Teenage Monsters

I recently got into the show Teen Wolf thanks to the recommendation of a friend. Before that I was (and still am) a fan of the show The Vampire Diaries. Before that I read the Twilight books and saw the movies. I might have regretted that last one. And before Twilight there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All of these properties have one thing in common. Young people who are in reality, monsters (or in the case of Buffy, fight monsters, but there were monster supporting cast members). My question is, why is there such an interest to make teenagers and young adults into monsters?

Now youngsters are no strangers to being characters in fiction. Long before Twilight we had the Teenage Mutants of the X-Men and Ninja Turtle variety. The movie Fright Night (original, not the remake, though I do like the remake) involved a High School student fighting vampires. But there was a clear distinction between good guys and bad guys and the good guys were never monsters (though sometimes people would call them that.). Even the bad mutants were usually older than the original X-Men (Professor Xavier being the exception).

And for the longest time, so too were all our monsters. Dracula, the Wolf Man, these were fully grown adults. Granted yes the vampires in The Lost Boys were all teenagers but once again they were portrayed as villains (with the exception of Star and Michael who were tricked into joining the gang). And certainly The Lost Boys were not the dreamy objects of lust that the vampires in Twilight are. In fact the Lost Boys were downright terrifying. With deformed faces, and clawed hands and feet, there are few who would be sexually aroused by being fed on by a Lost Boy.

But also the idea of a noble and proud werewolf was a foreign concept in films as well before Twilight. Werewolves were primarily mindless killers whose human halves had no memory of the horrible atrocities they had committed and would usually awaken naked or in ripped clothes in some wooded area. There was not the level of control that the werewolves in Twilight seem to exert. Also the Twilight werewolves change back and forth between human and wolf with little to no effort. There is no dramatic slow and painful transformation such as there is in An American Werewolf in London, which to me still is the best onscreen werewolf transformation ever done. In that movie, being a werewolf is a horrific and painful curse, not a noble calling like the werewolves in Twilight. In Twilight, to be a werewolf means you are their to protect your tribe from vampires. Twi-wolves don't even have to be bitten to become werewolves, they're just called.

It seems shocking to me that these mollified images of teenage monsters have appeared in pop culture in the past few years when the actual image of teenagers have been changed to be something truly horrifying. In the spring of 1999 the horrible school shootings at Columbine High School forever changed the image of the typical teenager. Prior to these events the popular image of a teenager in popular culture was of someone who was confused about life and slightly sexually active. Basically teenagers were seen as how they are portrayed in John Hughes' movies. After Columbine, Teenagers became these complex stews of emotions that could possibly snap at any second. They in essence became real monsters. Far scarier than any werewolf or vampire was now the average teenager walking the halls of any high school in America.

"I got held back. 100 times."

When one truly thinks about it, the idea of being a teenager forever seems like a horrible proposition. Characters in these shows and movies often portray the melancholy of life as a vampire, but in truth that’s the fun part of being immortal. The part about being an immortal that would suck would be forever being stuck as a teenager. You’re physically frozen in a body that is in transition from child to adult, not quite existing as either. Plus both The Vampire Diaries and Twilight depict the vampires as having to attend High School. If I was immortal and had to spend my immortality in High School I would drive a stake through my heart. Teenagers are the last people who should want to be immortal.

 

The simple answer for why this obsession with making teenagers into monsters is far less a sociological one and more an economic one. Teenagers and young adults are a strong market with large amounts of disposable income. Most teenagers are living at home with parents and thus have no overhead while also working a job to gain some sense of financial freedom. Obviously they are going to exercise this freedom with entertainment that specifically caters to them. And thus making the vampire protagonist of your story a teenager is going to get either the attention of teenage boys who want to be like him or (the far far more likely instance) teenage girls who would want to date said vampire protagonist.