In John Lewis"s book, The Road to Romance and Ruin, he defines the teen movie as "the principle mass mediated discourse of youth; a discourse that rather glibly and globally re-presents youth as a culture" (p. 2). In using the term "teen movie" this does not refer to a movie geared towards teens, but instead to movies about teens. The 1980"s gave us many teen movies, such as Pretty in Pink, Better Off Dead, Say Anything, The Breakfast Club, and Can"t Buy Me Love, which have become classics to the twenty-somethings of today. These were movies usually involving two teens from different classes most likely, and the impossible love that they find not-so-impossible. Joseph Reed, in American Scenarios, believes that the ongoing popularity of these movies is that they "call up something primal in all of us.High school pictures tend to be about public high school, but they know this: even if I went to private school I can be every teen in this picture. I can be (because I have been) victim or failure or nerd" (p133). .

             The late 1990"s gave birth to a new breed of high school movies. Freddie Prinze Jr. replaced John Cusack; Jodie Lynn O"Keefe replaced Molly Ringwald. Though on the outside these new movies have all the makings of the old eighties high school movie, a close look will show you that not only are they very different, but they in fact enforce the opposite ideals and problems that high school teens face in real life. Though the plot lines are very similar and many of the characters have many of the same traits, when we examine them we see how different they really are.

             Pretty in Pink, written by John Hughes, tells the story of Andie Walsh (Molly Ringwald), an unpopular, lower middle class girl who dresses in thrift shop/homemade clothes. In the opening scene we learn that not only is the mother missing (we find out later that she left three years earlier), but Andie and her father have a slim budget and he is not a "model father" (she wakes him in the morning and his first words are "where am I?") Her only true friend in the school is an eccentric boy named Duckie (John Cryer) who is completely in love with her.