Abstract:
For at least 30 years American culture has failed to provide empowering
myths and symbols to its adolescents as they come of age and try to make sense of
their selves, sexuality and the culture that surrounds them. This lack of myths and
symbols is especially harmful to girls and women who are subject to the limiting and
damaging myths and symbols that mainstream American culture continues to
manufacture and reinforce. While mainstream entertainment continues to produce
and market commercial products and ideology that do not empower girls and women
and often undermine their autonomy, intelligence, and power, there are fissures in its
powerful facade. In independent films, and in some mainstream films, are powerful
and empowering characters, images, and ideology that offer girls an alternative to
manufactured narratives that rely upon limiting myths and symbols to define and
confine girls' adolescence and mold them into powerful consumers. Because few
independent films are part of the entertainment readily available to teenage girls and
women, I have assembled a collection of films that subvert American myths and
symbols and create powerful and empowering narratives and characters that girls and
women can use to make sense of their selves and sexuality as well as adolescence,
mainstream entertainment, and American culture itself. By understanding all of these
contexts, girls and women can work to change the culture that limits, defines, and
confines both women's lives and entertainment.
