Abstract
Michele Meek’s Consent Culture and Teen Films offers a timely and detailed exploration of the ways in which affirmative consent discourses have been taken up by contemporary US teen films, a genre that is centrally concerned with issues of gender and sexuality as teenage characters navigate the liminal space between childhood and adulthood. Through discussion of an extensive range of films, Meek examines how depictions of consent (or lack thereof) have evolved over time, with consent becoming a guiding principle of the genre in the twenty-first century. Yet along with these shifts, Meek also considers the limitations of an affirmative consent framework. For example, while teenage girls’ sexual desire, pleasure, and agency may now be foregrounded in contemporary teen films, this is often at the expense of considerations of teenage boys’ consent. Through specific case studies, Meek identifies further moments of contradiction and complexity, highlighting the powerful ways in which race/ethnicity, gender identity, and sexuality can intersect to constrain or complicate negotiations of consent and asking important questions about what remains “unseen in the genre” even in this time of change (p. 57).
Consent Culture and Teen Films contextualizes contemporary teen films, mostly from the 2010s onwards, in relation to a much longer history of moral panics in the United States surrounding cinema and youth. As Meek demonstrates, US cinema has long been concerned with policing and regulating adolescent sexuality to uphold heteronormative, patriarchal values and sustain white supremacy. If one of the underlying concerns of these moral panics was tied to the presumed passiveness and vulnerability of teen audiences, a key strength of Meek’s book is the recognition of teenagers as critical viewers and the commitment to taking teen films seriously and on their own terms.
Meek simultaneously acknowledges the significant role that media can play in creating and normalizing sexual scripts. Chapter 2 explores the “the resiliency of the narrative structure of coercive seduction” (p. 62) through examples that either reinforce normative constructions of gendered sexuality or invert them, by positioning girls as sexually aggressive. Highlighting the welcome increase of teen films centering girls of color, Meek considers how this positioning can risk perpetuating “race-based sexual stereotypes such as girls of color being more sexually available or aggressive” (p. 81). Meek also considers the transformative power of teen films to disrupt these scripts, identifying examples of films and filmmakers that seek to challenge, and offer alternatives to, gendered and race-based sexual stereotypes.
A recurring theme for Meek is the gap between “performative” and “subjective” consent in teen films and what this might mean for meaningful negotiations of consent. These tensions are clearly highlighted in chapters that explore films featuring queer and transgender teenage characters, exposing the “unspoken cisness of the affirmative consent discourse” (p. 17). Chapter 3 considers the complexity of consent in practice in films featuring queer teen protagonists. Meek draws on a recurring pattern in these films, in which queer teen characters are depicted trying out heterosexual experiences, to highlight the way in which the terms of affirmative consent can mask a lack of desire. Despite growing visibility of same-sex desire in contemporary teen films, Meek argues that there remains a reluctance to depict queer passion without shame, and queer sex remains less visible on-screen than heterosexual sex. Questions of visibility are returned to in Chapter 5, which explores films that center transgender teen characters and highlight tensions around consent culture’s emphasis on full disclosure for trans individuals.
In the concluding chapter, Meek reckons with the fact that representations of sex and consent discussed in the book are written and directed by adults and, therefore, filtered through adult lenses. This chapter explores sexual images created and disseminated by teens themselves via a discussion of sexting. Here, Meek acknowledges that sexting too can reinforce heteronormative sexual scripts and gendered power dynamics but can simultaneously highlight the complexities of sexual agency and victimization. Overall, Meek argues that while seeking consensual encounters is a worthy goal, it remains important to recognize the tensions that arise in relation to an affirmative consent framework. Contemporary US teen films offer a rich area to explore such complexities, and the book raises important questions about shifting depictions of consent that could be valuably applied to other media forms and national contexts.
Throughout, Meek situates discussions of representations of consent in relation to wider generic, historical, regulatory, and industrial frameworks. Film analysis is supplemented with extratextual materials including interviews with actors and directors and considerations of popular and critical reception. This ambitious approach means that there is sometimes more attention paid to dialogue and plots than to film form and how these stories are told. This minor point, however, does not detract from the book’s rich contributions to the fields of feminist media studies, gender studies, and youth studies.