Wonder girls: Undercurrents of resistance in the representation of teenage girls in 1980s American cinema

This thesis explores the representation of teenage girls in 1980s American teen films such as Little Darlings (1980), Smooth Talk (1985), Just One of the Guys (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986) and Mermaids (1990). It uses film analysis and feminist film theory to subject a range of case studies to three principal lines of enquiry: it firstly explores whether the representation of teenage girls in 1980s American teen film constituted part of a neo-conservative cultural backlash against Second Wave Feminism; it secondly exposes undercurrents of resistance amongst these representations, and suggests such ‘pockets of agency’ may have opened up new possibilities for the more progressive images of teenage girls that followed in the 1990s; and thirdly, this thesis looks at what the figure of the teenage girl on film in itself (a transitory figure that is in a perennial state of ‘becoming’) can offer a feminist film theory that has thus far focused predominantly on the images of adult women, with the hope of sparking new areas of debate within this field of study.