Q & A with Sharon Dean

Sharon Dean’s fascination with 1950s film began when her grammar school principal called her to his office to tell her that her famous relative James Dean had died. Once out of graduate school, she focused on media portrayals of the African American experience, especially coming of age movies by independent black filmmakers. Her publications are about media portrayals of '50s adolescents, as well as black women in film and the emergence of a black film aesthetic.

Q: Let’s begin with the obvious. You described James Dean as “great.” How did being related to a film icon affect you as a teenager?

A: I didn't even know who James Dean was when the grammar school incident occurred, but it made a huge impression on me, especially since I was basking in his limelight. Clearly the adults did know about him and were caught up in his celebrity, but I actually became professionally interested in 50’s depictions of high school when I pulled together films for Cult Films and Fandom, a new course I conceived. I was stunned by the number of cult films (which are largely fan rather critic designated) that are set in high school. In addition, the growing number of violent events, such as Columbine, linked to the “culture” of high school. Films such as “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “The Breakfast Club,” “Clueless,” “Bring It On,” “Basketball Diaries," “Scream,” “Election,” and “Heathers” offer glimpses into the culture of adolescents to whom they appeal.

Q: When you talk about ‘50s work, are you referring only to the James Dean category, or are other kinds of teen films equally important?

A: The ‘50s institutionalized adolescence in the expansion of high schools as separate educational entities, just as sociologists began to identify “juvenile delinquency” as a social ill. High schools depicted in these films played out parental fears about their own children, urban violence, integration, and increasing divorce rates. I’m thinking here of “The Wild One,” “High School Confidential,” “Rebel without a Cause,” “Blackboard Jungle,” “A Summer Place,” and “King Creole.” Of course, there were the antidote films like “Tammy and the Bachelor” and “Gidget.” The 1940s focused on college, usually private institutions, as the playgrounds of the rich and well-connected. Education in these films was relative to privilege—mostly male. I think it’s interesting to note that the ‘60s movies returned to college life.

Q: What do you think the ‘50s films tell us about the era and adolescents during that period?

A: The ‘80s and ‘90s films are all about high school and ironically mirror changes in conventional attitudes toward sexuality, authority, wealth, and political corruption. The ‘50s teen movies really started in the mid-‘50s with the rise of the privileged American teenager, with adolescents emerging as a market segment, with Hollywood’s decision to exploit this new audience, and with public education focusing increasingly on girls as a sort of unknown quantity.

Q: In your opinion, are the films accurate portrayals of the majority, or are they primarily Hollywood creations?

A: I have a book project underway that explores the evolution of the high school in films from the ‘50s to the present, their relationship to popular culture, to youth subcultures, and to changing attitudes toward the function of education, family, and school. But I also plan to discuss Hollywood’s role in marketing, promoting, and distributing the films. I pose a question to my students: “Is high school what we want society to become, or what it already is?” I have a tentative title for the book:

Anyone? Anyone?: Hollywood Goes to High School

. The first part refers to a classic scene in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

Q: To what extent do you, as a mother and scholar, find film able to capture the reality of adolescence?

A: I am also the mother of two high schoolers, so I see in their experience with the class hierarchies some new warping of the high school culture seen in the ‘50s during the Reagan and Clinton years.