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As you may have guessed, my own teenage years had made up the core part of the 1990s; I was unlucky-for-some thirteen in 1991 and eventually reached twenty in 1998, and I have to admit that I used to hate seeing teenage girls who were the same age as myself and were obviously born around the mid to late 1970s on the television, mostly in soap operas, dramas and also audience-based programmes like Top of the Pops. Anyone else feel like that? I am not too certain whether it had anything to do with the fact that I had difficulty associating with people of my own age group back then; bullying and all that made me leave school early, and I don't just mean in a just-before-3.00 pm sort-of-way, but just-before-Easter-1994, sort-of-way instead.
It could be something to do with the fact that I came from a working class inner-city area and that young on-screen performers came from more middle class South-East and Home Counties areas, blessed with alumni from Sylvia Young, and Corona (not the virus, but the theatre school where a lot of the Pink Windmill kids came from). I have always wished that my parents were the right age and were pushy and allowed me to do something like that, although to be fair, as I mentioned on the Drama Lessons thread which I started a few years ago on here, I did attend a drama workshop on Saturday mornings in the early 1990s and I also took Drama as a GCSE option in Years 10 and 11. Even my nephew had tread the boards in the mid-1990s and was awarded a stint in a TV drama which I didn't want him to do; I have never watched him in the episode that he had appeared in even though it has been repeated in recent years on ITV 3 and is available online, and I have no plans to do so in the near future.
I suppose I was jealous of those I saw on television because they were the same age as me and also the fact that they were the opposite gender, so one wondered at the time, why weren't we similar if not the same? The CBBC channel wasn't around in the mid-1990s but the obvious places to see them were Grange Hill; Byker Grove; and Children's Ward; the latter, being a Granada production, became a sort-of training school for future Coronation Street stars such as Jane Danson and Chloe Newsome. In soap operas for example, I used to hate it when female teenage girl characters had on-screen boyfriends at such a relatively young age, even if the actress was three or more years older than their character; for example, in 1996 when I was just a few months from my 18th birthday, I hated watching scenes with Ken Barlow's childminder Kelly Thomson seeing Ashley Peacock, and even now, I find it unsettling for some reason. Around the same, Becky Palmer, a sort-of Tracy Barlow with ginger hair and was played by Emily Aston (of that acting dynasty), was the daughter of Claire Palmer (also with ginger hair) who was seeing Casanova Des Barnes, and that made me think in similar ways. The 1990s was also the decade when Coronation Street had more younger people outnumbering older ones rather than the other way found which it had been the case since the 1960s; shaking off this Last of the Summer Wine identity and adopting a closer Byker Grove one instead.
I also started to watch Casualty on Saturday nights around the same time they contained guest characters from females of my own age group, although as it is a health and medical issue show, it illustrated more of a purpose to viewers such as myself. I feel that it was peer pressure and feeling the need to keep up with the Joneses and making comparisons with others as you do when you're at that age. On the other hand, dramas on the television which dealt with more direct issues such as disability and bullying at school felt more warming to me; the latter of the two includes a drama on ITV called Walking on the Moon which was shown in late August 1999. As I was bullied at school, I could easily relate to the storyline, even thought it had been five-and-a-half years since I hung up my school uniform for the last time. It almost felt quite scary to see how relatively long-standing teenage girl characters in soaps and dramas change and develop in around four years; quite often looking like a child in their first year and starting to look like an adult woman by their fourth or fifth year, almost giving an optical illusion that the character was played by a different actress and that one had to check the credits at the end of the programme to make sure. Grange Hill characters in that decade (Justine Dean onwards) were certainly like that, making it feel as if more years had passed then it really had.
The Summer Bay High scenes in Home and Away and characters such as Angel, Sarah Thomson and Selina are also within this remit, although less so by virtue of the fact that it is an Australian series; the same with Minnie Crozier in Shortland Street which is its New Zealand counterpart. Closer to home, I do remember an episode of Wycliffe which had a storyline of a schoolgirl being murdered in a science laboratory at school and concluded with the sister of the victim (played by the same person) admitting killing her. In the same episode, there were a couple of scenes where some youngsters who were the same age as me at the time and appeared to bully one member of the peer group which seemed so stereotypical in mid 1990s Great Britain; something which I have explored on the Get a Life factor thread. And it was Jack Shepherd and not Jack P Shepherd in the title role.
The other aspect is the music and the fan-base-side of 1990s culture; the audience of an average Top of the Pops episode, frequently re-explored on BBC Four (repeated once again thanks to Savile not having any direct connections with the programme by the 1990s). The core audience seem to be teenage girls, just a few metres away from almost meeting their favourite bedroom wall pop stars and groups sans the Stage Door, and the days of Pans People and Legs and Co were now gone. The national fury which commenced in 1996 when the news that Take That were splitting up was tremendous and created a social yardstick, and teenage girls being disappointed (an understatement, I know) by the so-called appalling news and 17 and 18-year-olds being interviewed on ITN's Early Evening News; it seemed a lot more controversy than when the Beatles were in the same boat some 26 years before. Then came Girl Power not long afterwards, and it produced five female stereotypes to identify with, had one of their first of many number one hits, and it all went on from there. They were parodied no doubt by the media and almost everyone else.
I did find it uneasy to watch dramas, soap operas and other programmes which had teenage girls in the mid-1990s, but I suppose that 30 years on, the girls back then are still the same age as me now, but we are no longer teenagers, and this is no longer the 1990s. Perhaps I am so used to a male-dominated adult environment when I see these programmes, and I always have been so?
It could be something to do with the fact that I came from a working class inner-city area and that young on-screen performers came from more middle class South-East and Home Counties areas, blessed with alumni from Sylvia Young, and Corona (not the virus, but the theatre school where a lot of the Pink Windmill kids came from). I have always wished that my parents were the right age and were pushy and allowed me to do something like that, although to be fair, as I mentioned on the Drama Lessons thread which I started a few years ago on here, I did attend a drama workshop on Saturday mornings in the early 1990s and I also took Drama as a GCSE option in Years 10 and 11. Even my nephew had tread the boards in the mid-1990s and was awarded a stint in a TV drama which I didn't want him to do; I have never watched him in the episode that he had appeared in even though it has been repeated in recent years on ITV 3 and is available online, and I have no plans to do so in the near future.
I suppose I was jealous of those I saw on television because they were the same age as me and also the fact that they were the opposite gender, so one wondered at the time, why weren't we similar if not the same? The CBBC channel wasn't around in the mid-1990s but the obvious places to see them were Grange Hill; Byker Grove; and Children's Ward; the latter, being a Granada production, became a sort-of training school for future Coronation Street stars such as Jane Danson and Chloe Newsome. In soap operas for example, I used to hate it when female teenage girl characters had on-screen boyfriends at such a relatively young age, even if the actress was three or more years older than their character; for example, in 1996 when I was just a few months from my 18th birthday, I hated watching scenes with Ken Barlow's childminder Kelly Thomson seeing Ashley Peacock, and even now, I find it unsettling for some reason. Around the same, Becky Palmer, a sort-of Tracy Barlow with ginger hair and was played by Emily Aston (of that acting dynasty), was the daughter of Claire Palmer (also with ginger hair) who was seeing Casanova Des Barnes, and that made me think in similar ways. The 1990s was also the decade when Coronation Street had more younger people outnumbering older ones rather than the other way found which it had been the case since the 1960s; shaking off this Last of the Summer Wine identity and adopting a closer Byker Grove one instead.
I also started to watch Casualty on Saturday nights around the same time they contained guest characters from females of my own age group, although as it is a health and medical issue show, it illustrated more of a purpose to viewers such as myself. I feel that it was peer pressure and feeling the need to keep up with the Joneses and making comparisons with others as you do when you're at that age. On the other hand, dramas on the television which dealt with more direct issues such as disability and bullying at school felt more warming to me; the latter of the two includes a drama on ITV called Walking on the Moon which was shown in late August 1999. As I was bullied at school, I could easily relate to the storyline, even thought it had been five-and-a-half years since I hung up my school uniform for the last time. It almost felt quite scary to see how relatively long-standing teenage girl characters in soaps and dramas change and develop in around four years; quite often looking like a child in their first year and starting to look like an adult woman by their fourth or fifth year, almost giving an optical illusion that the character was played by a different actress and that one had to check the credits at the end of the programme to make sure. Grange Hill characters in that decade (Justine Dean onwards) were certainly like that, making it feel as if more years had passed then it really had.
The Summer Bay High scenes in Home and Away and characters such as Angel, Sarah Thomson and Selina are also within this remit, although less so by virtue of the fact that it is an Australian series; the same with Minnie Crozier in Shortland Street which is its New Zealand counterpart. Closer to home, I do remember an episode of Wycliffe which had a storyline of a schoolgirl being murdered in a science laboratory at school and concluded with the sister of the victim (played by the same person) admitting killing her. In the same episode, there were a couple of scenes where some youngsters who were the same age as me at the time and appeared to bully one member of the peer group which seemed so stereotypical in mid 1990s Great Britain; something which I have explored on the Get a Life factor thread. And it was Jack Shepherd and not Jack P Shepherd in the title role.
The other aspect is the music and the fan-base-side of 1990s culture; the audience of an average Top of the Pops episode, frequently re-explored on BBC Four (repeated once again thanks to Savile not having any direct connections with the programme by the 1990s). The core audience seem to be teenage girls, just a few metres away from almost meeting their favourite bedroom wall pop stars and groups sans the Stage Door, and the days of Pans People and Legs and Co were now gone. The national fury which commenced in 1996 when the news that Take That were splitting up was tremendous and created a social yardstick, and teenage girls being disappointed (an understatement, I know) by the so-called appalling news and 17 and 18-year-olds being interviewed on ITN's Early Evening News; it seemed a lot more controversy than when the Beatles were in the same boat some 26 years before. Then came Girl Power not long afterwards, and it produced five female stereotypes to identify with, had one of their first of many number one hits, and it all went on from there. They were parodied no doubt by the media and almost everyone else.
I did find it uneasy to watch dramas, soap operas and other programmes which had teenage girls in the mid-1990s, but I suppose that 30 years on, the girls back then are still the same age as me now, but we are no longer teenagers, and this is no longer the 1990s. Perhaps I am so used to a male-dominated adult environment when I see these programmes, and I always have been so?
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