http://www.altfg.com/blog/film-festivals/atlanta-film-festival-awards-2006/ thinking film Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:41:03 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 http://www.altfg.com/blog/film-festivals/atlanta-film-festival-awards-2006/#comment-466264 Marcus Tucker Sat, 15 Jul 2006 06:57:00 +0000 http://www.altfg.com/blog/?p=4207#comment-466264 Quinceañera I am very eager to see because I know that the theme of the 15 year old pregnant teenager will inevitably anger some watchdog group, especially the groups who protest every time someone “insults” their culture. But for me, it highlights how all of the important social issues that I grew up with have vanished; Teen pregnancy being one of them. The push for abstinence as the government’s official stance on teen sex has made girls who are in their teens who get pregnant outcasts again. No they don’t get sent away to special homes anymore or get taken out of schools but most of them end up having no choice but to drop out of school and are usually thrust into poverty. Like AIDS, teen pregnancy is something the doesn’t seem to happen anymore, at least according to the media. The millions of teenage girls who become pregnant and get lost in the world are much less important than missing blondes in Aruba who leave bars with three strange men at a time or dumb blondes who happen to date men who kill their pregnant wive. The era of Maurine Dallas Watkins “sob sister” journalism is once again upon us and has made stories like Quinceañera less important somehow, this time it’s not slattern gun molls who are the criminals but a media that sees Lifetime Movie Network fantasies of rape and romance (the movies shown often combine the two as romance novels also do) have made stories about real women with real issues like Quinceañera obsolete. Quinceañera I am very eager to see because I know that the theme of the 15 year old pregnant teenager will inevitably anger some watchdog group, especially the groups who protest every time someone “insults” their culture. But for me, it highlights how all of the important social issues that I grew up with have vanished; Teen pregnancy being one of them. The push for abstinence as the government’s official stance on teen sex has made girls who are in their teens who get pregnant outcasts again. No they don’t get sent away to special homes anymore or get taken out of schools but most of them end up having no choice but to drop out of school and are usually thrust into poverty. Like AIDS, teen pregnancy is something the doesn’t seem to happen anymore, at least according to the media. The millions of teenage girls who become pregnant and get lost in the world are much less important than missing blondes in Aruba who leave bars with three strange men at a time or dumb blondes who happen to date men who kill their pregnant wive. The era of Maurine Dallas Watkins “sob sister” journalism is once again upon us and has made stories like Quinceañera less important somehow, this time it’s not slattern gun molls who are the criminals but a media that sees Lifetime Movie Network fantasies of rape and romance (the movies shown often combine the two as romance novels also do) have made stories about real women with real issues like Quinceañera obsolete.

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