Unlike the '50s when screen teens were steered down relatively rigid, righteous paths, the '80s teens encountered a complexity of moral choices and personal options on which the multiplex movies thrived. This gave teenage movie audiences at the end of the twentieth century a greater sense of presence in popular media, a deeper potential to be influenced by the films they saw, and a wider range of options from which they could construct and compare their sense of self." (7)

(Shary, Timothy. Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. Print.)