Watch one of the following "teen" movies (either renting at a video store or via cable television, if shown in your area). After viewing the movie, write five to six paragraphs comparing the movie to issues you have studied in this lesson and the corresponding chapters in the textbook.
Choose from one of the following movies:
• Mean Girls
• Grease
• American Pie
• Rebel without a Cause
• Heathers
• Some Kind of Wonderful
• The Breakfast Club
• Sixteen Candles
• The Outsiders
Specific milestones in development can often be seen in popular teen movies. One of the largest psycho-social developments during adolescence is the development of identity. Broadening of self-esteem, an increase of self-concept, the development of moral judgment and sexual maturation contribute to forming self-identity in an adolescent.
In Mean Girls, the protagonist, Cady Heron finds herself at 16 a new student in a completely new environment. Previously homeschooled in Africa, she finds herself on her first day in high school. She is immediately thrown into being reluctantly involved with the popular pretty-girl clique, the “Plastics”. Erickson would say she is in the Identity vs Identity Confusion stage where Cady is developing a concept of what is unique and distinctive about herself. Cady makes some good friends with Damien and Janice as she is relying more on peer relationships. Yet they convince her that she should infiltrate the Plastics and “spy” on them. Eventually, they plan to destroy the reputations of the Plastics, yet in Cady’s own role confusion, she becomes more involved with them, and identifying with them.
Erickson would suggest that she has been unable to find a suitable self-concept which leads her down a disastrous path and eventually making some poor decisions. Ultimately, she becomes to a better understanding of who she is, rectifies her mistakes and starts to build her own moral character. According to Kohlberg, she is losing her...