Abstract
Bicycle Thieves (1948), from Italy, where the possession of a bicycle means the difference between subsistence and destitution for an adult male and his family; and Rebel Without a Cause (1955), from Hollywood, where American teenagers have such abundant access to automobiles that they drive them off cliffs for recreation. The "chickie run" in Rebel is usually interpreted as an outlet for masculine bravado and adolescent ennui, but it may be best seen as an emblem of the aristocratic privilege and ludicrous affluence enjoyed by the first generation of American teenagers (not the storied Baby Boomers, the brats born in or after 1946 and who remember the JFK assassination) but the cohort who came of teenage-dom in the 1950s and hit the first wave of the greatest tsunami of goods and services, dispersed across all class lines, in world history (this is not hyperbole). The high school yearbook design of the book jacket and end papers signals that Handy's approach will be fun and conversational rather than dour and scholarly, but he has done his homework-slogging through the voluminous studies on adolescents written by distressed sociologists after the primitive tribe was first discovered. A signature film provides the central spoke to wrap a trend around: in turn, the Andy Hardy series (1937-58), Rebel Without a Cause, the Beach Party cycle, American Graffiti (1973), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), the John Hughes oeuvre, Boyz n the Hood (1991), Mean Girls (2004), and the estrogen-fueled blockbuster franchises Twilight (2008-12) and The Hunger Games (2012-23).