The Evolution of the Teenage Bedroom
Film writer Luke Goodsell has made a study of teenagers’ bedrooms on the big and small screens. He tells Yahoo Parenting that the most surprising thing is how little they’ve changed in 70-odd years. Photo from Pretty in Pink by Paramount Pictures.
Taped up posters, shrines to rock bands, and, of course, the mess: Walk into any home and it’d be hard not to tell which bedroom belongs to a teen. “If you were to fold time and space you’d always recognize a teenager’s room,” editor and film writer Luke Goodsell tells the Huffington Post commenting on his Tumblr collection of examples as depicted on TV, movies, and music videos. “You can draw a direct line from Shirley Temple’s ‘No Parking’ sign in Miss Annie Rooney [from 1942] to Lindsay Lohan’s ‘Parental Advisory: Keep Out’ warning in Freaky Friday [2003].”
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And Goodsell should know. He’s made a study of older kids’ crash pads through research for the Tumblr entitled, “Teenage Bedrooms on Screen,” which New York magazine has recently dubbed “genius.”
Photo from Aquamarine by Everett Collection
The writer – whose experience with real-life teen rooms is limited to his own as he doesn’t have children – has been curating the vast gallery of these fictional home bases since 2011 and reportedly hopes to create an exhibit out of them.
Music video “Famous” by Charli XCX. Photo by YouTube
“I work in film editorial, so I see a lot of images and notice trends over time,” Goodsell tells Yahoo Parenting. “And I’m always fascinated by the details…how teenagers’ rooms function as pop-culture time capsules of the era — at least as it’s seen through cinema.”
Photo from “My So-Called Life” by ABC
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The most interesting part of pouring through all the photos, for him, has been seeing how the space remains consistent from decade to decade. “Despite the changes in detail, whether it’s a room from the 1950s or the 1980s or the 2010s,” he says, “you’ll generally find a photo collage, band posters, and inevitably a character examining themselves in the mirror.”
Photo from The Parent Trap by Disney
And you’ll see each aspiring adult looking to their space as a haven. “In the broadest sense they’re a refuge, from parents and the world,” Goodsell says, adding that his favorites include those in The Virgin Suicides and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. “It’s a place where one can hide but indulge the ego.” He’s quick to add however, that the idea of a teen bedroom as sanctuary is an illusion, “both because it’s the room is ephemeral, a kind of purgatory between childhood and adulthood, and because it’s a movie.”
Photo from Cruel Intentions by Columbia Pictures
What will his next project be? “An archive of all of the things stuck inside kids’ school lockers in movies,” he says, adding: “I’m kidding. Maybe.”
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