Gosh, who lives like this? These are ueber privileged teenagers who buy drugs at a grand a pop. This is an urban landscape where the peer pressure is as high as ether. You have got to be beautiful and you’ve got to be cool or you are nothing. Spending money on style is part of the allowance; drugs might be, but are not necessarily, included.
Twelve basically captures the lives of teens involved with drugs so heavily that though they appear to have everything they really have nothing. The parents of these kids are absent pill poppers with superfluous money and bankrupt relationships. They are parents who have little to no time for their children, who leave a gaping hole in their children’s lives, or in the case of this story, an eviscerating one. This film depicts a tragic mass shooting scene, so beware.
The characters carry this movie, the film is slightly noir, and the spell is just broken enough to keep the sensation and glamour of the lavish lifestyle portrayed here at bay enough so the viewer—at least I had—enough cynicism regarding the “let the good times roll” events to basically feel put off. The film does a good enough job at showing the tragic consequences of the detachment, alienation, and violence connected with the desperation of teens with money but without parents, teens addicted to party drugs and high times.
I might not have recommended this film for young adults, especially, but I recently finished reading Michael Cart’s long detailed survey young adult literature: from romance to realism. Cart has me almost convinced that kids should view and read this kind of stuff, that authenticity makes portrayals like this more meaningful and that authenticity actually means everything to young adults.
I can’t say I’m totally over my apprehension that the glamour and sensation of this particular film wouldn't actually attract kids to the lifestyle. Like anyone else they might choose what to believe and what to dismiss thus giving themselves permission to want the glamour. But this story does rub the consequences of the doped down lifestyle in our faces. If you wanna be a nobody, let the good times roll and roll and roll and roll.... And if you want to be powerful, truly powerful, get your act, and keep your act, together.
One important conclusion I’ve recently come to, having studied YA lit and films for a month, is this: there are lots of depictions around of the toughest problems teens face, and adults should also watch and read them, especially if their young adults are doing so. Share them and talk about them. If it is too hard to sit down and read aloud or watch and talk about a film together, then maybe there’s something wrong with reading the book or viewing the film in the first place. And here’s what I now feel more confident giving teens credit for, especially if adults participate—recognizing what they as teens feel comfortable or uncomfortable with and deciding what they do and do not want to experience, read, or see. Teens may need to be handed their license to decide.
Cart makes a fundamentally important point in his book on YA lit, and I think the point applies equally well to film. How it is made, the book or film, makes all the difference in the world. And to understand that, maybe we have to keep finding and reading a lot of good books and/or watching a lot of good films.
