ABSTRACT
The T-Birds are amusing but ultimately upstaged by the announcement of the National Bandstand visit to Rydell for a live broadcast from this most ‘representative’ of high schools so that it takes a scene change to the lunchroom and a closer focus on the Pink Ladies and Sandy to begin the narrative proper. In sum, it becomes perfectly clear in this opening that the true ‘bad seed’ of Rydell High is Betty Rizzo, yet the film also unquestionably identifies her as a strong leader, a sympathetic character, and perhaps, the narrative’s only legitimate ‘rebel.’ The concept of the teenager, then, was forged by the Fordist consumer culture Medovoi describes and propagated by one of the largest ‘baby booms’ the country had ever known, which most demographers originate in 1946. Drugs and sex were certainly more permissible at a younger age than in previous generations, but these experiences felt less like a revolutionary act, at least for heterosexual teenagers.
