By Amelia McCluskey
“Everyone is putting everything up on Facebook,” declares Mr. Griffith, the English teacher in Will Gluck’s Easy A (2010) (48:56). To signal its status as a distinctly contemporary teen film, Gluck portrays the internet as a newly crucial facet of teenage life. The film’s depiction of Facebook’s popularity mirrors the reality of the early 2010s, but in just eight years, the social media landscape had changed completely. Kennedy—the queen bee of Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade (2018)—declares haughtily to her mother that “no one uses Facebook anymore” (12:06). Eighth Grade’s teens have already moved to newer platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, which allow them to connect with their peers along with a wider virtual community. Both Easy A and Eighth Grade capture the internet’s influence on teenage social life, reflecting their respective cultural moments. In their essay “Cinema and the Premises of Youth,” Steve Bailey and James Hay analyze the settings of the teen film genre of the 1980s and 90s, identifying how the home, the school, and the mall influence and enable teenage social practices. In the 21st century, the internet emerges as a new digital third space that occupies teenage leisure time, allowing for the dissemination of knowledge, the formation of identity, and social connection. Beyond merely representing the internet, both Easy A and Eighth Grade use it as a device to communicate key elements of the narrative, highlighting its importance as a site that organizes the teenage social system. I argue that while both films depict the internet as a crucial setting for the formation of teen social identity, Easy A portrays it as a unified, hyper-connected space, while Eighth Grade presents it as a space of alienation.
As a site of teenage activity, the internet’s disciplinary functions resemble those of the 80s or 90s mall. As Bailey and Hay argue, the spaces of the home, the school, and the mall represent a “gradually diffused system of discipline” (232). In the home, power is directly enforced through the restrictive authority of the parent, whereas the mall and other locations of leisure allow for a greater sense of independence, governing youth “in their freedom, [and] in their mobility” (234). Despite their freedom, teenagers in the mall are encouraged to assume conventional social roles and explore their approaching adulthood through the prescribed activities of shopping and working. While their behaviour is not directly enforced by adult authority, the mall’s practices still enforce specific subject positions for the American teenager as consumers and employees. Direct adult authority is even more absent on the internet. The adults in both Easy A and Eighth Grade lack fluency in the digital space and find online teen behaviour perplexing. Mr. Griffith is bewildered by the teenage insistence on “documenting…every thought” (Easy A 48:53), while Kennedy’s mother is oblivious to Facebook’s outmoded status (Eighth Grade 12:06). In both films, the internet makes the teen “a kind of self-governing subject” (232). The authority of parents and teachers is diminished in comparison to the online space.
Instead, Eighth Grade illustrates how the internet indirectly influences teen social behaviour. In the film’s opening sequence, Kayla does her makeup in preparation for school, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Beside the mirror, a YouTube video plays on her laptop of an older teenager demonstrating her makeup routine (3:22-3:56). By juxtaposing the video with a shot of Kayla’s reflection in the mirror, Burnham highlights how Kayla’s self-presentation is governed by other teenagers through the online tutorial. Although Eighth Grade never shows Kayla shopping on screen, the voiceover in the video names makeup products over the scene’s non-diegetic music, delineating a specific set of daily consumer practices to engage in. While the mall encourages consumer practices through its streamlined layout, social media does so through indirect recommendations. Kayla’s use of a Beauty Blender—a recognizable ‘viral’ beauty product—mimics the teenager’s use of the same product on screen and emphasizes how the online tutorial conflates making the correct purchases with achieving the correct makeup look. By imitating a teenager with more online followers, and thus a higher social position, Kayla attempts to reflect teen cultural knowledge, or “cultural capital,” to elevate her social status (Bourdieu 43). Beyond cultural knowledge, the lack of adult authority online allows for the circulation of sexual knowledge. In Eighth Grade, Kayla accesses information about oral sex through a YouTube video at 40:13, while in Easy A, Mr. Griffith implies that information about Olive’s fictional sexual activity is accessible on Facebook, granting her notoriety and a distinctive reputation at school (48:56). Bailey and Hay note that possessing this kind of unofficial knowledge—counter to the “official knowledge” of the school—enables acceptance into the teen social world (224). As a site for social activity, teens on the internet are governed through the exchange of commercial and cultural knowledge, which encourages them to take on identities that align with dominant social conventions.
Both Easy A and Eighth Grade highlight the influence of the internet by visually conveying how in-person relationships are shaped by the social system online. Easy A imagines the teen social world—on and offline—as an interconnected community, while Eighth Grade depicts it as a series of alienated and divided subgroups. At the time of Easy A’s release, social media was most commonly used for direct communication with friends and family. Popular platforms of the 2000s, like Facebook and Myspace, encouraged users to build close networks that mirrored their offline communities, made up of ‘friends’ rather than ‘followers.’ Easy A reflects this understanding of social media through its portrayal of the rapid spread of rumours. After Olive lies to her friend Rhiannon about losing her virginity, the story instantly reaches her peers online. Gluck conveys this chain of gossip through an elaborate tracking shot across the school, where the camera moves rapidly between different groups of students in various settings as they react to their phone screens (8:37-9:20). This kind of sequence is an established trope in the teen film genre, which critic Roz Kaveney coins as the “anthropology shot” (56). In the anthropology shot—which also appears in films like Heathers (1989), Clueless (1995), and Mean Girls (2004)—the camera’s movement “establish[es] a number of social groups among high school students and pan[s] between them to demonstrate social divisions” (Kaveney 56). Easy A references the anthropology shot to indicate the possibility of social division among teenagers, only to revise it. The film suggests instead that through the use of the internet, the teen community is now an interconnected social network. In earlier teen films, Catherine Driscoll notes that cliques are often labeled in voiceover narration by the protagonist (59). In Easy A, however, the different groups are unrecognizable to the viewer through both the lack of voiceover narration and the mise-en-scène. Rather than using costuming to communicate membership to any recognizable clique, the costumes of each group are neutral, pointing to a sense of equal community among the teens. Even as the camera moves through the drama room, Gluck depicts the drama students in plain t-shirts and jeans, dressed like ordinary students, rather than exaggerated ‘theatre kids’ (9:01). Similarly, while social groups in other films are often divided by “class and ethnic diversity,” in Easy A the groups are made up of a diverse range of students, coming together to look at the gossip on their phones (Driscoll 59). The constant presence of cell phones in each group illustrates how, according to Easy A, the internet can be used to bridge both physical distances and personal divisions, unifying the teen social world into one collective.
Eighth Grade contrasts Easy A’s depiction of the internet as a community, and instead portrays social media as a divisive space, magnifying the isolation of teen life. While students in Easy A primarily communicate through Facebook, at the time of Eighth Grade’s release in 2018, users had spread across a variety of platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, and Snapchat. These platforms simultaneously encourage engagement with friends, as well as with a larger online community. Eighth Grade represents this much larger, more immeasurable internet as a space of oversaturation. In a scene in her bedroom, Kayla scrolls through posts from her classmates, but also from other niche fan communities centred around Harry Potter and Disney. This montage is paired with the soundtrack of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow,” highlighting how Kayla “sail[s] away” into the absorbing world on her screen (16:48-18:57). While sitting at the dinner table, Kayla scrolls through Instagram with music playing through her earbuds (12:38-13:13). Rather than beginning with an establishing shot of the dinner table, the opening shot of the scene is a close up of Kayla’s phone; to Kayla, the internet is the more important space. By playing Kayla’s music at full volume as part of the soundtrack, Burnham aligns the audience with her subjectivity, as she is overstimulated and absorbed. The close-up shot of Kayla’s face as she looks down at her phone provides no sense of her location, drawing out the scene’s spatial disorientation. Burnham highlights how the internet separates Kayla from other teen sites like the home and school, rivaling her father’s parental authority as his muffled voice tries to break through the soundtrack. Only after Kayla finally hears her father, Mark, does Burnham insert an establishing shot of the dinner table, indicating that the isolating, yet absorbing quality of the internet threatens the connection of the family unit. Unlike Easy A’s depiction of the internet, which unifies teens across social groups, the use of the internet in Eighth Grade only magnifies Kayla’s sense of disconnection from her community. At school, Kayla attempts to speak to the more popular Kennedy and Steph as they scroll on their phones in the hallway (34:21-35:26). As they stare at their screens, the girls are completely absorbed in the online world. By framing Kayla between the two girls’ shoulders, Burnham creates a frame within a frame that emphasizes her isolation from her peers. Through visually representing Kayla’s social alienation, Eighth Grade illustrates how teens’ engagement with separate online platforms disconnects them from their real communities.
Although both Olive and Kayla use the internet freely, each protagonist is pressured to perform a fictional identity that fits the teenage milieu. The false rumours about Olive’s sex life in Easy A compel her to take on a performatively sexual identity, which prompts her to dress in promiscuous clothing. As Olive walks through the school hallway in a black corset, slow-motion long shots and an extreme close-up shot of her breasts mimic the predatory, voyeuristic gaze of her peers (39:17-39:50). Although Olive’s performance objectifies her, Brandon points out that she is motivated to maintain her “floozy facade” because then, “at least [she’s] being thought of” (27:37-27:47). Maintaining notoriety within the teen social hierarchy is more important than authentically communicating an identity, leading Olive to cooperate with the widely broadcast, yet incorrect narrative spread about her through social media. Much like how Olive’s costume receives an instant reaction from her peers, the timing of internet activity is also immediate; this is demonstrated by Olive’s livestream, which presents her confessional narration throughout the film. By nature of being ‘live,’ it is synchronous with real-time, allowing Olive to reveal the truth to her entire school community at once. In Easy A, the internet space mirrors the site of the school through its temporality. As Olive is continuously observed both online and in person, Gluck depicts the teen social world as a site of constant performance.
While Olive performs an identity for the immediate audience of her peers, Kayla chooses to construct a fabricated online persona despite not having an audience. Unlike her real self, Kayla’s online identity—which is primarily conveyed through posts to her YouTube channel—is a fully realized, confident individual. Although Kayla’s father talks about how cool he thinks Kayla’s YouTube videos are, her videos’ view counts of one and zero suggest that the internet is so saturated in content that even her father has not actually watched all of her videos; there are simply too many things to watch (15:30; 17:58). Kayla’s continuous posting highlights how performing a fabricated identity—even without an audience—is a means of claiming what Bailey and Hay call “teen citizenship” in the 2018 internet space (224). When Kayla looks at the online profiles of her classmates Kennedy and Aiden, both characters use filters or flex in the mirror (18:16-18:37). Fabricating an identity is now part of the internet’s expected use for every teenager. Even though Kayla’s online persona doesn’t receive recognition, she still has an online persona, just like everybody else. Throughout the film, Kayla repeatedly tries to use her online identity to seek connection with other teens, writing on her To-Do list that she should “leave nice comments on people’s IGs” in order to make more friends (34:03). Because Kayla’s videos have no immediate audience, the temporality of Kayla’s internet use is future-oriented. In making the headline of her YouTube channel “life tips for people like me,” the film indicates that Kayla creates her videos with the hope that they will reach another like-minded teen, who cannot otherwise be located in the physical sites of the home or the school (17:58). This contrasts with Easy A’s depiction of the internet, where the online teen community directly mirrors the offline school community. While both films reflect the pressure to perform a fictional persona, Eighth Grade highlights how Kayla performs a fictional identity for no one, continuing to participate in teen cultural practices despite being unnoticed.
Much like how the spaces of the home, school, and mall are treated with a “fundamental ambivalence,” the internet in both films demands users’ conformity to specific normative identities, while simultaneously allowing for small expressions of “personal autonomy” (Bailey and Hay 219). Although the internet compels Olive and Kayla to take on the social roles of the ‘slut’ and the confident, popular girl, it also provides them with the opportunity to convey a radical authenticity. Both characters eventually confess to having lied to their online audience: Olive reveals in her livestream that she is actually a virgin, while Kayla reveals on YouTube that she isn’t the confident person she seems to be (Easy A 1:25:50; Eighth Grade 1:10:11). By looking into their webcams and confessing the truth, the forms of self-expression that the internet allows have the potential to be empowering. While livestreaming to her audience, Olive’s direct eye contact breaks the fourth wall, returning the voyeuristic gaze of her peers with confidence. During the livestream, Olive grabs the camera, panning over to her handmade intertitles (Easy A 1:54). By manipulating the camera itself, the film suggests that Olive holds the power to shape how she is perceived through the act of telling the truth. Similarly, although Kayla’s YouTube videos are constantly reaching out to “people like [her],” it takes separating herself from her fictional persona to ultimately find friendship (Eighth Grade 17:58). After making a video where she opens up about her anxiety, Kayla goes to her new friend Gabe’s house, where he reveals that he has watched some of her videos, stating “you’re really smart about stuff…you know a lot of things” (1:26:36). By placing her confession before this scene, Burnham suggests that Gabe’s appreciation for her online persona comes from her honest authenticity in her recent video, rather than from her previous lies. Kayla only connects with “people like [her]” through YouTube once she reveals her genuine personality (17:58). Both Eighth Grade and Easy A posit that although the internet space encourages disingenuous performance, it also allows teenage subjects to authentically explore their true identities.
The constant presence of the internet in contemporary teen film highlights how social media pervades and even rivals other dominant sites of teenage life. While both Easy A and Eighth Grade recognize the internet’s crucial impact, their differing representations of the space emphasize its changes from 2010 to 2018. Initially, the internet was imagined as a homogenous, singular space, as seen by the hyperconnected, unifying internet in Easy A. Like the platforms that were popular at the time, the internet brings together disparate social groups to form one large network. Communication online is immediate and direct, allowing individual messages—like the rumours about Olive—to travel widely across the social world. While this sense of rapid connection forces Olive to take on an unwanted identity, it also allows her to clear her name on livestream to her entire school at once. By contrast, Eighth Grade reflects the changing cultural perspective on the internet in 2018, viewing it as a series of disparate communities that are oversaturated with content. This version of the internet disconnects Kayla from her in-person community. Furthermore, Burnham depicts Kayla’s choice to perform a fabricated identity on YouTube as a now-expected online behaviour, as all teens manipulate their identities to compete for attention. Although Eighth Grade conveys initial anxiety around teenagers’ use of the internet, Burnham highlights how it eventually helps Kayla connect with Gabe. While both films reflect an overall ambivalence about the space, they suggest that despite its social pressures, the internet can still provide avenues for connection, self-expression and growth.
Works Cited
Bailey, Steve and James Hay. “Cinema and the Premises of Youth: ‘Teen Films’ and Their Sites in the 1980s and 1990s.” Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, edited by Stephen Neale, British Film Institute, 2002, pp. 218-35.
Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed.” The Field of Cultural Production, Polity Press, 1993, pp. 29-73.
Driscoll, Catherine. “Inventing ‘Teen Film.’” Teen Film: A Critical Introduction, Berg, 2011, pp. 45-61.
Easy A. Directed by Will Gluck, Screen Gems, 2010.
Eighth Grade. Directed by Bo Burnham, A24, 2018.
Enya. “Orinoco Flow.” Watermark, WEA, 1988.
Kaveney, Roz. “The Friends Who Are Bad for You: Heathers.” Teen Dreams, I.B.Tauris, 2006, pp. 49-84.