Eighth Grade and Booksmart: Cinematic Representations of American Girlhood in the 2010s

The study of the teen film genre itself is a relatively new and often overlooked area in film studies. However, as a cultural artefact that speaks about conceptions of youth in society, it is important to examine, particularly with regards to the process of identity construction. This is doubly true for film genres concerning female adolescence due to the ‘cinematic adolescent’ often being male. Thus, much of the scholarship surrounding teen film has been male-centred. Even within the wider debate surrounding youth and teen film, scholarship on girl film is relatively new. This thesis aims to contribute to the existing scholarship by exploring cinematic representations of girlhood during the late 2010s, with a focus on identity formation in Eighth Grade (Burnham, 2018) and Booksmart (Wilde, 2019). The thesis utilises textual analysis framed within a review of relevant academic literature as it maps key shifts and changes in genre boundaries, narrative arcs and focalisation, characterisations and tropes, to locate the films under analysis in terms of their negotiation of what is at stake in representations of girlhood. Both the films under analysis are underrepresented in current literature, and they each offer different perspectives on girlhood, as Eighth Grade’s Kayla (Elsie Fisher) is at the beginning of hers, transitioning from middle school to high school, while Booksmart’s Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) transition from high school to college. Within each of the case studies, this thesis argues that the representations of girlhood crystallise a distinctive construction. Eighth Grade’s inclusion of social media marks the film as one of the first in the genre to portray girls’ use of these new tools for self?authorship. Eighth Grade offers a depiction of how identity formation is mediated through social media in girl film, and in particular, the different kinds of performances that Kayla enacts on her YouTube channel, Kayla’s Korner, in contrast to her performances in real life. When Kayla learns to step back from the artifice of her online performance, her relationships with others strengthen as does her happiness. Of particular interest is the cinematic construction of the father-daughter relationship. Whereas previous cinematic representations of father-daughter relationships hinged on a kind of ‘postfeminist’ fatherhood, Eighth Grade exhibits a ‘profeminist’ fatherhood, wherein the father purposely refrains from enacting paternal control and instead encourages agency in his daughter. On the other hand, Booksmart introduces high school seniors and best friends Molly and Amy. Smart but self-righteous overachievers, they have sacrificed their teenage years to be 3academically successful and attend an Ivy League college, snobbishly assuming that it would be impossible to both study hard and have fun. But when their conviction is shaken, they eventually embrace recklessness. As it follows them on the eve of their high school graduation while they make up for lost time, Booksmart plays with the tropes and conventions of the high school setting, and with contemporaneous discourses around girlhood and feminism, to offer a critical representation of how popular feminism and female friendship intersect in the formation of Molly and Amy’s identities