Teens Talk Back

"Teens Talk Back"

One of the videos I watched was called "Caught in the Middle" and the girl (Charnika) was having a hard time with the fact that her mother now wanted her to live with her. Her mom had left her grandmother to take care of Charnika and raise her for fourteen years and now her mother has now decided that she wants all of her children to live with her. Her mother doesn't understand where Charnika's coming from because when she was younger her mother did the same thing to her. Charnika is dealing with a lot of repressed hurt and anger because not only did her mother leave her, but she never showed up to her graduation or any important events and she always ended up being disappointed.

"Walking Alone"

This video was about this girl Nikki who was diagnosed with depression in 2000. This video was just her showing her typical day and how all she wanted to do was sleep all the time (forever) because nothing can get to her or bother her while she was in bed. Her cousin described her as always crying, being sad, or sleeping. During the video her mother tries to wake her up at 6:30pm and she still refused to get out of bed. She describes it as having no motivation and she feels misunderstood because no one in her family understands how she feels.

"Graffitti Kids"

This video was made by a teen named Andrew Sosa and was actually my favorite out of all the videos I watched. It starts off with him sitting at the bus stop and he picks up a magazine that sitting on the bench next to him (Lifescapes). The magazine gives him ideas and he goes home and starts sketching a design he came up with for graffiti. He joins his ideas and with some of the graffiti he looked at on walls around the neighborhood and spray painted his design on flattened cardboard boxes. In the end of the video he puts the magazine back and another teen sits down and starts looking at the magazine. His message was that you can still express yourself in fun ways without defacing property, teens have creative minds, let them express it.

"A Sign of the Times"

This video was about how negatively Barbies and the media influence young girls and teach them to want it, flaunt it, and buy it. Barbies cause unrealistic images and expectations of what girls should look like. When Daisy (the girl who made the video) asked a little girl if she had a boyfriend the little girl replied, "I did my hair, I went to school, he wanted to come over and spend the night. I humped him and then I kissed him." When she was asked where she learned these things she said that her mother showed her. The point of this video was to show how we need to start paying much more attention to what our kids and generations are watching and doing.