Thirteen

When children are tyrants

THIRTEEN
Certificate 18
Director: Catherine Hardwicke
Starring: Holly Hunter, Evan Rachel Wood, Nikki Reed

Tracy longs to fit in with the cool girls in her year. When Evie, the 'hottest girl in the year', lets her hang out with her, Tracy changes dramatically from a sweet girl in bunches to the daughter of your nightmares.

She joins Evie in her whirlwind life of shop-lifting, drug-dealing, sexual activity, not to mention constant clashes with parental authority. She pierces her tongue and belly button, snorts cocaine, wears provocative clothing and invites any attention from boys, no matter what their age. Together they are predatory, seeking out sensory excitement and fulfilment wherever they can with little regard for anyone else. Tracy and Evie are 13 years old.

Debut

Thirteen is the directorial debut of production designer Catherine Hardwicke. It won her the best director prize at the Sundance Festival in 2003, bringing the film to the attention of distribution companies who took it worldwide. The screenplay was initially an attempt by Hardwicke to draw alongside Nikki Reed, the daughter of a friend who she had seen go through the same sort of dramatic transformation as Tracy does in the film. However, the project developed into something more than therapy. With Nikki cast as Evie, the shoot began four months later. They were definite that they didn't want to produce a teen movie along the lines of Clueless or American Pie. They had the material and the energy to do something more hard-hitting and powerful than that.

Thirteen pulls no punches. It surprises and shocks almost everyone. Older teens respond with open-eyed incredulity that anyone could be so mean and angry at that age, and parents see the horror of delinquent behaviour played out in the suburban middle class home. Yet there are some who nod their heads and recognise that this is not just an American or working class phenomenon. Girls don't just freak out because their parents are divorced, their dads hit them or their teachers pick on them in class. Teenage girls are desperate to be liked and admired and accepted by their peers,, male and female, and, as Thirteen shows, they will defy any authority that threatens to prevent them from achieving that.

The fact is that girls can change overnight and they don't always wait until they are 13. After watching the film for the second time, 17-year-old Kelly said, 'That was me when I was 12. I was so angry. I didn't care what my parents said. I sat there in my bedroom with a pile of weed in front of me and when my mother came in I didn't even care that she saw. I just screamed at her to get out of my room.'

Typical teenager

In the 'making of' documentary on the Thirteen DVD, Nikki Reed says of the character of Tracy that, although on the outside she seems to change radically, actually she's the same at the beginning as at the end: 'She can go from being on a super high one moment to wanting to kill someone the next'. 'It's a glimpse of what everyone goes through as a teen', says Evan Rachel Wood (Tracy), a young actress who gives a phenomenal performance in a demanding role that requires extreme emotional responses.

Thirteen does not condone the behaviour of these girls. The handheld camerawork and claustrophobic close-ups give a souped-up, hectic version of their lives that communicates the need for their rebellious energy to be challenged. As Tracy hits rock bottom, Hardwicke uses a bleaching filter that renders everything in pasty greys and blues. The advertising hoardings behind many of the street sequences cynically read 'Beauty is truth'. The message of Thirteen is that this type of selfish behaviour leads to broken relationships, rejection, loss of beauty and a lacklustre life that misses out on so much better things. These are problems that girls are actually more troubled by than the media headline scares of getting pregnant or dying from a drug overdose.

The question why

When we see these depictions of 'real' teen behaviour, we needn't ask 'why are these girls like this?' We know why -the seeds of such behaviour are in all of us. The apostle Paul wrote to the young church in Rome and reminded them that 'no one is righteous, not even one'. The passage (Romans 3.10-18) lists the characteristics of those who do not seek God - characteristics that we are all guilty of and that we see expressed in the actions of these 13-year-old girls. The shock lies in the speed of the transformation from innocence to experience. The conditioning veneer of obedience and respect that adults have taught these girls is ripped apart before our eyes and their true ugliness lies exposed. When they are shown acting according to what the Bible calls their sinful natures, we shouldn't think that a greater evil is taking place. It is simply greater evidence of their need of God's forgiveness through Jesus. While they are sweet and kind and beautiful, it is easy to forget that they are heading towards death and hell. When they are horrific, it is clear that they need redemption. Thirteen insists that we take the human condition seriously, and reminds us that every one of us needs the unconditional love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

It was Socrates who recognised that: 'Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannise their teachers'. All tyrants, whether ancient or modern (and all of us who believe we're not tyrants), need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ spoken relevantly, respectfully and with a love that doesn't expect love in return.

This article was first published on Damaris's CultureWatch website (www.culturewatch.org) and is used with permission.

When children are tyrants

Debut

Typical teenager

The question why

Copyright: Eleanor Margesson 2004

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