“This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.” — Robert Kennedy. Adolescence occupies an unique position in pop cultural imagination. Continue Reading
Enola and the Mariner: Why we can’t have one without the other in the film, Waterworld – Tanya Ang
Introduction “The future… The polar ice caps have melted, covering the earth with water. Those who survived have adapted, to a new world.” In Waterworld (1995), extreme global warming has caused the polar ice caps to melt. The Earth has flooded over, and survivors were forced to adapt to a new world, living on floating Continue Reading
Violence by Adolescents against Establishments, an Eschatological Analysis of Donnie Darko and the Destructors – Elaine Koh
“Destruction is a form of creation” Introduction Donnie Darko is a film that is rife with violent acts, either committed by the titular protagonist or enacted on him. Donnie is a teenager who wakes up in an alternative timeline (a Tangent Universe) with a prophecy that the world will end in 28 days when Continue Reading
Traumatic Adolescences and Revolutionary Tendencies in Brian Singer’s X-men – Clarice Loke
Traumatic Adolescences And Revolutionary Tendencies In Bryan Singer’s X-men (2000) In X-Men the stigmatising, marginalising powers of mutancy push mutants into two ideologically oppositional camps, one heroic (the X-Men) and the other villainous and anti-society (Magneto’s group) which come to represent good and evil in the film. The impending apocalypse in X-Men is brought about Continue Reading
Social Isolation and Jonas’ Rebellion in The Giver – Praveen Raman
“When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong” – Chief Elder While most young adult dystopian films have a clear distinction between what is good and evil from the start, The Giver (2014) directed by Phillip Noyce introduces a world which could be considered either utopian or dystopian depending on the Continue Reading
Survival versus Morality of Youths in the Presence of a Protector in the Hunger Games and The Road – Peng Yun Ting
Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games (2008) and Cormac Mccarthy’s The Road (2006) are both successful post-apocalyptics texts featuring young protagonists. They describe the development of youths’ morality within apocalypses. Analyses of the texts have largely surrounded ethical implications of choices characters must face. In an environment where their survival is constantly threatened, selfishness is the Continue Reading