When did those awkward, tormented creatures known as teenagers first crawl out of the primordial ooze and into American culture? Believe it or not, they didn't always exist. It was not until World War II, with grown men off fighting and grown women working in factories, that adolescents were left idle and unsupervised long enough to wreak havoc. In the forties, fifties, and sixties a new breed of youth evolved -- the juvenile delinquent -- and this state of emergency was quickly dramatized in every cultural medium. In Teenage Confidential, Michael Barson and Steve Heller conduct a guided tour through three decades of teen angst, displayed in shocking Technicolor on movie posters, paperbacks, comic books, advertising art, television shows, and Top Forty music paraphernalia. From Father Knows Best to Youth Runs Wild, this unflinching survey spotlights the sordid ways of our rebel youth.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
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Reviews From:
The New York Times Book Review
USA Today
Option
By Leslie Chess Feller
What? No Werewolves?
Americans 'twixt 12 and 20" have been driving their parents crazy since the days of George Washington -- in the 1770's, according to Michael Barson and Steven Heller, unmarried couples were criticized for "irregular night walking, frolicking and keeping bad company." With color images as in-your-face as the average adolescent. Teenage Confidential: An Illustrated History of the American Teen takes a multimedia look at the teen-age subculture since World War II. Examining advertising artwork, magazine articles, paperback book covers, movie posters and romance comics, this lively and well-researched retrospective suggests that "the more things change, the more they remain the same." For American teenagers, music (form Frank Sinatra to Elvis Presley and the Beatles) has always been a catalyst, the opposite sex an often heart-wrenching mystery, and parents there to rebel against. In "a masterful display of bifurcated vision, " the mass media promoted the "Kleen Tee," as embodied by the redheaded, bow-tied comic book hero Archie Andrews and immortalized on movie screens by Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, even while sounding the alarm with dire warnings of juvenile delinquents on the rampage. Magazine expos s, dime novels and low-budget films fanned the flames of parental panic side by side with their coverage of saddle shoes, sock hops and slumber parties. Magazines like Teen Life addressed "Kissing...Petting...Going Steady" while instructional films tackled subjects like" What to do on a Date." Love comics flourished throughout the 50's and 60's, "Offering pithy lessons of dating behavior that teens cold ignore at their own peril." Teenage Confidential is a wryly nostalgic trip back to the future, a tribute to the way we were ... when we weren't in detention, that is."
By Katy Kelly
Cool 'Teenage Confidential': One glorious, nostalgic hoot
Teenage confidential is a fine way to remind yourself that youth isn't everything.
This funny illustrated history of the American teen-ager, by Michael Barson and Steven Heller, is a study in the good ("KleenTeen" Mickey Rooney in Family Affair) and the delinquent (So Young, So Bad).
Teen life from the 1940s to the 1960s is remembered in glorious Technicolor movie posters (Live Fast, Die Young: "The Sin-Steeped Story of Today's 'Beat' Generation!"), Teen Life magazine covers ("Kissing, Petting, Going Steady") and Teen-Age Brides comic books ("If You were the Judge--or the Jury--Would You Brand this Girl Unfit to Marry?")
From Sandra Dee to the Beatles, this paperback is a real kick.
From: Option
The kitschy Teenage Confidential collects books, posters and memorabilia from post-war America through the '60s, the heyday of juvenile delinquency. Filled with lipstick-stained girls who can't say no and greasy-haired boys high on heavy petting, Confidential captures the underlying innocence of the golden era of youth gone wild.
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7 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
terrific refutation to those who think anything has changed,
By A Customer
This review is from: Teenage Confidential: An Illustrated History of the American Teen (Paperback)
This is a fantastic compilation of American adults' images of teenagers in those so-pure 1930s, '40s, and '50s showing (in my view) what a warped perspective grownups display toward adolescents. This book should be a text in modern film and sociology classes, where the first exercise can be: "find the Latino" and "find the African American." More than dry treatises, the visuals in this book show that America's so-called adults in this century have maintained an irrational terror of teenagers that speaks to the awful, anti-youth climate of the '90s as much as the latest newspaper headline-lie. Highly recommended.
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