“Wallflower”: A lost John Hughes teen flick

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 19:47:00 +0000

Set long ago in a distant land of calf-length plaid skirts and high-waisted pleated jeans – approximately the George H.W. Bush administration – Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” which was first a best-selling novel and is now a film written and directed by the author, thrives on having little or no attitude. Its main characters are a group of high school misfits trying to be cool, an archetype of American culture if ever there was one, who are very far from being the subculture-savvy urban teens of the ‘60s and ‘70s or the ruthlessly plugged-in teens of the 2010s. Their rebellion against life in the middle-class suburbs of Pittsburgh is, in fact, both mild and vague: They’re into the Smiths and they go to midnight audience-participation screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”; when David Bowie’s “Heroes” comes on the radio they’re blown away, but none of them has ever heard it before or knows who the singer is.

Salon.com > Emma Watson

“Wallflower”: A lost John Hughes teen flick