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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Three girls talk about the riveting, angsty movie "Thirteen" -- how they related to it, what seemed realistic, and what made them mad.
Sep 5, 2003 | I'm having a hard time remembering my 7th-grade year. "You wrote a lot in your journal," my mother said, when I asked her about it. "And cried a lot. And listened to the radio all the time." Oh, right. Maybe I'd blocked it out. Middle school, how I hated you: those ridiculous Skidz pants and Z. Cavaricci jeans; the mixture of pride and shame about getting A's; the humiliation of my complete inability to roller skate, which was the only thing to do on Friday nights in my small Kentucky town.
While I didn't spend my afternoons huffing computer cleaner and dropping acid in my neighborhood park when I was 13, I still related to Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood), the angry, out-of-control teenager in writer-director Catherine Hardwicke's "Thirteen." Tracy's an overachiever in her Los Angeles middle school; she writes dark poetry and gladly helps her mother around the house ... until she starts 8th grade and decides she's sick of being in the nerdy group and of being her mother's "baby." She wants to be like Evie (Nikki Reed, who co-wrote the movie), because everybody in 7th grade wants to be like Evie: hot, fearless, multiply pierced, sought after by guys and envied by girls.
Tracy's brazen first experience with pickpocketing wins Evie over, and in a matter of days Evie has introduced Tracy to her brave new world of drugs, smoking, drinking, shoplifting and boys. Meanwhile, Tracy's mom, Mel (Holly Hunter) -- a super-hot young mom in A.A. who cuts hair for a living and dates a former coke addict -- can barely keep her own life together, let alone help Tracy with hers.
Like Hardwicke and Reed, who've touted "Thirteen" as a kind of family therapy for mothers and daughters, I assumed that most teen girls would find something in "Thirteen" to relate to. But the three New York City girls I spoke with about the movie -- who had never met before the screening -- proved me wrong. They found the film overly dramatic, the drugs and sex unrealistic, and the main characters disrespectful and annoying. Look, these girls said, we're not all drowning in despair. Adolescence isn't always that fragile.
And even though "Thirteen" was based on the experiences of actress Nikki Reed (Evie), these girls saw the film as more about adults' fears of teen life than teenagers' realities.
Kate, 15, loves anime, Asian culture, reading and fine arts; she attends Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights. Her parents -- a writer and a media consultant -- are married. She has a younger sister, Lucy.
Nikki, 15, the daughter of a middle school teacher and an elementary school teacher, is an only child who attends Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. She loves fashion and spent the summer at a writing workshop.
Thana, 14, is about to begin her freshman year at Poly Prep Country Day School in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where she plays volleyball and hopes to work on the newspaper or yearbook. Thana's parents are divorced; an only child, she lives with her mother, who works at UNICEF.
We met in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, to watch and discuss the movie.
You guys were saying that you felt the girls in the movie looked way too old to be 13, and that the casting felt unrealistic. Did their wild lifestyle feel unrealistic, too? Reviewers have focused on how "shocking" the movie is.
Nikki: It's not what the average teenager does.
Kate: I think the average teenager who does stuff has a beer and smokes marijuana with their friends. I don't think they're as extreme as the kids in this film.
Nikki: I know my parents would've sent me to a boarding school in a foreign country with no boys for 20 miles all around if I'd fallen into those habits. I think my parents would be brutal on me if they ever even saw signs of that behavior.
Thana: It definitely wouldn't have gone on that long if her mom was really paying attention.
Let's go through some of the specific things that happened in the movie. What about the cutting scenes? Did those seem realistic to you?
Thana: It seemed to me like Tracy was cutting herself every time something bad happened. I have a friend who cuts and I've had long conversations with her -- serious ones -- and it's definitely a reality. It's something that some people do to kind of get away from it all. Afterwards, it's like, Oh my God, I cut myself.
Kate: One of my friends cuts herself, sort of. In 6th grade she did and stopped, and it started up again recently. She says that she does it because it's the only thing that makes her happy now -- but she's clinically depressed. It probably is a way to deal with emotions you can't handle.
What about the fact that Tracy and Evie had that short lesbian interlude? Do you think that's something that happens among girlfriends?
Nikki: I thought it was very strange -- I'm kind of an uptight person -- but that scene in Evie's room when they were practicing kissing in this way that didn't look awkward -- I mean, I've been best friends with my best friend since 6th grade, and we practically live in each other's houses, but I could never even imagine doing something like that. Tracy was obsessed with Evie in kind of a really sick way.
Kate: Evie kept saying that she loved Tracy, and I felt like that wasn't explored enough. I can understand Tracy's feelings toward Evie more than I can Evie's toward Tracy, because Tracy obviously looked up to Evie.
Nikki: Evie was sexual with Tracy's mom, Mel, too. She kissed Mel on the lips. I mean, I don't have problems with homosexuality, and I have friends who are lesbian -- but I thought it was really uncomfortable considering it was Tracy's mother.
Kate: And moments earlier Tracy had walked in on Mel hugging Evie.
Nikki: It was just strange how Evie was all over Mel. She just seemed to cling to people in a sexual way rather than a loving way. I know that if one of my friends is crying I'll give her a hug and tell her it'll be OK, but there was a lot of touchy-ness between Tracy and Evie that seemed odd, and I think Mel probably should've noticed.
In your schools, are there a few popular girls who dominate?
Nikki: I thought the social dynamic of the school was weird. Like, you would envision the popular crowd being the peppy cheerleader types or the generally happy people who are elected homecoming queen. But I know people who do dress like Evie and Tracy -- not with their thongs hanging out of their pants -- but I've seen people who try to get that look, and other people tend to avoid them rather than worship them.
Thana: I definitely think that it's possible for people like Evie and Tracy to be popular, though. I don't think it's like that anymore, where the cheerleaders are the popular ones. At Poly, the whole grade is split up into a lot of groups. It's not like the movie. The people I immediately hang out with are certainly not my only friends. There are people in other cliques that I hang out with.
Kate: In my grade there was never really a popularity issue. There are a couple of girls who are generally athletic and most of the guys end up thinking they're the really hot girls in the grade. But it's still not the queen bee thing. It's just that most of the guys in the grade end up admiring those girls. It's not like there's one girl and the Tracys in the grade tried to be like her.
