Young Adult Extravaganza

Two teenage films, The Outsiders and The Virgin Suicides, have amassed a cult-like following over the years since they were released. Each is targeted for a gendered target audience and deals with adolescence in very different ways.

Each sends very specific cultural messages geared towards emerging men and women. The Outsiders is a male-centered film with only minor female characters and contains an array of boys dealing with individual problems with their income level, family unit, and the confusion that's brought along with adolescence. The story focuses on male comradery and friendship and even goes as far as to complicate traditional gender forms by showing intimacy among men without sex. The men of the film have to withstand trials of many kinds, including Johnny's eventual death and the stabbing of Bob and also the death of Dally, but by the end of the film Ponyboy, the protagonist, withstands it all and end up stronger, though wounded. It is a story of heroism and bravery, while also showing consequences and loss. Ponyboy's family is intact and he is allowed to live.

On the other hand, The Virgin Suicides, ends in the death of all the Lisbon sisters, who all happen to be beautiful. Their stories are told through the perspective of neighborhood boys who recall what happened to them. The girls in this narrative commit mass suicide, unable to withstand outside pressures and emotional turbulence. They succumb instead, dying one by one. They are local legends, talked about and looked at by other teenage boys and nearly fetishized. Their deaths are used as tools of growth for the men involved, as women's deaths often are. They are a tool in other's personal journey with no agency or significance on their own. Their stories cannot simply be their own.

Even though a female director chose to adapt The Virgin Suicides, it remains highly problematic in the issues of female agency and succumbing to the male gaze. The stark contrast in the messages each film sends to its intended audience and completely genderized and problematic to the impressionable teenagers watching them.