Pretty Little Liars: A Person of Interest
For this blog post, I decided to study the series Pretty Little Liars: A Person of Interest because the show focuses on four female high school students and the mysterious death of their friend. I have watched the show, since the pilot episode, but I have never considered the show as a representation of youth and adolescence. I think the show adds a unique observation of the youth and the relationships they have in their lives.
People have referred to the style of the show as similar to Desperate Housewives, but for teens. Clearly, the show is targeted for teens, or at least a younger generation of people. Calling it a Desperate Housewives for teens also suggests there is a certain level of adolescence and immaturity that does not allow the show to be presented to an audience of adults. I think the clothing of the female characters on the show is also interesting. The clothing is very upscale fashion forward and expensive looking, which might read as the director’s attempt to make the female high school students attractive. I think the clothing style also gives the female viewers an example of how they should dress or how they should want to dress.
At the beginning of the episode, the girls are seen in an interrogation room being questioned over a possible suspect for the death of their friend, Ian who is Spencer’s brother-in-law. After arriving home, Spencer sits down with her parents. They quickly proceed to tell Spencer that she needs to see a shrink for accusing Ian and her grieving process over her friend’s death. This points out her parents, sister, and other adults like the police did not take the girls’ accusations seriously. Spencer would be admitting that she needs help and that she still needs to be looked after like a child. Although she is still in high school, the suggestion of a shrink furthers the representation of Spencer as being too naïve and immature to really realize when she needs help from a professional. I think this kind of ties in with the Future Girl article. Throughout the show, Spencer is seen as the “can-do girl” who takes AP classes, plays tests, wins scholarships, and other activities and achievements. In this situation, her parents are willing to see a problem that Spencer may have and provide her with a resource to help her get better. “…young people can be tagged and closely observed in an attempt to keep them on track. However, these situations tend to become the only lens through which these youth are seen, and this then invites surveillance and intervention.” (Future Girl, 25) I think Spencer’s parents are tagging her because they fear if she steps one step away from perfection, she will become a troublemaker or an “at-risk” girl. The moment they ask her to see a shrink is their way of an intervention to stop the problem before it gets any worse. The correlation between parent approval and adolescence acting out is discussed in the Kearney article. “…since adolescence is a mode of subjectivity typically defined by its opposition to adulthood and the responsibilities adult identity usually entails…” (Kearney, 291) Spencer’s parents feel she is acting out; thereby she is not an adult by disobeying their parenting. Female viewers of the show can see be actually doing the right thing sometimes that you can be punished for speaking up, especially as female adolescences.
Later in the episode, Hanna camps out with her boyfriend Caleb after a fight with her mom about Caleb staying at their house. The conversation begins with Hanna revealing to Caleb that she went to fat camp for five summers. She kept this part of herself hidden from him, because she needed to keep her appearance up with her peers that she was a girl who cared about fashion and looking beauty. “Increasingly bombarded by countless “perfect” body images projected by TV, movies and magazines, many Americans are feeling worse and worse about the workaday bodies they actually inhabit. The people being hurt most are the ones who are the most vulnerable: adolescences.” (Bordo,457) I think adolescences are the ones being affected more because of the pressure they have from the media as well as their peers. Hanna did not want to reopen those emotions of being looked down upon for the shape of her body. I think this also draws upon the shows focus to present the female high school students as adolescences who care way too much about how they look and how to look a certain way to be popular.
For the most part, the series portrays the female high school students as adolescences lost in the world. They are confused about who they are, who they should be, and who they truly want to be. This portrayal fits into many of the common stereotypes surrounding adolescences and pressures they feel from society and the media.
Work Cited
Bordo, Susan. “Never Just Pictures.” University of California Press, 1997.
Harris, Anita. “The ‘Can-Do’ Girl Versus the ‘At-Risk’ Girl.” Future Girl. Young Women in the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge, 2004.
Kearney, Mary. “Producing Girls.” Girls Make Media. New York: Routledge, 2006.
