For those of you checking out my revisiting "Beverly Hills, 90210," I have set up a page — see the rail on the right — with all the recaps, in order of telecast. I'll add them there as I go along, so you don't have to scroll through the non-"90210" posts, or go back in search of, say, the third episode because of something I said about the sixth.
In today's Beacon Journal, I have a column about the sexualizing of teens in popular culture. It's an incredibly open-ended topic, and there were plenty of things not mentioned in the piece that could have been.
"Lolita," the book and the two movie versions. "Cruel Intentions" and its attempted TV version. "Gossip Girl." The photography of David Hamilton. 14-year-old Brenda Lee singing "Sweet Nothin's" — after doing "Let's Jump the Broomstick" when she was 13. "Skins," the British series starting on BBC America tonight. Woody Allen's "Manhattan." Roman Polanski. And on it goes.
Some of those things I considered putting in the column, and set aside. Some I did not think of until after the column was done. But even with all that other information, the basic issue is still the same. If you're a teen, especially a young teen, you're caught between the innocence of childhood and the worldliness of adulthood, with a lot of images and history pushing you toward the latter.
