Madalynn Abele

When Sixteen Candles came out in 1984, the quintessential John Hughes film changed the face of movies and television in popular teenage culture. One year later, The Breakfast Club was released, taking stereotypes of high school and exposing complexities and contradictions within them.

Much of John Hughes’ 1980s filmography did this, combining the issues of teen melodramas from the 50s and 60s with romance and comedy. This new world of film features social issues like gender, class, sexuality, and race, but rather than challenging these deeper areas, they attempt to be reassuring. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty in Pink joined this repertoire as well.

Characters in The Breakfast Club ultimately declare that they are more than their social definition, exploring the complexities of teenage stereotypes, unintentionally creating a new standard in filmography: the quality portrayal of teenagers.

The CW’s television series Riverdale takes the Hughes narrative and twists it into a darker path.

Many types of media since these 80s films have taken the teenage concept and adapted it for their audiences in their own ways. In the 90s, 10 Things I Hate About You and Can’t Hardly Wait were popular, while Mean Girls, Bring It On, and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants took over in the 2000s.

Over the past ten years, “escapist” teen television has grown in popularity, crafting a new world outside of the real one. Gossip Girl kicked off this trend, with their characters leaning into a wealthy lifestyle, along with sex, drugs and alcohol. Glee is another example, where characters perform elaborate musical numbers in their everyday lives. The Vampire Diaries gives a fantasy of vampirism above any regular teen experience. Part of the rise of these shows aligns with the rise of social media, where programs can use these platforms as marketing.

Riverdale and 13 Reasons Why have been called “woke teen television,” with a focus on social awareness & cultural consumption, featuring diverse gender, race, & sexuality. This both takes advantage of its audience and encourages social justice arguments over whether the show is “woke enough.”

The original proposal of Riverdale by producer Greg Berlanti drew inspiration from Freaks and Geeks and My So-Called Life, but needed something more to draw attention to the show than solely the childish Archie stories. Berlanti told writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: “You need a dead body.” While Aguirre-Sacasa ultimately decided to take this literally, the real meaning behind this was the need for clickbait. For teens to want to watch the new show, something had to draw them in.

Using the idea from The Breakfast Club (the quality portrayal of teenagers), casting decisions are often altered to create the “perfect” teen. Oftentimes, this means adults or older teens playing teenagers so that they are past their “awkward” phase. This keeps a consistent, aesthetic image throughout the series. These casting decisions are also further driven due to labor laws, making it easier to cast adults who can work longer. However, creators often take this farther to deceive their audiences into forgetting they are watching adults playing minors.

Child actor Cole Sprouse made his star debut as Cody Martin in the Disney Channel show The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. In Riverdale, his role as Jughead gets himself being called out on the internet, under headlines such as “You Won’t BELIEVE What This Actor Looks Like Now!” and “15 Child Actors Who Got Hot.” Many Riverdale fans have followed Sprouse since his role with Disney, so they feel as though they should look the same maturity level he is. However, Sprouse started his role as sophomore Jughead Jones at age 24.

Each character has a certain role they are meant to fill. While it may not be “the princess,” “the athlete,” “the brain,” “the criminal,” or “the basket case” as seen in The Breakfast Club, everyone is boxed into a stereotype. Most teens are depicted as one-dimensional high school characters who solely want to find their own one trait, rather than exploring the true complexity of being a teenager. 

However, all actors seem to have the same body type, of course, regardless of what type of activity they are involved in. Women have the same slim figure, are toned and tall. Men are fit and somehow all have abs.

Along with age and matured bodies comes another topic: sex. Riverdale, along with many teen-targeted-media, has a history of sexualizing its characters far more than regular high school life would. 

The presentation of surface-level sexual interactions, such as 16-year-old Betty Cooper’s pole dance, occurs regularly throughout the show. This desensitizes the real impact of intimacy and sex and drives an unhealthy idea of what the teen viewer believes their image should look like, along with what types of activities they should be taking part in.

There are many scenes with Betty, Veronica, or Cheryl in their bras or Archie shirtless, alongside the numerous sex scenes, presenting “an impact on viewers who suspend reality and themselves reflected on-screen every week.” The nickname “Hot Archie” was trending on Twitter, stemming from the idea that Archie “got hot” over the summer, as noticed by Betty and Kevin.

According to research by the Western Journal of Medicine on how young people’s exposure to sexual content through media, it “provided models for achieving the ‘right look’ to become popular and attract boys, portrayed teen characters with problems similar to their own, showed how they solved those problems, and gave examples of how to behave in sexual situations.”

Megan Fleming, a sex and relationship therapist said that “these shows, and porn, are shaping teens minds about the ideas of pleasure, power, and intimacy.” While nearly everyone in any relationship in this series is sexually active, in reality, about 40% of girls and 44% of boys are sexually active between the ages of 15 and 19.

This is still a fairly high ratio, and Riverdale isn’t doing anything to even promote protection or the worry of being pregnant. At one point, Betty’s mother tells her daughter, “If that beanie wearing cad defiled you, at least please tell me that you were safe.” This is the only mention of contraception in the show.

“It’s important to consider how sex is being portrayed,” Fleming said. “It’s a disservice that they’re not talking about STDs and safe sex practices.”

Alongside the bees and flowers talk viewers get by watching this show, Riverdale also teaches teens… how to run a speakeasy? Veronica’s bar started off as a dance club, but became a true bar very quickly. First off, teenagers can’t get a liquor license, and even if they could, a popular show within teens ages 13 to 18 shouldn’t be pushing the idea of alcohol. Veronica’s successes with her full business puts an emphasis on the benefits that come with having money, but mainly diminishes the amount of work it would really take to run a business at such a high caliber.

There are some things, however, that Riverdale does do right. One of these things is the discovery and struggle with sexual identity. Moose is in the closet for the majority of the show, much like many teenagers in high school.

Not all teenagers get into or go to college after graduation, and since characters are rarely shown studying, it’s almost a relief when they don’t get into college. Archie was too busy focusing on fighting midnight crime, so instead of going to college, he joined the military, a common choice for many young adults.

Teen television has tried to adapt its content into what it believes its audience wants to interact with through the way they consume media. Because of this, our teenage society is becoming less culturally aware as the media models itself on all the “best” qualities of life, acting as an “escape” within itself.