The Undercurrents of Adolescence

Imagine a great movie about adolescence like Rebel Without a Cause or The Breakfast Club with a written commentary rather than a DVD audio one. For years I have used movies about teens to learn and grow from. As a movie fan, and as I became more entrenched in the world of teenagers, I found myself looking at teen movies in a couple different ways. With each new teen film, I would just turn off my brain and enjoy the movie. But then I found myself watching the same movie again with my ‘adolescent filters’ on and a legal pad & pen for keeping notes. I saw countless useful pieces in almost every movie, from hedonistic party-driven films like Dazed and Confused to true-life tearjerkers like Freedom Writers. Classics like West Side Story and American Graffiti or musicals like Footloose, all gave me great material to use in helping parents and other adults involved with teens a venue to learn from. While researching for my first book, From Boys to Men: Spiritual Rites of Passage in an Indulgent Age, I learned of a somewhat unknown spike of delinquent and adolescent discontent in the 1950s. Beginning with Catcher in the Rye in 1951, through James Dean’s brilliance and into West Side Story, the undercurrent of teen problems was coming to the surface. The youth of the 50s were children of two wars, and not buying into the post-WWII I Love Lucy and Father Knows Best vision of America. The section in my book about this period and films became one of the most popular components of my workshops. When on-line streaming and rentals, as well as inexpensive movie sales arrived, I realized I could finally write a book where readers could watch the film and read my comments on adolescence. By deeply paraphrasing each movie, even people who could not view each of the ten classic films I use in Undercurrents could learn a lot about teens and adolescence.

Imagine a great movie about adolescence like Rebel Without a Cause or The Breakfast Club with a written commentary rather than an audio one. For years I have used movies about teens to learn and grow from. As a movie fan, and as I got more and more entrenched in the world of teenagers, I found myself looking at teen movies in a couple different ways.With each new teen film, I would just turn off my brain and enjoy the movie. But then I found myself watching the same movie again with my ‘adolescent filters’ on and a legal pad & pen for keeping notes. I saw countless useful pieces in almost every movie, from hedonistic party-driven Dazed and Confused, Porky’s and Fast Times at Ridgemont High to true-life tearjerkers like Stand and Deliver, Lean On Me and Freedom Writers. Classics like West Side Story and American Graffiti or musicals like Footloose, Grease, and Bye Bye Birdie all gave me great material to use in helping parents and other adults involved with teens a venue to learn from. Bits and pieces of these movies found their way into my first book, From Boys to Men: Spiritual Rites of Passage in an Indulgent Age. There were always parts in these movies I liked, and even aspects I could learn from scenes or plots I didn’t resonate with. As I started collecting teen movies for personal use, and occasionally watching movies from other eras, I kept realizing how much useful information was available in these movies and found myself referring to them when talking about teens, and using movie anecdotes, quotes or themes to educate people I was working with. The idea for tracking the adolescent undercurrents through the past 100 years or so originally came to me from a teen, which seems appropriate. More than 26 years of working with adolescents has taught me a great deal, much of which I hope to share in this book. My nephew created a PowerPoint slide show in lieu of a boring book report on Catcher in the Rye. He began the report with a quick look at what was happening in 1951 when Catcher in the Rye was published and quickly became one of the most banned books in American history. In his first few slides, he pointed out that “It’s 1951 and the US is celebrating….the war is over….I Love Lucy started its first season….rock & roll was about to top the charts” Next, my nephew explained that “The US was happy…not realizing problems that were right under their nose. That’s why J.D. Salinger decided to publish a wakeup call.” While writing my first book I started thinking about movies that might have come out around the same time as Catcher or that also showed a different side of the teen story. While most 50’s teen movies were wholesome and positive, I recalled a few that fit the “undercurrents” profile. A couple of classics and a couple of not-so-famous movies came to mind. In 1953 we first saw Marlon Brando as The Wild One, a reenactment of an actual motorcycle gang that had taken over a small southern California town. The wholesome town residents are completely lost in how to deal with a new form of trouble: delinquent and violent young people. There’s a classic quote from the movie, at least for me that explains the undercurrents of The Wild One and growing adolescent unrest in modern America. While dancing in a bar with a local girl, she asks (Brando), “Hey Johnnie, whatcha rebelling against?” Unfazed, Brando looks back at her and replies, “Whaddaya got?” Talk about a rebel without a cause or clue; he was simply rebelling to rebel, frustrated and disenfranchised at the adult world he was forced to deal with during the week. Readers of my book and participants in my workshops really seemed to enjoy the section I was evolving on the undercurrents of growing adolescent discontent. I was beginning to use the movies mentioned above to help give people a frame of reference for what appeared to be going on in society at one level versus what seemed to be manifesting at other levels elsewhere. On-demand movies made this possible.

Bret Stephenson M.A. is the author of From Boys to Men: Spiritual Rites of Passage in an Indulgent Age. He has been a counselor of at-risk and high-risk adolescents for twenty-seven years. Bret has worked in residential treatment, clinical counseling agencies, group homes, private counseling, foster parent training, Independent Living Program, and managed mentoring and tutoring programs. He has been a presenter and speaker at numerous national and international conferences and workshops, including being the teen coordinator at the International Transpersonal Association's Youth Conferences in America and Ireland, the United Nations World Peace Festival, Institute of Noetic Sciences and the World Children’s Summit. Bret has worked with teens from more than 100 countries. 
Presentations also include the Association of Transpersonal Psychology's annual conferences. He has been a presenter at the National Foster Parent Association annual conference and multiple California State Foster Parent Association conferences as well as the Indiana and Iowa Foster Care annual conferences. As a men's group facilitator, he has also led workshops in the U.S. as well as Switzerland. Bret was Director of Special Projects for Foster/Kinship Care Education and the Independent Living Program at Lake Tahoe Community College. He pioneered the use of Internet based systems intended to deliver distance education classes for rural providers and group home staff for the State of California Chancellor’s Office FKCE program. He designed and taught on-line classes in Understanding Adolescence, Reactive Attachment Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. He was recently a case manager for Rite of Passage, Inc. in Nevada where he was the founder of the Str8 Up student-business project and Case Manager of the Year in 2006 and 2009. Bret recently relocated to Phoenix, AZ., where he is teaching at ROP’s Canyon State Academy. Bret was an Advisory Board member for My Journey Home in Reno, a project assisting prison inmates and their families through reintegration back into society. In addition, he was on the Global Passageways Intergenerational Advisory Council project based in Washington DC mentoring youth activists and assisting in trying to create initiation and rites of passage models for modern youth. He is currently advising YouthPassageways.org on similar rite of passage dynamics. Bret is owner of the Adolescent Mind, a teen consulting business and the founder and Executive Director of Labyrinth Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to adolescent services and programs. He has trained and designed programs for numerous organizations including the Girl Scouts of America, Adirondack Leadership Expeditions and CASA. Bret and Labyrinth Center are currently creating youth employment and youth entrepreneurial models such as Str8 Up and Sphere of Influence at Mt. Tallac High School in South Lake Tahoe. He is a contributing author on rites of passage for the on-line Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. In 2013 & 2014 Bret led a number of workshops and lectures in Prague after the translated release of From Boys to Men in Czech.