The Hard Times of R.J Berger does a great job in my opinion with showing the different discourses that surround adolescent high school students, as well as showing the issues involved with gender, race, and sexuality that surround adolescence. The show generalizes around a 15 year old boy named R.J Berger. R.J is considered to be very nerdy and isn't accepted by the popular crowd at his high school. R.J has two main friends that he hangs out with, Miles and Lily. Miles is very loud overweight kid that only thinks about one thing and that is scoring with the ladies. Miles always seems to get R.J in some kind of trouble that he has a hard time getting out of. Then you have Lily, who is extremely sex-obsessed and does nothing but lust after R.J every chance she gets. I chose to do this blog on this show because it is extremely heavy on the stereotypes of high schoolers which makes it very easy to point out different discourses associated with them. For example you have your typical jocks and cheerleaders who are the most popular kids in the school and then you have your nerdy kids that are the less popular ones.
In the show there is a character named Max. Max is your typical meat-head jock who can care less about anyone other than himself. Max gets most of his pleasure from picking on R.J and just basically making his life a living hell. For two whole seasons of the Max can be seen as your typical heterosexual high school teenager. In the last episode of the second season Max is discovered by R.J, kissing a guy and later tells R.J that he is gay. This goes back to the discussion of compulsory heterosexuality. Which explains how heterosexuality is so naturalized as the norm and all people are considered to be heterosexual unless they "come out" (Queer Desire, Romantic Comedy, and Citizenship Power Point). Max explains to R.J that he is afraid to come out because he doesn't want everybody to treat him different. This shows how hard it is for adolescence to express their sexuality because there is such a big deal with acceptance in our young culture. It is easy to not be accepted by your peers if you are "so called" different than the generalized norm in society.
Also in the show there is a character named Jenny. Jenny is a cheerleader and the most beautiful girl in school. She is considered widely popular by everyone. Jenny is the stereotypical blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl who is all about purity and all around being considered to be a good girl. Throughout the first season Jenny dates Max, which also ties into the stereotypical idea that all good girls like bad boys. While Jenny would love to stay pure and keep up on all of her morals she falls to the temptation to have sex with Max just so that she can keep him and feel accepted. This goes back to the discussion on adolescence and sexual desire. Girls are not represented as full sexual subjects and girls feel like sex is required in order to keep a boyfriend (Youth Studies Power Point). I feel that adolescent girls that want to be good girls but then go and date bad boys are very insecure with themselves and focus on what other people this of them entirely too much. Every girl and guy for that matter should just be themselves and shouldn't care less about what other people think of them.
To finish up my discussion I would like to talk a little more about Jenny. I feel that other than R.J, she is the most important character in the show and she really keeps the show going. The show is based around a lot of strong sexual fantasies of adolescent high schoolers and Jenny usually seems to be right in the middle of that with pretty much whole school lusting after her. I wanted to relate her character to Harris' article on the can-do girls vs the at-risk girls. A can-do girl is explained to be a girl that is middle to upper class, is a good student, wants to be pure and wait until marriage to have kids, and has access to unlimited resources. An at-risk girl is explained to be a girl that is more lower class, more likely to get pregnant early, and not having as much access to resources. I think that Jenny would fit into the category of an can-do perfect (Harris). However by the way that Jenny acts and how she wants people to think of her you would think that she was an at-risk girl. I think that the character of Jenny is a very good example when it comes to talking about the sexual desires in adolescent girls and as well as good representation of girlhood in adolescence.
Work Cited
Brown, Adriane. "Intro to Youth and Pop Culture” Women’s Studies 230 Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture. 23 May 2011
Brown, Adriane. "Queer Desire, Romantic Comedy, and Citizenship" Women's Studies 230 Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Popular Culture. 23 May 2011
Harris, Anita. "The "Can-Do" Girl Versus The "At-Risk" Girl." Future Girl: Young Women in the Twenty-first Century. New York: Routledge, 2004. 13-36. Print.
