Troubled Teens Resources

“I think it struck a chord at the right time,” he says. “I think we lived in a world that parents had defined as gloomy and with this movie, kids the world over are saying ‘Life is good. It’s complicated but it’s good’. “

And that is likely the key reason High School Musical has met with such resounding success. Teen crisis intervention starts with making sure that nothing ever replaces the message that “Life is good.”. And I would disagree with the notion that parents are spreading the opposite message.

The message of doom and gloom is a Hollywood staple, even more so now, with heavily politicized scripts being written into every teen drama and comedy. The scripts tell them that America is bad and that Al Gore’s climate hysteria is a sure bet (in my generation we were told we’d all be dead of famine by now) and that the end of the world, in one form or another, is just around the corner. In the background there are choruses of thugs calling women “hos” or Nirvana wanna-bes spilling their angst ridden lyrics on to gloom laden guitar chords.

But life is good and the complications are challenges to be welcomed. If parents can keep that message louder than MTV’s message, their troubled teens‘ risk of falling into the casual drug use of today is far lessened.

“There’s a certain safeness and hope (that) kids are responding to and embracing.”

(source)

Yeah, well that’s what happens when you depict kids enjoying something other than drugs and sex. The rest of Hollywood needs to get a clue.