Coming-of-Age Film in the Age of Activism: Agency and Intersectionality in Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name

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Coming-of-Age Film in the Age of Activism

Agency and Intersectionality in Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name

29 – 06 – 2018 Anne Salden anne_salden@hotmail.com student number: 11927364 Supervisor: dr. M.A.M.B. (Marie) Lous Baronian Second Reader: dr. A.M. (Abe) Geil Master Media Studies (Film Studies) University of Amsterdam

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank Marie Baronian for her first-rate supervision and constant support. Throughout this process she inspired and encouraged me, which is why she plays an important part in the completion of my thesis.

I would also like to thank Veerle Spronck and Rosa Wevers, who proved that they are not only the best friends, but also the best academic proof-readers I could ever wish for.

Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude towards my classmate and dear friend Moon van den Broek, who was always there for me when I needed advice (or just a hug) during these months, even though she had her own thesis to write too.

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Abstract

The journey of ‘coming of age’ has been an inspiring human process for writers and filmmakers for centuries long, as its narrative format demonstrates great possibilities for both pedagogy and entertainment. The transformation from the origins of the genre, the German Bildungsroman, to classic coming-of-age cinema in the 1950s and 1980s in America saw few representational

changes. Classic coming-of-age films relied heavily on the traditional Bildungsroman and its restrictive cultural norms of representation. However, in the present Age of Activism recent coming-of-age films seem to break with this tendency and broaden the portrayal of identity formation by incorporating diversity in its representations. A case study of three critically acclaimed contemporary coming-of-age films Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name shows how these films diverge from the historical tradition by incorporating agency and intersectionality in their diverse representations of maturity. A comparison of the

Bildungsroman’s portrayal of identity formation to the recent corpus pointed out that the included agency and intersectionality politicize the century old genre. Due to this politicization, one can witness a distinct development towards growing awareness of diversity issues in 21st century coming-of-age cinema.

Keywords: Coming-of-Age Cinema, Bildungsroman, Identity Representation, Agency, Intersectionality, Moonlight, Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name.

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Introduction

“At some point,

you gotta decide for yourself who you gonna be. Can’t let nobody make that decision for you.” – Juan to “Little” in Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)

“I want you to be the very best version of yourself.” “But what if this is the best version?” – Marion and Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson in Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017) “How you live your life is your business,

just remember,

our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once.”

- Mr. Perlman to Elio in Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)

Coming of age is a human experience that is similar to birth, and eventually death: everyone goes through it at some point in their life. One finds himself rather different than before through experiences of loving and losing, seeking and settling, running and returning. We might say, that one has matured. While the specific experiences that determine one’s coming of age process differ for everyone, the fundamental notion stays universal: you live through stuff that urges you to grow up. This timeless characteristic of the coming-of-age experience explains the enduring success of the cinematic adaption.

Personally, I have always enjoyed the classic American coming-of-age film genre, but somehow it has also always felt like a ‘guilty pleasure’, due to its traditional high school allure. However, with recent American releases such as Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014), 20th_Century Women (Mike Mills, 2016), Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016), American Honey (Andrea Arnold, 2016), Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017) and Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017) I was

introduced to a new approach to coming-of-age films. Not only did these films move away from the original high school environment, but they also seemed to transcend the high school

sentiment through the implementation of unfamiliar characters and environments within the familiar coming-of-age genre. Due to these aforementioned recent releases one might say we are in the midst of a renaissance of the American coming-of-age genre, which last culminated in the 1980s when John Hughes dominated the scene with celebrated teen films such as The Breakfast

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Club (1985), Sixteen Candles (1984), and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). While these original coming-of-age films offer insights into the rich tradition of the genre, recent films aim to shake up this tradition by broadening the scenery of coming of age. The six different titles mentioned earlier collectively focus on telling untold stories of growing up through new points of view, and in a manner that feels more realistic than the rather idealized teen films of the 1980s.

This feeling of realism stems from the fact that these coming-of-age stories represent the lived and quite complex experiences of diverse people, with varying genders, sexualities, races, and classes. It is my hypothesis that through these non-normative portrayals, coming-of-age cinema is not only broadening its portrayal of identity formation, but also moving towards the realms of politicization by taking part in the societal debates on representation, diversity and equality within the cinematic field. Such societal participation makes sense when considering the current time, as numerous American journalists1_{have argued that people live in the ‘Age of} Activism’ since around 2014, and increasingly after Trump’s 2016 election win. The recent Age of Activism is centred around the youth and refers to the manner in which young activists mobilize the American nation with political marches, protests and debates demanding gun control, racial equality and gender equality. Similar to these political protesters, recent coming-of-age films seem to have started using their voice as a medium to talk about socio-political issues having to do with gender, sexuality, race, and class. All of a sudden, the everlasting teen film is becoming a medium with a politicized voice, and a medium to take seriously.

1_{Some of the journalists that argue for the Age of Activism in their articles are:}

Blakemore, Erin. "Youth In Revolt: Five Powerful Movements Fueled By Young

Activists". News.Nationalgeographic.Com, 2018, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/youth-activism-young-protesters-historic-movements/

Gabbatt, Adam. "Activism In The Age Of Trump: Meet The Leaders Of The Grassroots Resistance". The Guardian, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/19/anti-trump-activists-protest-grassroots-leaders. Pindell, James. "Welcome To America’S Golden Age Of Political Activism - The Boston

Globe". Bostonglobe.Com, 2017,

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/01/24/groundgame/oB0e1onE4q6AaztzShw0PM/st ory.html.

Ruiz, Rebecca. "Trump’s America Will Also Be A New Golden Age Of Activism". Mashable, 2016,

https://mashable.com/2016/11/15/trump-presidency-sparks-liberal-resistance/?europe=true#cT5SNBbDMuqp

Safronova, Valeriya. "Millennials And The Age Of Tumblr Activism". Nytimes.Com, 2014,

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Concomitantly, these contemporary coming-of-age films were also starting to get critically acknowledged for their representational value, as the efforts were rewarded by the acclaimed award shows. Boyhood was nominated for Best Film at the Oscars and won the Golden Globe for Best Film (Drama) in 2015. Two years later in 2017, another coming-of-age film was nominated at the Oscars, and even managed to win: Moonlight. This win was both an accomplishment for the longstanding critically neglected coming-of-age genre as well as for the people the film

represented, being black queer men. Since the last Academy Awards presented us with two more nominations from the coming-of-age genre, Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name, the genre has become increasingly vital again, and therefore worthy of further investigation.

One recurring element in the reviews of these ‘rejuvenated’ coming-of-age films is the frequent mentioning of the German Bildungsroman, the 18th_{century literary tradition from} which the classic cinematic coming-of-age genre originates2_{. This mentioning gives the} contemporary coming-of-age films a bit of historical cachet, however, I also questioned the accuracy of the Bildungsroman reference. This 18th_{century tradition was known for its}

conventional, pedagogic and peaceful nature, while in contrast, the 21st_{century coming-of-age} films were all praised for their disruptive, complex, and divergent representations of adulthood. Additionally, the time difference of three centuries plausibly led to substantial disparities concerning the representation of identities. By observing these differences, I was prompted to look into the representation of identity formation in the recent coming-of-age releases compared to the tradition.

In this thesis I will further research the recent revival of coming-of-age cinema and its connection to the historical Bildungsroman. In doing so, I aim to establish whether the affiliation to the genre’s origins are still accurate, or if it is actually more accurate to speak of a new

tendency within the coming-of-age genre. In order to examine this, I will ask: How does recent coming-of-age cinema handle the representation of diversity in its portrayal of identity formation, compared to the traditional Bildungsroman? This research question will help me to critically reflect on my hypothesis

2_{To be seen (amongst others) in:}

Bradshaw, Peter. "Boyhood Review – One Of The Great Films Of The Decade | Peter Bradshaw". The Guardian, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jul/10/boyhood-review-richard-linklater-film.

Kelly, Nolan. "New York Film Festival Review: Call Me By Your Name". The Pavlovic Today, 2017, https://thepavlovictoday.com/mixed-media/new-york-film-festival-call-me-by-your-name/.

Lack, Hannah, and Maisie Skidmore. "The Cultural References Behind Greta Gerwig’S Lady Bird". Another, 2018, http://www.anothermag.com/design-living/10570/the-cultural-references-behind-greta-gerwigs-lady-bird Spiegel, Josh. "Moonlight: A True Coming Of Age". Movie Mezzanine, 2016,

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regarding the politicization of the contemporary coming-of-age genre, which I believe to have witnessed with the last few releases of the genre.

The answer to the research question will be formed by looking at the three most recent and critically successful coming-of-age films: Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name. These films deliver vastly different explorations of growing up compared to the polished teen films from the 1980s and prove that there is a distinction in the influence of different makers of coming-of-age films. Whereas most of the 1980s teen films were created by white male directors (Wilkinson Wonder Girls 8), in the 2010s the field of production has diversified and consequently the films have too. By using their unique personal perspective of respectively a woman (Lady Bird ‘s Gerwig), a black man (Moonlight’s Jenkins) and a queer man (Call Me By Your Name’s

Guadagnino) the recent films represent women, black and queer men. Lady Bird introduces us to a stubborn, lower-class teenage girl who fights with society, her mother and her growing

maturity. Moonlight shows us how a poor, black boy struggles with his sexual identity, while he comes of age in the ghetto of Miami. Call Me By Your Name presents us to an intelligent young boy whose coming of age is synchronous to his queer sexual awakening.

To thoroughly analyse these films, I will first look into the history and traditions of the Bildungsroman, as well as its merging into the cinematic coming-of-age genre in the theoretical framework (Chapter 1). I will build on theorists Franco Moretti, John Maynard, and Mikail Bakhtin and the genre’s estimated paragon, Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (1795) by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in developing an understanding of the literary

Bildungsroman. I will reflect on the connections between the literary and cinematic field, as well as the characterizations of the cinematic coming-of-age genre by using two significant examples: Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955), with which coming-of-age cinema started and The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985), from the teen film peak in the 1980s. The theoretical framework will be developed by use of theorists Stuart Hall, Judith Butler, Kimberle Crenshaw, bell hooks and Richard Dyer, allowing me to analyse identity and representation matters in that perspective further in the following chapters

In the analysis of identity and representation matters, I will centralize two concepts which I deem the most striking innovations on the level of identity representation within the coming-of-age genre: the personal agency of the central hero (Chapter 2), and the incorporation of diverse characters through an intersectional analysis (Chapter 3). Chapter two concentrates on the notion of agency on the basis of the definitions of David Bordwell and Torben Grodal. This chapter will focus on how agency is utilized differently in the historical coming-of-age tradition compared to the recent corpus by analysing Lady Bird, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name. Chapter three

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zooms in on the concept of intersectionality by building on explanations of Kimberle Crenshaw and Patricia Hill Collins. This last chapter will demonstrate how diversity is employed differently in the historical coming-of-age tradition compared to the recent corpus, by analysing the films through an intersectional lens. These analyses will help me to examine in which way the identity representations in Lady Bird, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name diverge from the

Bildungsroman tradition, and might lead to the politicization of the contemporary coming-of-age genre.

In the end, this thesis aims to find an answer to the main question concerning recent coming-of-age cinema’s representation of diversity in the portrayal of identity formation

compared to the Bildungsroman. Through this answer an evaluation will be made with regards to the politicization of the contemporary cinematic coming-of-age genre in the Age of Activism. It is not my aim to demonstrate the wrongs of the Bildungsroman tradition and the rights of the contemporary corpus. Rather it is my aspiration to offer new lenses (of agency; of

intersectionality) with which one can look at these films to indicate whether there is a certain development within the genre.

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Chapter 1: Traditions of Growing Up

Introduction

This chapter will explore the historical and theoretical background of the coming-of-age genre and the representation of identity in media. Starting with the origins of the German

Bildungsroman, I will explain the tradition by relying on the paragon Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (1795) by the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. I will connect the literary origins to the classic American cinematic coming-of-age field and outline the characterizations of this cinematic form by use of two significant examples. These are Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955), with which coming-of-age cinema started in America and The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985), from the teen film peak in the 1980s. Through these examples I will determine the codes of the genre. Additionally, I will define a theoretical framework on the matters of identity and representation building on work of theorists such as Stuart Hall, Judith Butler, Kimberle Crenshaw, bell hooks and Richard Dyer. This will allow me to explore the norms of the coming-of-age genre further in the following chapters.

1.1 The Bildungsroman Origins

Maturing, growing up, or coming of age is a human experience which has always been of high interest for various artists in the Western world, whether that be novel writers, poets,

photographers or filmmakers. The mere idea of maturing - the transgression from being a child to becoming an adult - is in no way bound to a specific historical timeframe. Yet, as I will show, the tradition of contemplating on this transformative process of youth is, via mediums

appropriate to its time.

In the 18th_{century, authors in Europe started taking their story inspiration from maturing,} the psychological journey towards moral self-awareness (Maynard 279). One of the first Western stories that embarked upon this theme is the 1795 work Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre (or:

Apprenticeship Years in English) by Goethe. Since this work is historically deemed important, I will use it as the main example of early self-awareness stories3_{. In Goethe’s story the eponymous} hero, Wilhelm Meister, attempts to escape from what he sees as the empty life of a bourgeois businessman by embarking on a journey of self-realization. Through this story the novel “directs

3_{However, the corpus is of course much broader, see for instance: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education}

(1762); Jane Austen, Emma (1815); Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847); Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850), amongst others.

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our attention to the pressing task of bringing all the potentials contained within us to full expression” (Bleicher, 365). At the time, Goethe broke with the classic hero paradigm in literature that focused on mature, adult men such as Hector and Achilles. Instead, he chose to “see youth as the most meaningful part of life” and focus on a young hero, as Franco Moretti states in his book on the Bildungs-movement in Europe (3). Hence, a paradigm shift can be witnessed in Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre, as Goethe enters a new field of literacy with a different protagonist than writers accustomed themselves to in the 18th_{century. Goethe’s novel marked} the birth of a new genre - the European Bildungsroman - in which the youthful age became centralized as a source for meaningful lessons for our modern culture (Moretti 4).

However, the renowned term Bildungsroman was actually not used until 1803 by the German critic Karl Morgenstern, making Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre from 1795 a Bildungsroman a posteriori (Maynard 279). Goethe’s work later became the archetype of this new genre, as the rules of the Bildungsroman were determined in hindsight of its inaugural work (Moretti V).

Nevertheless, despite Morgenstern’s efforts, the term Bildungsroman did not come into broader use until it was adopted overseas in the English Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1910 (Maynard 280). By the 20th_{century, Bildungsroman had become the main term to describe the steadily developing} types of novels that were concerned with the quintessential and psychological process from youth to adulthood.

The name Bildungsroman was not mindlessly chosen by Morgenstern, as the word is centred around the German word Bildung, which can literally be translated to education or formation (Bleicher 364). Additionally, Bildung as a concept also refers to the German tradition of self-cultivation, or educative self-formation, a thought that emerged in Europe the 18th_century (Bleicher 364). As Bleicher argues, this worldly “thought” was thus exemplified in the new genre of the Bildungsroman where we follow an individual, a Bildungsheld, in its course towards self-formation, or identity building, as we do in Goethe’s archetypical work (365). It is also in this exact definition that we find the central vision of the Bildungsroman, as its sole focus is “the growth of a particular subjectivity” (Brown 651). In other words, Bildungsroman stories tell us how a particular individual at a particular time, through educative experiences, embarks upon his journey towards self-formation. In its concentration on the youth and youthful Bildung, the roman treated the growth towards maturity, so the process of coming of age, with a never seen before “moral and historical urgency” (Brown 660).

Due to the importance of education and self-formation in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre, it can be seen as a classic example of the Bildungsroman, while the genre of course encompasses many slight variations on the type. Russian literary theorist Mikail Bakhtin dissected

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five specific types within the Bildungsroman novels in the nineteenth and twentieth century: the novel of education, the novel of human emergence, the novel of biographical emergence, the novel of didactic or pedagogic emergence and lastly, the novel of historical emergence (19, 23). Rather than contrasting kinds of Bildungsroman novels these types should be regarded as variations, or subcategories of the same sort, with coming of age as their common connector. Central in all these Bildungsroman subcategories is thus the emergence or becoming of a hero, the difference lies merely in how this process unfolds (Bakhtin 19).

Alongside Goethe, other European writers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen also explored the Bildungsroman narrative. Together with this new genre development of the Bildungsroman came a central vision, created through a set of genre appropriate norms. This evolvement is in line with Jacques Derrida’s vision on the law of genre, as he states in his homonymous article, that the creation of a genre creates laws concerning the allowed use of said genre and demands respect for these norms (57). Coherent to Derrida, the Bildungsroman genre’s central vision was usually expressed through a set of typical elements in the story’s structure and main character.

Firstly, Bildungsroman stories usually follow a linear narrative with a centred perspective that is needed to tell the central character’s self-formative journey. Second, there is usually one protagonist, an apprentice to life, often referred to as the Bildungsheld: an individual who is yet to become morally self-aware, a kind of “tabula rasa” at the story’s inception (Beards 205; Brown 651). The third ‘law’ is that this youthful hero in the Bildungsroman will mature within the time of the story’s narrative. It is a hero “in the process of becoming” (Bakhtin 19), who we follow on his educational transformative journey regarding four crucial concerns: vocation, mating, religion, and identity (Beards 205). As a fourth marker the importance of mating can be put forward, as the Bildungsheld must always decide on a suitable mating partner by the end of the story, making the central figures in the Bildungsroman in a sense also “apprentice lovers” (Beards 207). The fifth law states that the protagonist learns his lessons and grows as a human being outside of the four walls of an institutionalised education system, as he steps into the world for his educative journey (Beards 205). As a following law, the relationship of the apprentice with his parents is often central in the story and crucial for his development, as “finding a place in society is coterminous with finding a satisfactory relationship with the father” (Millard 15). The final marker concerns the conclusion of the Bildungsroman stories, as these are commonly focused not on conflict but on the protagonist’s “participation in the Whole” (Moretti 20). The

protagonist is no longer seeking, but settling, as he is integrated into society after his

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journey of the classical Bildungsroman can end, as it achieved its sole function of maturing, and there is speak of ‘closure’ (Moretti 26-27).

After three decades of Bildungsroman novels, one can now recognize certain patterns, or norms, in the Bildungsroman representations. Traditionally, the Bildungsroman told a story that was about how a middle-class white man overcomes difficulties during his formative journey and finds his wife to settle within a bourgeois society (Hoagland 4). In doing so, the Bildungsroman constructed a ‘norm’ that was white, male and heterosexual and only showed the relationships and behaviours deemed appropriate within that norm (Hoagland 5). This norm appears rather limited from our contemporary world of growing awareness and diversity. Obviously, the authors at the time seemed not aware of the complexities of personal development and the diverse ways of being, concerning gender, class, ethnicity, race and sexuality (Šnircová 1).

Yet, when we look back at the time and place when the Bildungsroman was conceived, namely Germany in the 18th_{century, this conceived norm starts to make sense. The rather} obvious clarification lies in the fact that authors wrote (auto-)biographical works of maturation, and the socio-economic conditions under which the Bildungsroman arose at the time in Europe were mostly white and middle class (Brown 662). However, there are additional explanations for this norm that are more rooted deeply in our culture. These ruling Bildungsroman norms concerning representations of race, gender, sexuality and class come from long traditions of inequality matters, a topic I will turn back to later in this chapter when I further examine these particular fields. As for the Bildungsroman, however popular in dealing with the ‘problem’ that is youth in the 19th_{century, the literary tradition started to lose grounds by the beginning of the 20}th century as the medium of film entered the stage.

1.2 Coming-of-age on Screen

At the time in history when literature was moving towards more experimental narratives4_{(end of} the 19th_{, beginning of 20}th_{century) and thus the rather straightforward, linear Bildung-narrative} was losing grounds in the literary field, a new popular art form appeared which was more susceptible to traditional storytelling than the modernist novel (Brown 651-652). This new popular art form was cinema, and thus the transformative tradition made its own transition into the cinematic field, with the Bildungsfilm (Brown 652). The aforementioned transition from roman to film can be seen as an example of the longevity, or to use Walter Benjamin’s term, the

“afterlife” of works of art (Benjamin 256; Brown 652). The “afterlife of art” refers to Benjamin’s

4_{The 1910s literature field saw a rise in artistic experimentation in Europe and America (Modernist movement,}

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concept concerning the survival of materiality, as he suggests that a work of art can return in a different form, in a different time once its original form has become unfamiliar to the public (Flèche 103, Brown 653). By connecting Benjamin to the Bildungsroman, we can see that the genre-specific archetypical material has survived, as the fundamental elements of the literary genre were reborn in cinema.

The afterlife of the Bildungsroman starts in America in the second half of the 20th century, where after the war and economic depression a “renewed, consumer-oriented teen culture” provided a successful economic boost for the country (Goldberg 39). Due to the drive-in bedrive-ing one of the most successful consumer spaces for teenagers, a new genre of teen-oriented films was developed (Goldberg 39). These teen-oriented films or ‘teenpics’ can be seen as an example of the 20th_{century American version of the Bildungsfilm, that quickly went by the name} of coming-of-age films. Similar to the literary Bildungsroman, the coming-of-age film knows many subcategories. By now we can distinguish the light teen comedies (such as Ferris Bueller’s day Off, John Hughes 1986; Mean Girls, Mark Waters 2004), the teen movie musicals (Grease, Randal Kleiser 1978; Hairspray, John Waters 1988 and Adam Shankman 2007), the road movies (Thelma & Louise, Ridley Scott 1991; Into The Wild, Sean Penn 2007), and the more classic coming-of-age film that stays the most true to the traditional Bildungsroman (Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray 1955; The Breakfast Club, John Hughes 1985; Garden State, Zach Braff 2004).

The film that is said to have helped spark the coming-of-age genre throughout America in the 20th_{century was Rebel Without a Cause by Nicholas Ray (1955), featuring the iconic James} Dean (Goldberg 39). Due to this film’s historical impact I will take it as an archetype for a short analysis in my research, acknowledging that the corpus consists of many other coming-of-age films. Ray’s film actually has two main storylines and the first one resolves around dating, as the narrative follows a classic pattern of “boy meets girl, girl rejects boy for an established,

inappropriate boy, boy gets girl through an act of daring, boy proves his moral worth through a selfless act of bravery” (Goldberg 39). However, there is also a second storyline that drives the film’s plot, which is about how the young boy Jim (James Dean’s character) struggles with his overbearing family in order to become a strong man and also a “responsible, middle-class member of society” (Goldberg 40).

There exist some clear connections between the 20th_{century coming-of-age film Rebel} Without a Cause and the 18th_{century Bildungsroman tradition. To start, the story of Rebel Without a} Cause centres around a main character (who is the “rebel” referred to in the film’s title) that we follow in his struggles and journey towards adult-like responsibility, similar to the Bildungsheld in the Bildungsroman. Second, the central themes in the film, middle-class youth rebellion and

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heterosexual romance, are also main elements in the Bildungsroman. Heterosexual romance was actually a principal plot focus of the whole teen-oriented genre that followed Rebel Without a Cause, and the importance of this feature can be compared to how mating and marriage was of high concern in the plot of the Bildungsroman (Goldberg 39; Beards 207). In Rebel Without a Cause, certain homo-erotic undertones can be distinguished, which is a new element to the Bildungsroman genre. However, this sexual tension between Jim and two male characters is never openly discussed, and these two characters both die during the film. Critics have claimed that these ‘tragic’ deaths point to the film’s conservatism concerning sexuality and gender relations (Goldberg 40). Accordingly, the film’s narrative and worldview still conform to the traditional Bildungsroman.

A third similarity between Rebel Without a Cause and the Bildungsroman can be found in development of the young boy, who is expected to establish a “strong and balanced masculine identity”, meaning that the boy must become a man, which resembles the obligatory maturation of the Bildungsheld in the novel (Goldberg 40). As the second storyline of the film focuses on Jim’s struggles with his overbearing family, we see a connection between the crucial influence of the Bildungsheld’s relations with his parents and the parental relationship as displayed in Rebel Without a Cause. Additionally, the conclusion of Rebel Without a Cause lies in his societal

acceptance, as he has grown into a responsible middle-class member of society, similar to the merging of the Bildungsheld and society in the closure of the Bildungsroman stories. Whereas Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Lehrjahre was one of the first European novels to focus on youthful hero’s and their problems about the essence of maturing, Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause was one of the first big American films that also showed an understanding of youthful struggles and the conflicts of growing up5_.

As mentioned before, Rebel Without a Cause was said to spark the teen film genre in 1955, and it paved the way for other, now classic, youth-oriented films such as The 400 Blows (François Truffaut, 1959), The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) and Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols, 1971). These films took their inspiration from trailblazer Rebel Without a Cause as they all stay rather close to the traditional markers of the Bildungsroman. However, around thirty years later than the release of Nicholas Ray’s film, America saw an additional peak in the teen-genre as the 1980’s delivered some of the biggest coming-of-age films until today. Explanations for this second major wave of teen films can be found in the time’s changing infrastructure (cinema multiplexes popped up in malls across America), as well as the launch of television’s teen sensation MTV in

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1980 (Wilkinson Wonder Girls 11). As such, Maryn Wilkinson states in her dissertation Wonder girls: Undercurrents of resistance in the representation of teenage girls in 1980s American cinema that essentially “the consumer potential of the American teen was radically embraced by the entertainment market of the 1980s” (11), which resulted in an immense increase in teen film production during the decade.

Titles like Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984), Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), Stand By Me (Rob Reiner, 1986), Some Kind of Wonderful (Howard Deutch, 1987) and of course the quintessential coming-of-age of the 1980’s The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985), to name a few, were all released during the 1980’s. While Rebel Without a Cause evidently followed the

Bildungsroman tradition quite closely, the genre itself developed over time. Some genre-specific changes will become clear if we take a closer look at the prime example of the 1980s: John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club (1985).

The Breakfast Club is set in suburban Chicago in 1984 and portrays “the relationships and inner journeys of five suburban high school students serving a one-day detention at school” (Kaye Hokin 110-111) through a linear narrative. This suburban setting is similar to the usual middle-class societies that are portrayed in the Bildungsroman. The students have the perception that they are very different from one another, as they are all examples of prototypical adolescents: The Athlete, The Brain, The Criminal, The Basket Case, and The Princess (Kaye Hokin 110). The Breakfast Club’s focus on these characters constitutes the main difference with the traditional Bildungsroman, as there are now five central characters instead of merely one Bildungsheld. However, all five individuals have yet to become morally self-aware and they all have the same lesson to learn, thus they can be seen as different parts of one central hero.

While the film unfolds, a story is shown about the search and formation of identity of this peer group, which takes place during their Saturday detention as their teacher instructs them to write an essay on the topic “Who Do You Think You Are?” (Kaye Hokin 111,115). The process of writing this essay functions as the adolescents’ transformative journey, since it makes them realize that they are all inherently similar. During this process, the characters discover how each and every one of them has to deal with either parental pressure, parental absence or parental judgement. Once again, the parental relationship proves to be of crucial importance in the formation of the teens. These identity-based discoveries make the central characters of The Breakfast Club leave the day feeling rather content, as they learned from each other and figured out they are not as different as they initially thought. The search for identity is ‘closed’, which is quite similar to the Bildungsroman. Although the film is set in a high school, which is a formal educational system, this arena does not serve to be the actual school for the students, as they learn

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what they need to learn from each other, rather than from the institution. This coheres to the fact that the Bildungsheld is taught by the world itself, as supposed to any institutionalised

educational system. A last analogy can be found in the traditional importance of mating in the Bildungsroman, as The Breakfast Club focusses on two heterosexual romance couples in its conclusion (Kaye Hokin 112).

Besides the connections made on the level of content, persona and plot, we can also compare the Bildungsroman and the (1950s and 1980s) Bildungsfilm on the levels of gender, class, race and sexuality. Surely the coming-of-age film developed over time, but are the ‘norms’ of the traditional Bildungsroman still alive in the Bildungsfilms of the 1950s and 1980s? As mentioned before, the Bildungsroman ‘norm’ was white, male, heterosexual and middle-class (Hoagland 5). If we compare this to Rebel Without a Cause, we notice that the norm is still in place, as the lead character Jim is male, heterosexual, white and comes from a middle-class family. Hence, it is arguable that this ‘early’ example of the Bildungsfilm followed the Bildungsroman quite accordingly, it stayed ‘by the book’ and did not offer a more diverse representation.

When we move over to The Breakfast Club from 1985, some differences can be noted. There is no longer merely one lead character, and there are two main women in the group of ‘diverse’ Bildungshelden. However, the differences amongst the depicted adolescents are still minor if we compare it to the bigger picture of diverse representation of gender, class, race and sexuality. To state that the film is about “five very different adolescents” while they are all conforming to the white, heterosexual and middle-class norm, might be a too much of an overstatement if we look back at it now (Kaye Hokin 110).

Despite a thirty-year progression in film history, the resulting diversification of media representations of coming-of-age stories is still quite limited in the mid 1980s. There is a hint of progression on the level of gender, but the overall Bildungsroman norm is still very much alive. Nevertheless, by analysing the recent identity representations of another thirty years in coming-of-age film history, we can see if the contemporary coming-coming-of-age films broaden the artistic tradition of the Bildungsroman. However, before diving into the corpus, I will first explain the concept of representation.

1.3 Representation Matters

Representation is a notion that has grown to be of high importance in contemporary Western popular culture, as it is said to be a central element to producing our culture. Stuart Hall, who was a main theorist of representation studies in the 1980-1990s, explained how this fundamental process works. As he claims in his book Representation (1997), culture is all about “shared

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meanings”, and these meanings are produced and exchanged through language, both visually and textually (Hall, xvii). This language, Hall elaborates, operates as a “representational system”, which is a structure of symbols and signs (and these can be written words, images, sounds or objects for example) that stand for our concepts, ideas and feelings, thus these symbols and signs represent concepts, ideas and feelings to other people (xvii). As such, “representation through language is central to the process by which meaning is produced in our culture” (Hall, xvii).

This created meaning is what gives us a sense of who we are, of our own identity, and thus the representational system goes hand in hand with identification matters, whether that is in advertisements, novels, music or films (Hall, xix). If you identify with something that is

represented, you feel connected and understood by it, which is beneficial for distributors when it concerns a consumer product (Du Gay et al. 24). Creators of media products use their identity-knowhow to their advantage and design people in their advertisements, stories or films that represent “the kinds of ideal target consumers” which are very similar to the “typical product-users”, hoping for higher sales by doing so (Du Gay et al. 24). A norm is created that leaves out the actual and potential range of users which are far broader and far more varied than the constructed identities in media representations (Du Gay et al. 38).

Thus, to specify this to my research focus, the representations in coming-of-age films until the 1980s did not reflect all the diverse cultural identities that existed, but rather the idealized – and thus constructed - identity of the aforementioned white, male, middle-class, heterosexual Bildungsheld (Hoagland 5). Problems occurred as the underrepresented people were left feeling misunderstood and undervalued as human beings in society. Therefore, media bear a certain representational power, as Hall argues that “we give things meaning by how we represent them” (xix). Representation has the power to reinforce cultural norms which makes the notion rather influential. From the Bildungsroman norm, four main categories of analysis can be drawn: gender, sexuality, race, and class. These categories are all individually important fields in the process of maturing, but they are also closely intertwined as they have an influence on each other, and thus need to be investigated together in order to come to a complete analysis of the coming-of-age genre6_.

1.4 Gender, Sexuality, Race, and Class

As mentioned before, gender, sexuality, race, and class are all independently rather extensive topics, but for the sake of this research I will try to pinpoint the fundaments of each. Although

6_{The notion of intersectionality (coined by Kimberle Crenshaw in the 1980s) explores the intersections of the four}

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the studies on the topics of sexuality and gender actually had their main academic peak in the 1990’s, recently awareness of these issues and their academic fields has been raising again. In the current appointed Age of Activism (as stated in the introduction) many societal protests, marches and discussions centralize issues of gender and sexuality. #MeToo, The Women’s March and #TimesUp are only a few current examples of the women-lead protest-initiatives in America that focus on equal rights and call an end to the sexist mistreatment of women. Film, and especially coming-of-age film, seems to sometimes place itself in the midst of these discussions, as we see a range of recent coming-of-age films that engage more and more with the political concepts of gender, sexuality, race, and class that also occur in the public debate.

The reason why such societal messages are shared via the genre of coming-of-age film, lies in the genre’s recognition for the “potential influence of these films on adolescent audience members” (Behm-Morawitz and Mastro 143). As the main target group of coming-of-age cinema are the youngsters they find themselves in the similar unique phase of identity development as the portrayed hero’s. Social studies have showed that for young spectators this phase is an influential time, during which media messages can serve as a meaningful source for the acquisition of knowledge and expectations on the levels of gender, sexuality, race, and class (Behm-Morawitz and Mastro 132). Through monitoring the representations of their equals on screen and the perception of the way in which the characters deal with issues concerning the aforementioned fields, individuals can adopt certain social behaviour as they view it to be appropriate. Thus, representations in coming-of-age films play a role in young viewers’ perception and experience regarding their identity and the identity of others (Behm-Morawitz and Mastro 132). Additionally, as argued by the journalists who coined the Age of Activism7_{, it is} also mostly the young people who participate in the current political protests. To address these politically engaged youngsters, it makes sense to politicize the ‘youth’ genre in order to make sure that it fits their current principles.

Judith Butler, one of the main scholars in the field of Gender Studies, has stated in her book Gender Trouble (1990) that there is a clear distinction between sex and gender, as sex is

7_{This argument is to be seen in for instance:}

Blakemore, Erin. "Youth In Revolt: Five Powerful Movements Fueled By Young

Activists". News.Nationalgeographic.Com, 2018, https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/youth-activism-young-protesters-historic-movements/

Gabbatt, Adam. "Activism In The Age Of Trump: Meet The Leaders Of The Grassroots Resistance". The Guardian, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/19/anti-trump-activists-protest-grassroots-leaders. Safronova, Valeriya. "Millennials And The Age Of Tumblr Activism". Nytimes.Com, 2014,

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inherently biological but gender is culturally constructed (8). Hence, she argues that “gender is neither the causal result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex” (Butler 8). With this theory, Butler elaborates on Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas about the construction of gender, who in her 1949 work The Second Sex, stated that “one is not born a woman, but, rather, becomes one” (301). The cultural construct that is gender has significant implications for the way people live their lives, as a gendered life comes with certain norms that govern “gender normativity” (Butler xxi).

According to Butler, such norms are highly heterosexually orientated – akin to the

Bildungsroman tradition - and dictate for example what we consider to be a man or a woman and which expressions, relations, bodies and behaviours are deemed proper or improper for these confined gender norms (xi, xii, xxiv). By behaving ‘properly’ according to the culturally constructed image of gender, we are actually “performing” our gender in society almost as a ritual, and in doing so we secure the hierarchy of heterosexuality and of gender as a whole system (Butler xii, xv).

After the Bildungsroman, many representations in coming-of-age’s film history

conformed to this heterosexist construct as they were influenced by the ruling norms on sexuality within society at the time. We see this for example in Rebel Without a Cause and The Breakfast Club, where the only depiction of sexuality is heterosexuality, leading to a limited representation. As Butler adds to this, “sexuality is always constructed within the terms of discourse and power”, and this power is often understood in terms of “heterosexual and phallic cultural conventions” (41). This means that the man is favoured over the woman in the hierarchy of gender and that representations of homosexuality, lesbianism and bi- as well as trans* or non-binary

representations of gender, are ignored or are a vast minority in coming-of-age cinema, as they were not seen as a legitimate part of culture for a long time (Russo xii). Butler therefore argues that a sexuality freed from heterosexual constructs would be a utopian notion, as the ones holding the power in society are usually heterosexual men who are not eager to give up their powerful position (41). The heterosexual norm has been dominant for centuries, originating in the esteemed first two mating partners of earth, Adam and Eve, who were created by God himself to reproduce and populate the earth. As the Church has been a central organ in Western society for a long time it makes sense that this idea of heterosexual love and reproduction is still present in today’s society and representations, although there exists now more awareness of other forms of sexuality. By analysing how Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird, I will further explore whether these films keep the constructed rituals alive, or if they try to bring more

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When the discussion is shifted towards the role of race and class, cultural theorist Richard Dyer has some relevant insights concerning the whiteness of the Bildungsheld. In his book of collected essays on the topic, White (1997)8_{, Dyer looks closely at the culturally constructed} category of whiteness. Dyer argues that although we are supposedly now living in “a world of multiple identities and fragmentation”, where the old unified identities of class, gender, race, and sexuality are breaking up, we still have not reached a situation in which whiteness is no longer the norm (White 3). Throughout our history, white has never been seen as a race and this is a big part of the problem concerning ruling racial norms (Dyer White 3). “As long as race is something only applied to non-white peoples, then they/we function as a human norm” he states (Dyer White 1). The fact that only other people are racialized, and white people are considered to be just human, is problematic as that comes with a position of great power (Dyer White 2). As a result,

representation of whiteness is “overwhelmingly and disproportionately predominant” not only in coming-of-age films, but also in any other media outlets, ergo: whites are everywhere in

representation (Dyer White 3). This provides important insights through which we can

understand the position of the Bildungsheld, as well as the more diverse contemporary heroes. However, it does not end there since the dilemma’s surrounding race are inherently intertwined with class. As social activist and cultural theorist bell hooks argued a few years after Dyer: “It is impossible to talk meaningfully about ending racism without talking about class” (Class Matters 7). In her book Where We Stand: Class Matters (2012), hooks defined the central problem as such: the face of poverty in America is a black face, even though most poor American people are white (Class Matters 3). This statement teaches us two things; first that the identity aspects of race and class are closely connected, and second, that these social categories are also very much connected to power. In a schematic manner it can be explained that the ones who hold the power within a culture (in this case white people), also have the ability to control the representations within that culture9_{. Consequently, the black representation of poverty} reinforces the cultural notion of “poverty” as established by the more powerful people. While this representation might be false (as hooks points out) the people who have to endure these portrayals do not have the power to change it, due to their marginalised position within society.

8_{Richard Dyer original essay “White” was published in 1988, but I am referring to his book White of 1997, in which}

he further explored the topic of whiteness. The original essay can be found at:

Dyer, Richard. "White". Screen, vol 29, no. 4, 1988, pp. 44-65. Oxford University Press (OUP), doi:10.1093/screen/29.4.44.

9_{I will come back to cultural constructs and the possession of power within a culture in the second chapter of this}

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Feminist postcolonial critic Gayatri Spivak adds to this sentiment that the most inferior position of all in the Western world is that of the poor, black woman, as in that case “you get it in three ways” which emphasizes the existence of more powerful and more marginalised positions within our society (90). Both hooks’ and Spivak’s arguments stress the interlinked connections between the individual social categories of sexuality, gender, race and class, to which I will come back to in my forthcoming chapters. In essence, an analysis on the treatment of race and class, gender, and sexuality in the filmic corpus Moonlight, Call Me By Your Name and Lady Bird could serve well to give insights on the development of identity representations in coming-of-age film.

Conclusion

As I have argued in this chapter, the Bildungsroman and following Bildungsfilm or coming-of-age film have a narrative format that demonstrates great possibilities for both pedagogy and entertainment. Actually, it was hooks who articulated the pedagogic role of film in an immaculate manner, as she explained:

Movies do not only provide a narrative for specific discourses of race, sex, and class, they provide a shared experience, a common starting point from which diverse audiences can dialogue about these charged issues (Reel to Real 3).

Through varying narratives of youthful development, coming-of-age films can namely function as a reflection on the representations and problematic constructs we see in society at large.

Considering the current activist environment in America, and the genre’s young target group, coming-of-age films form a perfect vehicle to teach or engage with young spectators about the aforementioned “charged issues” (sexuality, gender, race and class). However, as demonstrated in this chapter, traditionally the stories of growing up have been told from rather limited

perspectives, offering a one-sided view on maturing to the target group as the stories were mainly about white, heterosexual, middle-class men. As the Western world in the 21st_{century is a world} of engagement filled with activism in the form of equality protests and debates on the levels of identity and representation, it seems appropriate to analyse in which way recent coming-of-age films participate in these discussions by politicizing their films. This is why I will examine how the recent coming-of-age films use their ‘representative power’ to educate spectators about issues of equality and diversity. Therefore, I hope to find an answer to these questions by closely analysing the three recent coming-of-age films Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name and Moonlight in the following chapters.

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Chapter 2: The Agency of the Central Hero

Introduction

In the previous chapter I have revealed both the longstanding connection between the literary Bildungsroman and the genre of coming-of-age film, and the dominant norms within said

traditions regarding representations of identity. In this chapter I will discuss recent coming-of-age cinema (the corpus stems from 2016 to 2017) from the perspective of the concept of ‘agency’ and investigate how the role of agency in the historical coming-of-age tradition differs from the recent corpus. I will analyse the films Lady Bird (Gerwig, 2017), Moonlight (Jenkins, 2016) and Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017) by looking at the specific forms of agency in these films: female agency, black agency and queer agency, using theories of Judith Butler, bell hooks, Michael Kimmel, Maryn Wilkinson, Richard Dyer and Laura Mulvey. Through the following close-reading I aim to show that agency can lead towards a politicization of the coming-of-age genre.

2.1 Agency: A Theoretical Perspective

In order to investigate the politicization of the coming-of-age genre, I will first delve into the personal agency of the central character. As the word ‘agency’ stems from the Latin ‘agentia’ which translates to “doing”, having agency can be interpreted as an agent’s possession of the ability to take action in our world (Oxford dictionary, Eichner 21). Agency is thus inherently connected to obtaining and exerting power, as the term explains how any individual perceives him- or herself as being an empowered subject (Eichner 11).

In this chapter I will argue that agency, or the ability to have power and take control over one’s own life, is a central aspect of the characters in the coming-of-age films Lady Bird, Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name, and introduces a political flavour to the genre. I will argue that these recent coming-of-age films diverge from the classical Bildungsroman because they, each in their own way, focus on how their heroes powerfully take control of their own history while fighting certain norms or social barriers, which is opposed to the century old tradition that puts the focus on a peaceful and passive merging of the central hero within society.

In order to make this claim, the concept of cinematic agency needs some elaboration. Media and agency author Susanne Eichner pointed out in her book Agency and Media Reception (2013) that the most fundamental form of agency, both in the real world and in media experiences such as film, is the sense of personal agency (163). With personal agency Eichner intends to point towards the agency of an individual person or character, and how this individual exerts their

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power in a certain world. She continues by explaining how this sense of personal agency can unfold over different strategies, namely: “through mastering narrative, mastering choice,

mastering action, and mastering space” (Eichner 163). In film, these strategies translate into four main tendencies: the way a character has control over a storyline or development; to what level the character makes their own decisions; how the character steers the drama and the plot in a chosen direction; and, lastly, in which way the spaces within the film are controlled by the

character (Eichner 163). Since having personal agency is associated with the ‘mastering’ of action, choice, space and stories, the concept is unavoidably connected to control, power and

performance.

Film scholar Torben Grodal similarly explains in his book chapter Agency in Film Filmmaking, and Reception (2005) how agency is a common symbol for “action and performance” both in film and in a non-mediated world (17, 25). For Grodal, agency typically implies that a body is

pervaded with a possession of ‘abilities’: “the ability to perceive, to be conscious, to have thoughts and emotions, to have specific traits, and tot have the ability to intend and act” (15). These abilities represent power, and thus the experience of agency in a space is inherently connected to someone’s ability to obtain and exert power within a space. Grodal argues that viewers generally perceive filmic worlds as natural worlds, both in which agency unfolds similarly. Thus, when viewing films, spectators try to detect agencies – the aforementioned abilities –

because those are the source of meaning and power within the depicted world (17). As these abilities are connected to human bodies, the prime agents in film are therefore characters. This is why it is valuable to take notice of the characters and their given abilities since we are given information regarding the film’s greater message through the character’s depicted agency.

Before Grodal’s ‘agency abilities’, film critic David Bordwell had already elaborated on the characteristics of human agency in his book Making Meaning (1989). In Making Meaning, Bordwell explains how filmic characters may be perceived as living agents, thus what it specifically means to be perceived as a person, creating a set of characteristics that together make up for what he coins personification (152). These features are similar to Grodal’s “abilities”, and they include: “a human body, perceptual activity (including self-awareness), thoughts (including beliefs), feelings or emotions, traits, and the capacity for self-impelled actions (such as communication, goal formation and achievement)” (Bordwell 152). A person or character transforms into a

personified agent once endowed with and acting upon their bodies, thoughts, traits, actions and feelings. As Bordwell argues that a film makes meaning “by making persons”, the presented agency of the created characters can give viewers a great deal of information regarding the message of a movie (152).

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By drawing on this set of personification heuristics, I want to argue that these features, being looking, thinking, feeling, believing, talking, and acting, are also the fundamental elements of a hero or heroine’s acquired agency within a coming-of-age film. Especially the visual activity of looking has long been regarded by critics as a valuable interpretive cue, ever since the Kuleshov effect from 1918 alerted people to the character meaningful gazes and glances of characters (Bordwell 155). In the period that followed, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault built the foundation for theories on the relation between power and the act of looking and film critics followed the lead by deliberately focusing on the look (Bordwell 155). Film theory in the 1970s and 1980s therefore saw an emergence of multiple positions considering ‘the look’ and its designated meaning. Thomas Elsaesser explains in his chapter “Cinema as Eye” from the book Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses (2010) that in this ‘look’-perspective, the eye itself becomes the “privileged point of convergence for various structures of visibility and looks”, which can be traced back in film in the shots, framing and montage (83). Thus, by following a character’s look (or: “looking for the look”) through the shots, framing and montage of a film, we as viewers get a sense of who is looking and what they are looking at, and as such we can examine the power structures within the given world.

In addition to looking for the look it is equally relevant for film analysis to focus on Bordwell’s aspects of thinking, feeling and believing as indications for a character’s agency. In essence, an analysis of the appointed shared perspective – thus which character’s mind we follow - through shots, framing and montage can indicate who holds the agency in the film.

Furthermore, it is valuable to analyse how much the central character steers the plot and controls the drama within the film, by use of his or her talking, acting and decision-making.

2.2 Agency in the Traditional Coming-of-age Genre

In order to fully make my claim I will delineate briefly how the concept of agency was presented in the Bildungsroman and following cinematic coming-of-age tradition. As established by many experts of the literary genre, such as Franco Moretti, John R. Maynard, and François Jost, the classical Bildungsroman stories featured mainly passive men in its inception, meaning that these Bildungshelden did not possess much personal agency (Maynard 283; Moretti 21; Jost 128). Maynard argued that this passive identity of the standard Bildungsheld was very much in line with the role of the German bourgeoisie of the time, as in the eighteenth-century society they were attributed with little civil power (280). A clear example of such passivity is to be witnessed in the paragon of the Bildungsroman genre: Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Bildungsheld has no control over the plot as Wilhelm does not actively create or decide on situations, but

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rather passively confronts or endures them in his process of maturation (Jost 128). As such, the pliant personality of Wilhelm Meister makes him a necessary yet not an important character for the Bildungsroman, creating quite a paradoxical central character. Moretti elaborates on this

sentiment by asserting that Wilhelm’s necessity lies in his representation of being the exemplar Bildungsheld, however as he leaves to others the task of shaping his life Wilhelm is not active, nor a potential cause of plot, and thus eventually not a very important character within the story (21). As such, the character central to the story is not the character central to the action within the story.

When we take a closer look at the conclusion of Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, an argument can be made with regards to the passive aspect of the classic Bildungsroman ending. As argued in the previous chapter, Goethe’s story (and many others within the genre) ends with the protagonist’s “participation in the Whole”, meaning that the central hero integrates into society rather

peacefully after his journey (Moretti 20; Brown 659). From this recurring narrative element, we can conclude that while the focus of the Bildungsroman is maturation, the sole function of maturation in this tradition is merging or settling of the central hero. Only when Wilhelm forfeits his personal quest - and thus in a way his personal agency - for the greater good of integration in society, the story finds closure (Moretti 26-27).

The reason for the passivity of Wilhelm’s character can be found in the authors intention, as Goethe’s roman is highly didactic. The pedagogical lessons overrule Wilhelm’s agency in the story, causing Wilhelm to be “a rather passive hero as he is guided by the educative power of his surroundings” (Jost 128). For Goethe, it was most important that his readers would regard Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre as a docile story, which explains why he created a Bildungsheld that embodied exemplary behaviour to convey the necessary lessons within the story. However, when it is more important for a character to be pedagogical than to be truly individual, one loses his personal agency along the way.

As I have established in the previous chapter, there is a strong connection between the literary Bildungsroman tradition and the cinematic coming-of-age field, which explains why we similarly witness this passive central character in the early genre films such as Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955) and The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985). In the coming-of-age archetype Rebel Without a Cause we see how central character Jim experiences a partly similar journey to Wilhelm, as Jim generally responds to what happens to him without steering the plot into his desired direction. When he does undertake action to claim his agency it is rather functional, as it serves to underscore Jim’s bad character, his apparent ‘teenage terror’, in order to shape the moralistic character of the film. Director Ray similarly favoured a didactic central character over an

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individualistic hero with agency. Additionally, the conclusion of Rebel Without a Cause lies in Jim’s acceptance by society, as he has grown into a responsible middle-class member of society, similar to the rather passive merging of the Bildungsheld and society in the closure of the

Bildungsroman stories. In doing so, the film paints quite a negative picture of agency, as taking control over one’s life is strongly connected to being bad, while being passive is connected to being good.

The Breakfast Club, equally shows us the merits of personal passivity, that can be found in securing one’s affirmed position within society and free from any disturbances. After the five distinct peers in Hughes’ film spend a Saturday together in detention they grow to like each other fondly, however their glaring awareness of high school hierarchy makes their friendships short-term, as they fear that their new friendship might disrupt the school’s pecking order on Monday. We can generally say that in the ‘traditional’ coming-of-age genre, it was more important to deliver didactic stories whilst keeping social hierarchies in order, than claiming personal agency. Moreover, agency was seen and depicted as something that was rather fearful, and possibly dangerous, due to its incorporated power.

2.3 Agency in Recent Coming-of-age Films

When examining the incorporated agency of the central characters in the recent coming-of-age films Lady Bird, Moonlight and Call Me By Your Name it quickly becomes clear that the central characters in these films first and foremost give power to the people they stand for in society, through the act of representation. This is because the central characters in the aforementioned films are respectively a lower-class white woman, a lower-class black gay man and a higher-class white gay man, which makes them diverge from the dominant depiction of the white,

heterosexual, middle-class male Bildungsroman hero (Hoagland 4). Additional to diverging from the norm, these characters also have a long history of mis-and under representation in media. In 1990, Judith Butler argued in her book Gender Trouble, that there was a “pervasive cultural condition in which women’s lives were either misrepresented or not represented at all” (4). The same was true for gay people, as Richard Dyer argued in 1983 that although someone’s gayness is invisible to the human eye, problematic typification seemed a near necessity for the

representation of homosexuality on screen (“Seen To Be Believed” 2). In a similar manner, bell hooks stated in 1992 in her book Black Looks that there was little change in the area of

representation of the black community, compared to the relative progress that African Americans were making in the fields of education and employment (Black Looks 1).

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A tradition of mis- and underrepresentation was established in society, and Sarah

Eschholz, Jana Bufkin and Jenny Long echoed in their article Women and Racial/Ethnic Minorities in Modern Film (2002) that it is still very typical for media to treat women and minorities as such. By either utilizing stereotypes that belittle women and minorities and perpetuate dominant myths concerning their role in society, or systematically excluding women and minorities from their representations completely, modern film sends out a message that it regards members of these groups to occupy no significant social space (Eschholz et al. 300). As Eschholz et al. assert, these representations are crucial since they play a large role in the general public’s social construction of ‘reality’ and therefore condoning women and minorities to those aforementioned two options may perpetuate racism and sexism on a larger scale (300). This larger connection between

representations in media and people’s perception of reality shows the urgency of challenging such limited portrayals.

By subverting these dominant utilizations of women and minorities in media

representations, and by creating central characters that traditionally have not been represented in mainstream media or that stayed on the story side line - within the problematic realms of

stereotypical depictions - Lady Bird, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name do give agency to women, sexual, and ethnic/racial minorities. Additionally, by ascribing power to their central characters (as I will discuss shortly), directors Gerwig, Jenkins, and Guadagnino give much needed agency to the people who the characters represent. Viewers are made aware of the fact that generally, individual agency and the power that comes with it is not distributed equally amongst people as it is dependent on accessibility (Eichner 12). Thus, by representing women and minorities as central characters with agency, the central characters are made powerful and meaningful in the films.

2.4 Female Agency in Lady Bird

Greta Gerwig’s writing and directorial solo debut, Lady Bird tells the personal and loosely autobiographical story of a seventeen-year-old white girl named Christine, who prefers to be called by the self-chosen name of “Lady Bird”, growing up in Sacramento in the year of 2002-2003. As we follow a year in Christine’s life, we witness her finishing up her last phase of her Christian High school in California and preparing for a college life outside of Sacramento. It is clear that Christine insists on asserting her own individuality, even when she is not quite sure yet what that means or who she might hurt doing so. The emotional core of the film is the difficult mother-daughter relationship of Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf) and Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan).

Coming-of-Age Film in the Age of Activism: Agency and Intersectionality in Moonlight, Lady Bird, and Call Me By Your Name