it more a sense of self or a personal ethos) is based around wanting people to like you, having a whole roomful of people booing is your worst nightmare.  On the one hand, anyone who is any sort of high achiever and largely bases their worth on achieving their goals can relate, and can think of points where they've been devastated at a failure or perceived failure.  On the other hand, when you're a performer, everything you do is so much more public and so much more closely scrutinized.  You can see where maybe you'd have to get to a point where you rethought how much you needed everyone to like you just to survive.

The film is largely about how Swift has learned to do that.  Two key points that come up are her struggle with disordered eating and her recent decision to become politically active after spending years avoiding talking about her political views.  She says that she has had to learn the hard way that she feels much better and has much more energy in her shows when she isn't starving herself, but that that means having to learn not to care so much when, say, a tabloid reports that she looks pregnant based on an unflattering photo. Politically, she says she was warned from very early on that she didn't want to get "Dixie Chicked" based on the backlash the Dixie Chicks received when lead singer Natalie Maines spoke out against then-president George W. Bush.  We see advisors warning her when she wants to speak out against a Tennessee senatorial candidate who has a record of supporting anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ policies; one even asks her if she would be okay with half as many people coming to her shows.  She says in frustration that it has begun to feel hypocritical to get onstage all, "Happy Pride Month!" if she isn't willing to actually DO anything.  She ultimately does release a statement in support of the candidate of her choice.  She has had to learn to let go of her need to be liked by everyone in order to be healthy and live her values.

What the film is, then, is the story of how a high-achieving young woman who is prone to people-pleasing has established a career and learned to do things more on her own terms.  I thought it explained a lot about her.  It was relatable, yet also shed light on how someone who has achieved that level of success has a different mindset and different priorities than the average person (even the average high-achieving person).

Let's Talk About Yesterday (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS!!!)

Himesh Patel stars as Jack Malik, a struggling musician.  One night, there is a freak occurrence where all of the electricity in the entire world goes off for twelve seconds.  Jack is riding his bike with his guitar strapped to his back when this happens and gets hit by a bus in the ensuing darkness.  He wakes up in the hospital to learn that he has been incredibly lucky; he is missing his two front teeth but is otherwise okay.  He gets together with friends to celebrate his release from the hospital, and Ellie Appleton (Lily James), his longtime manager, gives him a new guitar as a get-well gift.  He picks it up and plays the Beatles' "Yesterday" for his friends, much to their astonishment: when did he write that?!  In confusion, he tells them that Paul McCartney wrote it.  "Who's Paul McCartney?" one of them asks.  Upon returning home, he Googles the Beatles and can find no evidence of them on the Internet.  He checks his closet and can find none of his Beatles albums.  It is as if they never existed.  He begins performing their songs.  At first, nothing really happens, but after he makes a CD of a few songs and is discovered by Ed Sheeran, his career takes off.  Ellie tells him she has feelings for him, but believes even as she delivers the news that it is already too late for them.

The film brings up a lot of questions and issues that are dealt with only in passing, perhaps because the film is split between being about the freak occurrence and being a love story between Jack and Ellie.  For example, Jack writes down the titles of all of the Beatles songs he can think of on Post-Its; eventually, he runs into problems when he is left with only ones that are about places he has never been and people he doesn't know, or ones where he can't remember the lyrics perfectly.  It seems like this would happen sooner. Does even the biggest Beatles fan know most of their songs verbatim?  Also, when he first starts playing the songs, he is frustrated when his career doesn't take off immediately; he tells Ellie that he knows that the songs are strong, so it must be something about HIM.  I wondered about that, as well, as there are so many factors that go into a band or musician's popularity besides just having good songs and having the musical ability to perform them.  There is also a scene where he is encouraged to change they title and lyrics of "Hey, Jude," to "Hey, Dude," and a scene where he meets with a large team of marketing consultants who point out how weird and unmarketable an album title like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band sounds in theory.  That occurred to me, as well; I feel fairly confident that songs like "Yesterday" and "Let it Be" could be as popular if they were released today as when they were released then.  I wonder more about songs like "I am the Walrus."  I found myself wondering more about these types of particulars, and wanting the movie to delve more into them; they were usually fairly quickly handled or dismissed as evidence of how ridiculous the music industry is today.

It is a fairly fun and charming movie, with obviously good music.  However, it's best to go in willing to just roll with the concept and not ask too many questions, because a lot of them aren't answered or aren't dealt with more than in passing.  I may have just been expecting it to be something other than what it was.

thoughts on Dumplin (spoilers)

Danielle MacDonald stars as Willowdean Dixon, the daughter of former pageant queen and current pageant runner Rosie Dixon (Jennifer Aniston).  Willowdean used to have her aunt Lucy (Hilliary Begley) to help her through pageant season, but Lucy has recently passed away.  Upon discovering an incomplete pageant application among her aunt's things and determining that Lucy must have not thought she would be welcome among the pageant's thin, pretty contestants, Willowdean decides to enter this year's Miss Teen Bluebonnet pageant in protest.  She is joined by her best friend, Ellen (Odeya Rush), who fits right in among the other contestants; Millie (Maddie Baillio), who, like Willowdean, is overweight, but unlike Willowdean, has dreamed of entering the pageant since she was eight; and Hannah (Bex Taylor-Klaus), whose entry in the talent contest initially consists of simply chanting "Down with patriarchy!"  Willowdean somewhat reluctantly befriends Millie and Hannah after she and Ellen have a falling-out ("You're not built for the revolution," Willowdean tells Ellen); she and her mother learn to understand each other better; and she learns that there is more to pageants than meet the eye.  Along the way, she finds a flyer for a Dolly Parton night at a bar called the Hideaway, after which the drag queens she meets there become unofficial pageant coaches for her and her new friends.

One thing I appreciated is that this movie is set in a world where most people are fundamentally decent.  Yes, there are some teen boys who yell nasty things at Willowdean and Millie (Millie mostly grins and bears it; Willowdean gets suspended from school for kneeing a boy in the groin).  Yes, Willowdean and Millie get some "What are you doing here?" looks from some of the pageant organizers and fellow contestants.  However, this is not the world of Glee, where those kids were constantly getting slushees thrown in their faces and having the cheerleading coach plot against them, or of Never Been Kissed, where more than one character has dog food thrown at them by the popular kids.  Here, the frontrunner in the pageant (Dove Cameron) looks exactly how you would expect her to look, and she even has a crush on the same boy that Willowdean does...but she seems nice enough.  In a different/worse teen movie, she would be actively plotting against Willowdean and her friends.  Here, more realistically, she and Willowdean are neither best friends nor enemies.

The parents aren't depicted as being evil, either.  It's fairly clear that winning the Bluebonnet pageant was the high point of Rosie's life, but given that the Bluebonnet pageant is such a big deal in their town, and that Rosie never left either the town or pageant culture, it makes sense that she would view it that way.  Also, though Millie's mother (Kathy Najimy) refuses to sign Millie's permission slip for the pageant and is initially angry when she finds out that Millie forged her signature, it is clear once we meet her that she only did so because she wants to protect her daughter, and she comes around pretty quickly to being supportive.  The looks on both her and Rosie's faces when Millie and Willowdean take the stage are very true to how mothers would react in those moments-- initially nervous on their behalf, then proud.

There are some real moments of joy in this movie.  Some of them involve Millie, who is so earnest and hopeful; whose smile so rarely leaves her face; who is working so hard and wants to do well so badly-- and is genuinely good at virtually every aspect of the pageant.  Others involve Willowdean and Ellen's friendship; they bonded as little girls over their love of Dolly Parton, and one genuinely joyful moment in the film comes when the two of them sing along to "9 to 5" as Willowdean starts to drive out of a parking lot and Ellen jogs alongside the car, holding her hand.  Nearly ALL of the joyful moments, in fact, are set to Dolly Parton music, including a closing scene with the girls and their moms back at Dolly Parton night at the Hideaway, onstage with the drag queens singing "Two Doors Down": "Here I am, feeling everything but sorry. Having a party, two doors down."

In short, it is a good-hearted movie about good people having a life-changing experience, with lots of Dolly Parton on the soundtrack; a feel good movie that goes deeper into the characters' relationships than you might expect.

Let's Talk About The Princess Switch (SPOILERS)

Vanessa Hudgens stars as Stacy De Novo, a Chicago baker who learns within the first few minutes of this movie that she has been selected to compete in a royal baking competition in the fictional Belgravia.  She travels there with her employee and longtime friend, Kevin (Nick Sagar), and his young daughter, Olivia (Alexa Adeosun).  Not long after arriving in Belgravia, she runs into Lady Margaret (also Vanessa Hudgens), who is engaged to Prince Edward (Sam Palladio) and looks exactly like Stacy.  Margaret proposes that they switch lives for a couple of days so that she can have one shot at being a regular person before she marries Prince Edward.  They will switch back in time for the contest.  Stacy agrees, and a lot of cuteness and some mild wackiness ensues.

First of all: "let's switch lives!" movies are my jam.  ("Let's switch lives!" movies are not to be confused with "Let's switch BODIES!" movies, or "Let's GROW UP REAL FAST!" movies, which often involve grown adults being made to act like children while encountering adult situations, and which make me DEEPLY UNCOMFORTABLE.  I will not see Thirteen Going On Thirty even though Jennifer Garner is one of my favorites.)  The Parent Trap is the most obvious example of the "Let's switch lives!" genre; another of my favorites is Big Business, starring Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin as two sets of switched-at-birth twins, one which grew up poor in the country and the other which grew up rich in the city. Closely related are "I have been mistaken for someone else and will just step into their life, which is better than my own" movies; obvious examples are While You Were Sleeping starring Sandra Bullock and Opportunity Knocks starring Dana Carvey.  Those are fun, too, but there is always an uncomfortable part where the person's real identity is revealed and everyone is mad that they've been lied to. 

Anyway, this is a pretty fun example of the "Let's switch lives!" genre, and I actually dig that there's not a lot of backstory and that it just jumps right into things.  It's like, "BOOM! You're in a baking contest!," and then, "BOOM! Here's a duchess that looks just like you!" This movie really could have gone one of two ways, either of which would have been fine.  The first way that it could have gone is that both women could have realized that they missed their own lives and that everything they wanted was right under their noses the whole time. The second way, and the way that it actually DID go, was that both women realized that they were better suited to their new lives than their old ones, and the men in both women's lives like the "new" them better than the "old" them.  Stacy's longtime friend Kevin likes that "Stacy" is suddenly spontaneous and go-with-the-flow.  Prince Edward likes that "Margaret" suddenly cares about the day-to-day affairs of running the kingdom.  (Side note: Prince Edward is REALLY SWEET.  My favorite scene in the whole movie comes when "Margaret" has to attend a royal ball with Edward.  Edward suggests that she play the piano for everyone, and the whole crowd gathers around.  I'm sitting there cringing, thinking that Stacy is going to embarrass herself.  What she does is freeze up.  Edward assumes that it is just stage fright, and he suggests they play "Carol of the Bells" together; her part involves just repeating a few notes and can easily be learned on the spot.  It is maybe the sweetest thing that I have ever seen in my whole life.)

There are a bunch of minor characters that are pretty standard in this type of movie, including Kevin's daughter, Olivia, who of course immediately figures out that "Stacy" is a fake but is into the whole thing; a guardian angel type guy who pops up at all the right moments to help things along; and some employee of Prince Edward's/the royal family's who knows something is up, keeps trying to expose "Margaret," and just keeps being given unpleasant chores to do every time he butts in.  There is Stacy's main competitor at the baking competition, who attempts sabotage that amounts to so little that I don't know why they even included it.  There is also a really fun scene where Stacy, Margaret, Kevin, Edward, and Olivia are all in the same place at the same time, and you're afraid they're all going to run into each other and the whole secret is going to be exposed.  That's actually usually the scene in movies like this where the whole secret IS exposed, but they keep it going for awhile longer here.

I think the reasons movies like this are fun are both because of the "fish out of water" aspect and the low-key stress/suspense of wondering when the secret is going to be exposed.  This one doesn't disappoint. Fine holiday fun.

Thoughts on A Star is Born (spoilers)

Bradley Cooper stars as Jackson Maine, an alcoholic country/rock singer who has been in the spotlight since his teens; he started as a guitarist for his brother (Sam Elliott) and went on to superstardom.  He meets Ally (Lady Gaga) by chance one night when he happens into a drag bar where she performs after her Friday night waitress shift.  It is one of those things where they meet and basically are never apart again.  The first perhaps half hour of the movie consists of their first twenty-four hours together, in which they meet, drink, and talk songwriting all night. This leads to her blowing off a waitress shift to join him at a concert, where he unexpectedly pulls her onstage to join him in a duet.  From there, it is a whirlwind: she joins him on tour and is offered a solo record contract; her career and their relationship progress as his addiction spirals out of control.

There is a lot to like about this movie; their duet "Shallow" is a showstopper, and the rest of the soundtrack is solid, particularly "Always Remember Us This Way," which Ally performs solo on the piano.  Gaga turns in a consistently strong performance.  Cooper speaks in a mumbly, "grizzled" voice that is hard to decipher at times, and it's problematic that so much of the movie, particularly following the couple's first couple of days together, is told from Jack's perspective.  Jack has a problem with the makeover she receives after getting her record deal, and with her new, poppier sound; while some of the songs we see are, perhaps, a little silly, she isn't really doing anything wrong-- his problems seem to come at least partly between a preference for a country/rock style and look vs. a pop style and look, and since we see most of these parts of the movie from his perspective, this preference is presented as somehow "better."  He also has a talent for expressing his opinions at times that make it hard to believe that he isn't at least partly driven by jealousy and resentment, such as when she is first offered a record deal and when she receives news of her first Grammy nomination.  The pacing is also a bit off, with so much of the movie taking place in their first couple of days together and then speeding quickly through their tour together and the progression of her career.  Regardless, the movie doesn't feel overly long despite its two hour and seventeen minute run time; Gaga and Cooper have great chemistry; and both characters are compelling to watch even when it is clear that Jack is going nowhere good fast.