2. Teen comedy is a sub genre of Comedy.
The genre is targeted at teenagers and young adults in
which the plot is based upon the interests of teenagers.
However, older adults may enjoy them for nostalgic
purposes.
Teen Comedies
These interests include coming of age, first
love, rebellion, conflict with parents, teen angst or
alienation.
Often these normally serious matters are presented in a
stereotyped or trivialized way.
Teen comedies are often set in schools, or contain
characters that are of school age.
3. Comedy dates back to the era of silent film
in 1895 where it first began to be shown in
television programmes.
Due to the absence of speech, silent film
comedy relied heavily on slapstick and
burlesque humour.
The history of Comedy
Burlesque is theatrical entertainment which includes comical sketches
and parodies aimed at an adult audience due to the explicit scenes
that were shown, these included stripteases.
Slapstick is quite different to burlesque as this includes very energetic
comical conventions such as chases, collisions and very often
practical jokes were played.
4. Influential comedians
One of the most famous slapstick
directors is Charlie Chaplin. He
revolutionised the slapstick era by
self directing and creating comedy
films – a career that lasted for over
75 years.
Charlie was famous for his slapstick acrobatics and he was unique in
his styles when portraying this to the audience.
Instead of making something artificial
happen, he would wait until
something natural occurred.
His style of comedy is still used by
other comedians today.
5. The history of Comedy
By the 1930‟s silent film had grown out of
fashion and due to the advance in
technology verbal humour was able to be
included. This took comedy to a whole new
level.
Verbal humour consisted of onscreen
puns, innuendos and parodies.
In the early 1960‟s comedy became darker
and very serious in films, in the form of
black comedies. These were comedies
based on finding humour from even the
most hopeless situation.
6. The history of Comedy
In 1970 success was found with spin off films
from comical British television series.
1980 was a time of popular comedies, many of
which are still popular now. For
example, Honey I shrunk the kids was
produced in around the 1990‟s and is still
watched today.
In 2000 the emergence of Romantic Comedies, also known as Rom-Coms,
began. It was also around this time when Teen Comedies became popular.
They were aimed at teenagers and included
embarrassing and relatable situations that
would capture the audience.
Classic examples of this are American Pie
and The Inbetweeners.
7. The history of Teen Comedies
One of the first Teen Comedies was released in 1955. It was called Rebel
Without A Cause and was quite successful.
Then out of nowhere, a film called Heathers was
released in the 1980‟s. It was about two outcasts who
take revenge on the popular kids by killing them. The
film was a huge hit, but studios knew after the school
shootings at Columbine and Sandy Hook, there could
be no more films with this type of narrative.
Many studios realized that making movies
marketed to teens, who had a lot of free time to
go and see films, could be a huge moneymaker.
However, the number of films created for teens in
the 1950‟s exhausted audiences, and so for the
next two decades, there were few movies
targeted specifically at teens.
8. The history of Teen Comedies
With the constant quick advances in technology, teen slang and social society,
it is difficult to create a Teen Comedy with lasting power.
However, as long as the demand is high, constantly releasing new Teen
Comedies will allow different studios to make a lot of money.
So instead of such a shocking subject matter, a
much tamer approach to teen life was taken through
film.
This lead to a series of teen comedies, ranging from
Clueless to Mean Girls. Just like Heathers, these
films centered around the „popular‟ girls but the
characters weren‟t truly evil.
The only problem was that these Teen Comedies
tended to be extremely “current”, which meant they
out-dated in ten years or so.
9. Teen Comedies
Teen comedies came of age in 1950 because it was not
long before this that the concept of a teenager was born.
The idea of an intermediate stage between childhood
and adulthood, with its own particular characteristics.
Teen Comedies are also known
as teen films or teen epics.
Just like the early teen
comedies, any film in this genre
made today will contain some
stereotypical „high school‟
characters.
A change that is currently taking place however, is the
fact that other genres need to be included in films
aimed a teenagers in order to maintain the audience.
