American Teen
Directed by Nanette Burstein
Not exactly a humanist document, American Teen actually belongs to the Disaster Movie genre. It gathers a mixed group of high school students in their senior year—a preppie, a jock, a nerd, a princess (The Breakfast Club clichés)—and leers at their hostility to each other. Director Nanette Burstein exempts herself from pursuing a more exploratory, informative—or caring—perspective because this kind of teen exploitation is what TV producers call “sexy.”
When wealthy blonde Megan Krizmanich loses the student council election and vandalizes her opponent’s home, spray-painting hateful graffiti on the walls and windows, Burstein’s cool voyeurism follows Megan to the pandering school principal who bestows a sympathetic wrist-slap. (“I know it’s wrong, but I like getting even,” Megan boasts.) We never see the victimized opponent’s embarrassment, anger or legal remedy. When a girl text-messages a bare-breasted photo of herself to her boyfriend, Burstein traces the boyfriend’s betrayal; he disseminates the photo via the Internet around the entire high school. Burstein uses a gleeful split-screen effect that parodies the “Hugo and Kim” telephone-gossip number from Bye Bye Birdie. Worse, a catty clique (strapped with battery-pack mics) decides to harass the embarrassed girl with vicious, humiliating phone messages. And Burstein’s camera looks on, adoringly.
This is a vile misuse of the intimate, verité and reportorial technique that the Maysles, Pennebaker and other doc pioneers worked so hard to justify. MTV has corrupted documentary etiquette and principle through such blinged-up reality-TV series as Super Sweet Sixteen and The Hills—the contrived style that has all but destroyed the integrity of the documentary format. And Burstein—who previously directed Bob Evans’ vanity bio, The Kid Stays in the Picture—hides her cruelty and ignorance behind this debased fashion. Ever since the lousy, condescending Hoop Dreams, too many docs have become dysfunctional family horror shows. Portable video cameras have made it possible for filmmakers to get in close to their subject—not to achieve intimacy, just tabloid sensationalism.
The title of American Teen is so awful (it “wears elevator shoes” as a critic once said of George Lucas’ American Graffiti) that the pretenses of Burstein’s vapid viewpoint are exposed. She follows the Warsaw, Ind., teens, always aiming to inflate their habits as archetypal rites of passage. This isn’t the approach of a sociologist doc-maker as in Frederick Wiseman’s High School or a cultural investigation like Jeff Kreines and Joel DeMott’s Seventeen, which memorably captured the personal and cultural explorations of Muncie, Ind., youth. Instead, Burstein’s teen subjects are cynically indulged (shedding no light on their petty hierarchies, pimply neuroses, hormonal insecurities, excess energy and innocent ignorance). As on The Hills, you half-expect a commercial selling Grand Theft Auto or The Dark Knight to appear after every scene.
This view of adolescence is as dishonest as any Gus Van Sant wet dream, only Burstein pretends to be cataloguing our national soul. “Mr. Gross taught us America is a meritocracy, but here it’s an aristocracy,” one of the students narrates. That’s merely a sound bite. Burstein doesn’t bother examining the values and ideologies taught in youth that become apparent in later problematic adult behavior. Her directorial decisions favor shallow, selfish characters (ironically panning up to a school corridor BELIEVE IN YOURSELF banner). Her inept narrative construction causes abrupt emotional peaks and unreadable moments of tragedy (a girl’s manic-depressive mother tells her “You’re not special”; there’s a surprise suicide confession; an ostracized boy admits “I’m afraid of who I am.”) Inadvertently, Burstein’s own snobbery reveals how obnoxious people breed obnoxious offspring, status-conscious homes create status-conscious societies, dysfunctional parents inspire dysfunctional citizens.
American Teen is not nearly as good as Adam Yauch’s Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot, a doc that empathized with its teen subjects and situated them in a lively cultural-political context. (The moment a father tells his son to hold his head up when speaking publicly has powerful reverberations). Yet Burstein, a Sundance Film Festival celebrity, boasts a bigger promotion campaign that gives the illusion that American Teen is more important than Gunnin’, yet it’s actually totally fraudulent.
Don’t fall for the capturing-real-life ruse. That’s a Heisenberg Principle trap (asking us to excuse the filmmaker’s cynicism, since we already realize her presence). It’s no different from Christopher Nolan’s cynicism in The Dark Knight: The graduating students of Warshaw High suggest suburban comics heroes: Zit Boy, Tramp Girl, Manic Twat, Texting Dork, Jock Dweeb. Without any emotional or historical context for these pathetic youth, Burstein merely offers a spectacle of chipmunky kiddie voices and garbled diction. If American Teen had smell-o-vision, the scent of bubble gum would be overpowered by crap.
In this patronizing view of “innocence” we lose appreciation for real experience on film as once explicated by Andre Bazin. Now we’re stuck with opportunists like Burstein who piously clucks her tongue at teenage confusion. She never inquires how kids learn from pop culture except through an egregious series of animated sequences where their fears are projected into video games and dungeon-and-dragon fantasies. Credible? Maybe, but Burstein’s refusal to intervene when the teens abuse each other for her camera (for doc sexiness) prove she is not to be trusted. Note the basketball segment where Colin Clemens, a white kid pressured by his Elvis-impersonator dad to show off for college scouts, demonstrates his on-court mediocrity. (Yauch would barf.) Burstein ignores the team’s more talented black kid, just as her scenes of Hannah Bailey’s heartbreak ignores the romantic life of the gay-male best friend who consoles her. Burstein is gunnin’ for the lowest rung on the documentary ladder.
Directed by Nanette Burstein
Not exactly a humanist document, American Teen actually belongs to the Disaster Movie genre. It gathers a mixed group of high school students in their senior year—a preppie, a jock, a nerd, a princess (The Breakfast Club clichés)—and leers at their hostility to each other. Director Nanette Burstein exempts herself from pursuing a more exploratory, informative—or caring—perspective because this kind of teen exploitation is what TV producers call “sexy.”
When wealthy blonde Megan Krizmanich loses the student council election and vandalizes her opponent’s home, spray-painting hateful graffiti on the walls and windows, Burstein’s cool voyeurism follows Megan to the pandering school principal who bestows a sympathetic wrist-slap. (“I know it’s wrong, but I like getting even,” Megan boasts.) We never see the victimized opponent’s embarrassment, anger or legal remedy. When a girl text-messages a bare-breasted photo of herself to her boyfriend, Burstein traces the boyfriend’s betrayal; he disseminates the photo via the Internet around the entire high school. Burstein uses a gleeful split-screen effect that parodies the “Hugo and Kim” telephone-gossip number from Bye Bye Birdie. Worse, a catty clique (strapped with battery-pack mics) decides to harass the embarrassed girl with vicious, humiliating phone messages. And Burstein’s camera looks on, adoringly.
This is a vile misuse of the intimate, verité and reportorial technique that the Maysles, Pennebaker and other doc pioneers worked so hard to justify. MTV has corrupted documentary etiquette and principle through such blinged-up reality-TV series as Super Sweet Sixteen and The Hills—the contrived style that has all but destroyed the integrity of the documentary format. And Burstein—who previously directed Bob Evans’ vanity bio, The Kid Stays in the Picture—hides her cruelty and ignorance behind this debased fashion. Ever since the lousy, condescending Hoop Dreams, too many docs have become dysfunctional family horror shows. Portable video cameras have made it possible for filmmakers to get in close to their subject—not to achieve intimacy, just tabloid sensationalism.
The title of American Teen is so awful (it “wears elevator shoes” as a critic once said of George Lucas’ American Graffiti) that the pretenses of Burstein’s vapid viewpoint are exposed. She follows the Warsaw, Ind., teens, always aiming to inflate their habits as archetypal rites of passage. This isn’t the approach of a sociologist doc-maker as in Frederick Wiseman’s High School or a cultural investigation like Jeff Kreines and Joel DeMott’s Seventeen, which memorably captured the personal and cultural explorations of Muncie, Ind., youth. Instead, Burstein’s teen subjects are cynically indulged (shedding no light on their petty hierarchies, pimply neuroses, hormonal insecurities, excess energy and innocent ignorance). As on The Hills, you half-expect a commercial selling Grand Theft Auto or The Dark Knight to appear after every scene.
This view of adolescence is as dishonest as any Gus Van Sant wet dream, only Burstein pretends to be cataloguing our national soul. “Mr. Gross taught us America is a meritocracy, but here it’s an aristocracy,” one of the students narrates. That’s merely a sound bite. Burstein doesn’t bother examining the values and ideologies taught in youth that become apparent in later problematic adult behavior. Her directorial decisions favor shallow, selfish characters (ironically panning up to a school corridor BELIEVE IN YOURSELF banner). Her inept narrative construction causes abrupt emotional peaks and unreadable moments of tragedy (a girl’s manic-depressive mother tells her “You’re not special”; there’s a surprise suicide confession; an ostracized boy admits “I’m afraid of who I am.”) Inadvertently, Burstein’s own snobbery reveals how obnoxious people breed obnoxious offspring, status-conscious homes create status-conscious societies, dysfunctional parents inspire dysfunctional citizens.
American Teen is not nearly as good as Adam Yauch’s Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot, a doc that empathized with its teen subjects and situated them in a lively cultural-political context. (The moment a father tells his son to hold his head up when speaking publicly has powerful reverberations). Yet Burstein, a Sundance Film Festival celebrity, boasts a bigger promotion campaign that gives the illusion that American Teen is more important than Gunnin’, yet it’s actually totally fraudulent.
Don’t fall for the capturing-real-life ruse. That’s a Heisenberg Principle trap (asking us to excuse the filmmaker’s cynicism, since we already realize her presence). It’s no different from Christopher Nolan’s cynicism in The Dark Knight: The graduating students of Warshaw High suggest suburban comics heroes: Zit Boy, Tramp Girl, Manic Twat, Texting Dork, Jock Dweeb. Without any emotional or historical context for these pathetic youth, Burstein merely offers a spectacle of chipmunky kiddie voices and garbled diction. If American Teen had smell-o-vision, the scent of bubble gum would be overpowered by crap.
In this patronizing view of “innocence” we lose appreciation for real experience on film as once explicated by Andre Bazin. Now we’re stuck with opportunists like Burstein who piously clucks her tongue at teenage confusion. She never inquires how kids learn from pop culture except through an egregious series of animated sequences where their fears are projected into video games and dungeon-and-dragon fantasies. Credible? Maybe, but Burstein’s refusal to intervene when the teens abuse each other for her camera (for doc sexiness) prove she is not to be trusted. Note the basketball segment where Colin Clemens, a white kid pressured by his Elvis-impersonator dad to show off for college scouts, demonstrates his on-court mediocrity. (Yauch would barf.) Burstein ignores the team’s more talented black kid, just as her scenes of Hannah Bailey’s heartbreak ignores the romantic life of the gay-male best friend who consoles her. Burstein is gunnin’ for the lowest rung on the documentary ladder.
