STEREOTYPES are simple, one-dimensional portrayals of people, usually based on sex, race, religion, profession, or age. We all stereotype people unconsciously to try to make sense of the large amount of sensory input we get every waking second; it makes it easier for everyone to relate to one another if they know some simple characteristics about a person you don't know or can at least assume such characteristics. It feels safer for people to stereotype. In most films in the entire world, film characters are nothing but a bunch of stereotypes walking around so we can identify them at first glance. Filmmakers often rely heavily on stereotypes a movie's plot, without spending a lot of time on character development. Teenagers are a stable genre in cinema, especially in Hollywood, but the production of teen films into the early 1950's was rather small, even though America's fascination with juvenile delinquency never disappeared. More often than that, the films aimed at teenagers in this period were low-budget horror films. In 1949, two significant "troubled teenager" films began to renew interest in this cinematic subgenre: City Across the River intended to shock its audience by directly addressing the problem of teen crime, and Knock on Any Door, starring Humphrey Bogart, further explored the connected elements of a society that breeds delinquency. Yet these films were tame compared to the ephebiphobia (fear of teenagers) that swept America in the mid-1950s, in the midst of the appearance of rock 'n' roll music and the booming postwar economy. Teenage films weren't a great part of Egyptian Cinema in the same period; there were just the usual cutesy love story or young Fayrouz films such as Dahab (1953). There were no real serious discussions about teenagers in films, and if there were any similar discussion, it was directed at them as a social problem. Perhaps one of these reasons for the lack of such films is that there was no really "developed" youth culture in Egypt at this time; even in the US youth culture was a blooming phenomenon spurred on by rapid changes in entertainment (like rock ‘n' roll), perhaps even explaining the wariness of this by adults. In Egypt, one of the first important films about teenagers in the cinema was the 1972's film Imbratoriyat Mim (Empire of M) (1972), starring the legend Fatan Hamama. Here we were presented with six teenagers, of varying ages, who are trying to establish their own personalities, how each one viewed life, and what freedom meant to them – whether they expressed it in playing music or reading romance novels. Each one had their own specific trait; they weren't just carbon copies of one another. In recent years, there have been a string of films that deal with the young, whether cultural, comic, or dramatic, such Film Sakafi (A Cultured Film) (2001), a comedy that explores the youthful (and sometimes no-so-youthful) cultural obsession with sex and their lack of knowledge of it. Another example is Asrar el-Banat (Girls' Secrets) (2001), a drama about two teenagers who fall in love and the girl becomes pregnant, or Mozakarat Morahiqa (Diaries of a Teenage Girl) (2001), being a drama about a typical teenage girl, and one of the most popular and mentioned film in this subgenre Awqat Faragh (Leisure Time) (2006). But how do these films really measure up to typical Egyptian teenagers? In the film Awaqat Faragh, we see an array of young people from different classes wasting their lives by drinking, doing drugs, sleeping with girls, and that's pretty much all they do. So as the filmmakers are giving us an example of the bad apples, halfway through the film, one turns to God, but only after she becomes pregnant out of wedlock. The rest of the guys don't care much at all; it's not until the end of the film when one of the characters dies that we feel these characters are willing to change their lives for the better. Here is the thing: the film all together is not a bad film, but it's sort of become a "bad children/cautionary fairytale" that these characters are only want to change when one of them dies – i.e. look out so that this doesn't happen to you. The film however, like many other Egyptian films in this genre, ultimately doesn't expand on the stereotype, but merely presents it. The stereotype of them is just as the film portrays, they are viewed as lazy with bleak futures. They gather together in groups and just hang out in a café, or drive around the city aimlessly for those who have a car – or if they don't, they just lean on a car around the streets trying to make the day go by. This is the story of Nohad Ali (not actual name). He's a 23 year old, so he's not exactly a teenager, but life hasn't changed much for him since then. He thought his life during high school and college was great and breeze - he hung out with friends, dreaming of what life could be after college, and still hoped for that great future. He got a degree in pharmacology, and wanted to work with a pharmaceutical company to create medicine. That didn't go too well; he just ended up working in the same pharmacy he worked at while he was in college for 500 pounds a month. He had to leave that because he felt he was stuck at this job; he hoped for a better opportunity to come along, but it never did. Day after day went by of him just hanging with friends until dawn; he fell into depression and had to see a doctor. He thought it might be better for him to leave Egypt, so he went to Saudi Arabia – only to come back three weeks later because he couldn't take it there anymore. "I thought I would give it one more try, but that didn't work out, and I ended up going back to Saudia, this time for 2 months, and came backhere again to hang out on the streets," Says Nohad. Nohad isn't alone in this, Egypt is full of Nohads. Khaled Yousry (not actual name) is a 19 year-old Egyptian second year law student, for the second time. "I hate law, but that's the best my high school diploma could get me; I'm an artist, I draw, but like my parents said, that won't make me any money, so here I am…suffocated," he says with a sarcastic smile. When asked either of them if any of the so-called teenage/youth films represented them they responded yes and no. Khaled said, "You think they would and they [filmmakers] think they do, and to a certain extent there is some truth to it, but it's all so general and very moralistic." Khaled and Nohad might not seem like an ideal example of the perfect youth, but this is not to discredit any of those who followed their dreams successfully, but this is just to show examples of what cinema tries to portray with the theme of the hardship the youth face in Egypt face, but it's like Khaled said: just the surface of it is portrayed, and it all seems to be like nothing but an elaborate over-produced after-school special.
