The year of the young.

• Author: Rapping, Elayne
• Position: Culture - new families on Fox-TV series - Column

In what we like to think of as "the real world," 1992 was called "The Year of the Woman." In the world of series television, a kind of parallel universe which in some ways trails and in others anticipates the "real world," 1993 is "The Year of the Young" - the unattached, unmoored, unfamilied young.

At the movies, this has been true for a long time. The years after World War II ushered in the age of consumerism and home television - symbiotically linked developments, obviously. They also, for related reasons, gave birth to "The Teenager" as a cultural and economic force. When James Dean, accurately dubbed "The First American Teenager," took off his white shirt, coat, and tie - the uniform of middle-class apprenticeship to the traditional Father/Citizen role - and donned jeans, jacket, and boots in Rebel Without a Cause, a new era of social and generational relationships (and, of course, fashion and consumerism) was born.

From then on, Hollywood has played "The Kids" theme for all it was worth, aiming its product at the world of dating teenagers. In the age of TV, when adults tend more and more to stay home, it is teenagers who are the movies' target audience.

The more serious (and less popular) films, the true descendants of Rebel, increasingly depict youthful rebellion, alienation, and anomie. From Rock Around the Clock to Badlands and Easy Rider, all the way to last year's remarkable if unsung Where the Day Takes You, we've had a series of dark, grim movies about disaffected kids which have played to small audiences and drifted off into the cult-film sections of video rental stores.

The blockbuster teen films, by contrast - the ones I think of as "the mall movies" - eschew anger and disaffection and embrace the demise of the family and the rise of consumerism as a much-welcomed invitation to party down. Starting with American Graffiti and moving through Risky Business, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and the many look-alike films of John Hughes - Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Some Kind of Wonderful, and on and on - these films create a world of motherless and fatherless children who "cruise" and "hang out" on "the strip" or in the mall and live in suburban homes where no adults dare show their faces to the camera and only the kids' rooms, decked with rock posters and stocked with stereo, TV, computer, and phone, are visible.

For these kids, all of life's problems are contained in the working out of relationships in a class-divided high-school environment in which what one wears and drives determines one's status and fate. The peer group sets all the rules, and parents are totally irrelevant, as long as the credit cards and car keys are left on the kitchen table. Happily for all, these kids have good hearts and, inevitably, the "good" kids win out while the "snobs" are left on the sidelines.

Even fashion, in these films, goes democratic. The working-class girl with "real style" sews her own dresses and, because she's "really nice" and sincere," her designs turn out to be cutting edge,.soon to be "the next thing" at the mall, while the snobby girl, last year's prom queen in last year's hemline, is pushed out of the final frame by a cinematographer who knows what's hot and what's not.

Television, until the start of this decade, steadfastly ignored the social developments that produced this trend in movies and trudged on, against the grain of history, with its classic images of "The Family" and of "Father as Hero," whether at home or out in the big, bad world of...