Watching Teen TV: An Interview with Stefania Marghitu (Part Three)

To what degree is teen television an aspirational category targeting those on the threshold of adolescence rather than speaking to those actually undergoing such shifts in their age and social status?

There’s no denying any commercial for profit endeavor is exactly that. But I also do find the solution parents often find is censorship, those that are sheltered from media don’t have the literacy to understand it later on in life. I think it’s why I’m so keen to move on to one of my next hopeful projects on the idea of the digital masquerade in social media. The carefully fabricated authenticity behind the ideal beauty standard on platforms like Instagram is leading young people into a dangerous path. Going back to issues of gender and girl making, and added on to complexities of race, colorist, ethnicity, body image, gender identity, Im seeing a lot more organizations outside of the US invest in taking on these issues. Tracing back to the feminine masquerade to the post-feminist masquerade, and to Safiy Noble’s Algorithims of Opression, this is not a new issue, but a newly presented one.

At some point the media literacy and development does kick in with fictional media as fabricated and aspirational. Every single character in a teen show also breaks down some kind of vulnerability at some point, even if it’s solved within a “very special episode” or given more depth through a serialized plot line. I think there’s a reckoning with body images and a wave of amazing resistance geared towards breaking down the ideal beauty standard online right now too, but far too often the potential psychological or physical damage can already be done. And this is why the pain and suffering from childhood and adolescence carries on into adulthood, as it was never resolved or sometimes not even acknowledged.

Again we’re seeing some paradigm shifts, but those most in need of help in this country are also the least likely to receive any form of support. I dedicated the book to a dear childhood friend of mine who struggled with issues of identity, belonging, and self-worth. When we first met we bonded over the music and film and television that we loved. Going back to our town after the vaccine I see a lot of good for teens today, but it makes me realize how much can still be improved and how things have not changed as much as I wish. Finishing the book during the pandemic really reinforced this drive in me to dedicate my pedagogy and research to marginalized communities. 

A recurring critique of teen television is that the actors playing high school students are a decade or so older and often “too old” to convincingly play the part. Why do networks feel the need to cast actors in their 20s in such role and what are the consequences of this choice for the evolution of the genre?

This is a double edged sword. Age appropriate casting like Schulyer’s choice in Degrassi is geared towards public service authenticity and connection. But because it’s so common, audiences are also all the more aware of it. Gabrielle Cartiers just spoke about lying about her age for her part in 90210 because of ageism. Most audiences can look up or roughly know the twenty something playing a teen and be cognizant. Part of the reason behind the casting is industrial, and also  financial. As Holzman described, there are limitations to hiring a child actor. But it also grants authenticity and can also allow for more storylines. But again at this point it’s been satirized and accepted that it almost helps in acknowledge the false standards of what an ideal teen should look like. It’s poked fun of at the beginning of Never Have I Ever.  That kind of self reflexivity helps show behind the curtain and is also helpful for the young viewers. It can also take the pressure of child actors who have historically struggled in their own lives due to the pressures associated with their stardom.

Teen television has proven unusually successful at generating stars -- from Sally Field to John Travolta, from  Clare Danes  to Zendaya. What mechanisms are used to create teen idols? How does this impact the production of the shows? What are some of the challenges of escaping this teen idol status?

There are mechanisms - marketing, promotion, etc. - to try to make stars and there are also sometimes happenstance. Danes’ series was canceled but My So Called Life and her acting allowed her to be a film star. Field’s career shows how quickly one can go from teen to love interest to mother, highlighting ageism in the industry. Both Field and Danes returned to television later in their careers, which shows the opportunities it can give in contrast to film. Travolta and the Saturday Night Fever sensation is a whole phenomenon, and the story behind The Bee Gees soundtrack as told through their recent documentary merits its own academic study. I think it’s telling a lot of the men who started on TV and became film stars - from Tom Hanks to George Clooney to Leonardo DiCaprio, stayed strong in film. Of course the pipeline of movie stars is already so limited.

Zendaya is definitely a unicorn in the world of former child stars. She tried a bit of film acting, singing, yet still found her way back to television where she thrived.  She choose her projects wisely, has an enviable public image, and is now the youngest lead actress in a drama Emmy award winner. 

As I am writing these questions, I just finished watching the final series of Atypical, which deals with a teen who is on the autism spectrum. It raises questions for me about the notion of “normality” as a key theme in these series? It’s built into the title of  Freaks and Geeks, both groups who feel themselves to be outcasts in their school but for different reasons. My So-Called Life’s Winnie Holzman talks about “people who ‘fit in’ and don’t fit in.”  How has this push to deal with “outcasts” taken different forms across the history of the genre and how might a character like the protagonist of Atypical relate to this dynamic/  Or for that matter, the number of queer characters in recent series?

Atypical was another show I was really delighted to see my students engage with. Historical research has traditionally told us escapist media is where audiences turn to after national and global trauma. Some folks don’t want Covid in their fictional media at all. Some seek that for normalcy and catharsis. I’m really not sure how this might play out in relation to diversity and inclusion given those cyclical histories of shutting out, erasing, or scapegoating marginalized communities. But the positive responses for series like Atypical and Never Have I Ever, as well as docu series and interests in understanding how media history works is also encouraging. 

The recent decision in Tennessee to ban all state outreach with Covid-19 information to adolescents reflects ongoing struggles of adults to exert greater control over teen’s lives, at least among more conservative parts of the culture. Does this make teen television a particularly intense battleground in struggles over cultural politics?

I was actually just talking with a friend who is a teacher in a neighboring state about the upcoming school year right after discussing the new season of Never Have I Ever.  Public school teachers are being told they can’t express their vaccination status or opinions on it. There was a recent episode of Good Fight in which parents sued a private Zoom teacher tutor for “teaching socialism” and that students started critiquing their parents after seeing Parasite through a class lens. It’s all a battleground right now.

The politicization of the vaccine makes “sense” based on the rhetoric, but not on the logics of what vaccines have done for humanity for eradicating diseases. Especially as 12 is the starting age of vaccine eligibility now, but that it depends on their parents’ decisions. Also, of course, as with many of us, teens and pre teens have spent more time at home and potentially with television.  And some folks wanted escapism, but even family dramas like This Is Us showed the difficulties of both being away from family and loved ones, but also the tensions of multi-generational “bubbles” or “pods” and how young people especially were missing out on milestones and social lives.

I know there was a lot of criticism towards young people who “didn’t care” about Covid because it didn’t impact them, but I found that my students were cautious and considerate, though they were also forthcoming of the frustration behind spending a year in college off campus and back home. 

I’m all for criticizing Big Pharma and the inequalities of the health care system, but this is a free vaccine, that is also adding new incentives for folks to get vaccinated in states with low statistics. Meanwhile other countries don’t have the access to the vaccine and citizens which they could have the same protection.

Again I’m seeing both advancements and regressions in these areas. I do think access is key here. Horace Newcomb once said in an interview that he didn’t have access to cinemas growing in the non-urban South, so TV was his entry point into a lot of new worlds. I think about the books and media that was banned and censored while my parents were growing up in Communist Romania. And for teens especially, this is a time when they are gaining independence and forming their own views and perspectives while coming of age. There’s a lot of pressure and to some extent blame being put on educators for pushing agendas and having students turn against their parents. In the new HBO series White Lotus, a great critique of class and privilege, Connie Britton’s character tells her teenage daughter played by Sydney Sweeney that their generation’s legacy is “biting the hand that feeds them, ” not caring about their families who actually know and love them, while caring about oppressed groups who they don’t even know. I think being newly critical and questioning the world around you, including your own privilege, is part of the gears turning towards critical thinking and media literacy.

As college professors, there’s less pressure than teachers in K-12, I am not envious of the constant battles they face in just teaching objective facts in courses like science and history and how that is being challenged, or censorship over the type of literature being taught in English classes. But one interesting aspect of teaching this past year, more students were more in touch with their hometowns as adults, and more self-reflexive about childhood and upbringing. There’s a tendency for some to get out of their hometowns as soon as possible and start anew, which can be liberating of course. And some students stay nearby for various reasons, so this kind of united folks from high school who would have previously not kept in touch. Living in their childhood homes and sleeping in their rooms, being more involved in their local communities, they had a lot of interesting perspectives they previously wouldn’t have.

I had some students in conservative cities or states and they were realizing the changes they can make or impact was greater than in a political bubble or the echo chamber idea. And that’s why we’re seeing folks return to their hometowns or the south to contribute to change. That’s where the good fight is really being fought in those battlegrounds. And I think teen TV has allowed for a lot of relatability and catharsis for college students dealing with their high school past through nee series like Normal People , which also shows the transition to college, Cruel Summer, Never Have I Ever, End of fhe F***ng World, and Sex Education, but also revisiting or exploring past teen TV like Freaks and Geeks, Moesha, Skins, The OC, MSCL and so on. 

From the afterschool specials to East Los High, we can see tensions playing out between the desire to education teens about particular issues or concerns and the entertainment value of these series. What are some of the strategies producers use to negotiate these tensions?

This is where I think the influence of Canadian and British- and of course other non-US- public service television is making both a direct and indirect influence.

Some students don’t realize British shows like Skins and Misfits they loved when younger are on a public service platform- and even if it caused moral panic around the drugs, drinking and sex- and as scholars like Susan Berridge have asserted reassert some of the same stereotypes and narratives of marginalized folks - it was new ground for teen audiences at the time. And when we discuss the failed Skins US remake, it can be traced to adapting the surface level or shock value without a thoughtful or culturally specific eye

As both the folks behind East Los High and Degrassi told me, and for really many teen series that connected to its audiences, talking down is never the answer. Teens are critical when the writing is forced, whether it’s too commercial and like an algorithm of teen speak, or too much of a cautionary tale based on moral panic. Many grow up watching those sometimes terrifying and trite health class videos, or programs like Abstinence Only and D.A.R.E. It’s interesting because a lot of English television scholars have written on how US teen TV influenced the Channel 4 youth series and the American-ness of the teenage experience. And of course we know it’s more common for US to make their own versions of UK shows. But seeing audiences love not only other Anglophone teen series, but from continental Europe and K-dramas, really defies a lot of assumptions about US audience.

And shows like Norway’s Skam, which has been remade in various countries multiple times over, is still revered for its original and the way fans translated for subtitles  and distributed it via Tumblr. And that came from a very savvy Norwegian public service model. I don’t think we’ll see US public service programming beyond childhood series, though Sesame Street and other programs are revered. I see students really want more oversight and checks and balances of the Disney and Nickelodeon programming they grew up on. Children’s programming is not my area of expertise but again I’m seeing more self reflexivity towards that exposure. And the “representation matters” discourse and seeing someone like them on screen matters so much, but again I want to stress to them the cultural and industrial contexts beyond that. And that’s a main goal of the book, and my dissertation, and I think a lot of my work : to trace how socially conscious programming is developed, brought in, distributed and received, and when and why.

Stefania Marghitu holds her PhD from the University of Southern California’s Division of Cinema and Media Studies, with a minor from The Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism. Her book, Teen Television (Routledge Genre Guidebook series), was released in May 2021. You can also find her work published in journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Communication, Culture, and Critique, and Spectator, as well as the edited collections White Supremacy and the American Media (Routledge, forthcoming, 2021) and ReFocus on Amy Heckerling (Edinburgh University Press). 

She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola University New Orleans, where she teaches courses on digital media, film, gender, race, and adaptation. She has previously taught introductory and upper level courses on film, television, and digital media history, aesthetics, industry, and theory at Pitzer College, Chapman University, California State University Northridge, and Columbia College Hollywood.