MovieChat Forums > Thirteen (2003) Discussion > Movie certainly not reflective of my lif...

Movie certainly not reflective of my life as a teen, nor my peers.


No cutting, no sex, no smoking, no drugs of any kind unless it's coffee.

I'm surprised there are people who have led such terrible lives in first-world nations. While my parents have been too hard at times and showed little love (I was not physically abused in any way) they are not too neglectful and uncaring.


I suppose all the terrible adults I see in the world had similar upbringing as Nikki. They really are effed up. Adolescence can F you up and that is the time when RIGHT support and coaching is needed.


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by daffodil54 » Tue Feb 17 2015
No cutting, no sex, no smoking, no drugs of any kind unless it's coffee.

I'm surprised there are people who have led such terrible lives in first-world nations. While my parents have been too hard at times and showed little love (I was not physically abused in any way) they are not too neglectful and uncaring.


I suppose all the terrible adults I see in the world had similar upbringing as Nikki. They really are effed up. Adolescence can F you up and that is the time when RIGHT support and coaching is needed.

WoW! I'm shocked at the wondering awe of there being teens experimenting with ^^all of the above listed actions/behaviors^^ due to the fact that these particular individuals make up quite a large percentage of the population as a whole. And no, a good majority of those young people who take part in these often times negative actions/behaviors did not come from "terrible lives" with terrible parents that were either/both abusive, neglectful, and/or uncaring.. much, much different is the fact that many of these young people have stable home lives with parents who very much do give a damn about their child/teen, yet still are faced with struggles due to their child's choices/decisions, actions/behaviors.

I certainly came from and was raised in a stable, two-parent household where both parents did nothing wrong, or neglectful in their raising me, nor did I ever believe I had parents who didn't care...just the opposite. Now, I did not suffer from any of the issues that are usually at the core, root of an individual who is found to be "cutting", or in other ways causing themselves actual physical harm.. but I absolutely did make poor choices in many of my actions/behaviors as a teen/college student. my parents did all the "right things"...I was always involved in extra curricular activities, raised in a good church, and attended a private school where I had a tight knit group of friends that I "grew up" with.

Those tight knit, close friends were also raised quite similarly, yet, they too made their plenty, fair share of piss poor choices along the way just as I did..and I can say with certainty that we were far, far, far from being in the minority ratio of adolescents who rebeled, were wild, and/or experimented throughout our teen years... yet we went on to finish college, and lead productive lives with families of our own now. I guess its that personal knowledge and experience that has me speak with such certainty about teens negative actions/behaviors are NOT at all something unique, abnormal, or uncommon..infact the complete, polar opposite is fact, a large percentage of teens/young adults indulging in negative actions/behaviors is absolute commonplace..it was through the mid 90's when I went through those phases, and it still is commonplace here and now, in the present.

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"two-parent household where both parents did nothing wrong"
"my parents did all the "right things" "
"raised in a good church"

That's funny.



"attended a private school"

That's uncommon.



It's hard to take someone who's brainwashed seriously. Maybe in your world, teens are that way but in mine most aren't that way. We had(and still have) the weight of the world on our shoulders. I suppose that's what happens when people of your ilk have always been around. It's not something self-centred and selfish people can understand.

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No offense intended, purely a statement of my observation.

I have to assume you're referring to jswindter01 as there is no other post but yours. I don't see (by their post) how you assume that they are "brainwashed" when I and most people I knew grew up under similar circumstances (except I and a vast majority were not in private school).

Again no offense intended, but having read a few of your posts I suggest it is you that had been brainwashed...sheltered at the minimum. 




.....................Sometimes ya gotta wonder.... 


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This whole thread was written by people who don't speak 3 words of english.

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by chrisamon »
IMDb member since August 2000
No offense intended, purely a statement of my observation.

I have to assume you're referring to jswindter01 as there is no other post but yours. I don't see (by their post) how you assume that they are "brainwashed" when I and most people I knew grew up under similar circumstances (except I and a vast majority were not in private school).

Again no offense intended, but having read a few of your posts I suggest it is you that had been brainwashed...sheltered at the minimum.




.....................Sometimes ya gotta wonder....

Brainwashed was a strange way to describe my diatribe, I thought..but minus the private school comment(don't know why I even included that fact); it is true that a large percentage of adult society grew up in some what similar surroundings(thru 80s-90s).

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[deleted]

This movie has the same problem as "Kids". Are there many "13-year-old girls" who easily look 17 or 18 (because they're played by a couple unusually attractive 15-year-old Hollywood actresses)? Uh, probably not that many. Are there many "13-year-olds" that engage in this kind of behavior even though they're from a relatively stable middle-class background? Again, no not that many.

So then they combine the two things because you can't have a movie about poor, disenfranchised, or god forbid, unattractive girls (who in real life are much more likely to engage in behavior like this). And they just don't make movies about well-behaved teenagers that respect their parents and DON'T get into trouble (even though that is actually much more common). But now you have a COMBINATION that is REALLY uncommon. OK, but that doesn't mean it's totally unrealistic and you can't make a movie about it, right?

The problem is you don't call the movie "Thirteen" or "Kids" and try to scare parents that this is what ALL their kids or up to. That's just bullsh!t. But at least it might be socially responsible in a misguided way, right? But REAL kids see movies like this and think this is what the "cool kids" are doing. It's basically makes ugly, real-life deviancy look glamorous and normal.

I don't think sending parents a questionable "wake up call" justifies the message a movie like this sends to impressionable teenagers. If this were treated more as a singular, PERSONAL story (like say the more recent "Little Birds" or the French movie "Puppy Love"), I wouldn't dislike it. But it has absolutely no business calling itself "Thirteen"

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I can't speak from my own experience as a teen, but I went to a non-traditional, alternative high school, and the girls there very much reminded me of Tracy and Evie, especially when it came to drugs and sex. I just watched this movie for the first time, and I thought it was realistic to how girls at my high school acted, sadly.

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[deleted]

Same... very reflective of my adolescence.

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Sex and drugs were prominent in my middle school, but I never got involved in either one. I was violently ill when I was a teen, and I didn't want to risk mixing illegal drugs with drugs I was prescribed. On top of that, teenage boys are horrible to people who are sick, even their own.

The cutting? That I saw every day. A lot of my friends cut themselves--one to the point where she was repeatedly hospitalized for it. Probably, I would have done it if I had not needed surgery every year (my teenage tagline: 'I don't need to cut myself. I can pay a surgeon to do it for me.')

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I agree. I never saw any cutting, or cut myself. There were drugs and sex going on, but not by me.

Kids that age can be horrible-PERIOD, sometimes. My life in Jr High was more like Welcome to the Dollhouse, except my home life wasn't like Dawns, but I got bullied A LOT. I was very protected and isolated as a kid, and was rather naïve as a result, but I would have seen through Evie right away.




AVADA KEDAVRA!!!

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I was very protected and isolated as a kid, and was rather naïve as a result, but I would have seen through Evie right away.


This sentence resonates with me. I was the same, (and also bullied) and for a while, when I thought of how I wasn't cool in middle/ high school, I just explained it in my head like "well, the cool kids never offered that to me". I thought that if someone as 'cool' as Evie had wanted to be friends, of course I would have gone along. But later, in my 20s, I developed a better perspective on things and realized that actually, there WERE times when I had those opportunities, but I never followed them. I didn't think those offers were sincere, or at the very least I didn't think I could fully trust those people, and so I kept myself at a distance. Now that I look back on it I realize that not everyone would have reacted the way I did. A lot of teen girls would have jumped at such opportunities, even if it meant the risk of being made a laughingstock or ending up in some worse situation, because they were that desperate to be accepted. I didn't actually want that as badly as I thought I did at the time. Not badly enough to take that risk. So yea, I guess if an Evie had come into my life I would not have done what Tracy did. No matter how much I identified with Tracy when I first saw this film, I've come to realize that I wasn't really that much like her. My lack of dangerous teen rebellion wasn't just a fluke, as I'd previously thought it to be.

Just some thoughts/ reflections. Still love this movie and always will.

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It isn't supposed to be reflective of everyone's adolescence, but no doubt that the movie rings true for many people.

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I'm surprised there are people who have led such terrible lives in first-world nations.I suppose all the terrible adults I see in the world had similar upbringing as Nikki.



Just by reading this, I can see you are a terrible person high on white privilege.

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Even if you grow up in a loving and caring environment, things can get pretty bad especially as a teenager, and don't think parents or other adults will notice, especially if they haven't made similar experiences on their own.

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I was thirteen when I first watched this movie (the irony!) with my then best friend, who was also thirteen. I am from Europe and not from a first-world country, born in a good family, attended public schools, both me and my best friend. While most of the things depicted in this movie seemed a bit exaggerated to me, some of those things do happen if you lead them. My best friend started dyeing her hair at the age of fourteen; she had an older sister who started smoking, getting tattoos and piercings before flying out the nest for college, so my friend followed her path, getting her tongue and belly and upper ears pierced before she finished high-school. I had been in the same class with her since kindergarten until we both graduated high-school. But we stopped being friends in, like, seventh grade, because she became the popular girl - the 'Evie' of my school, everyone wanted to hang out with her, she started dating older guys that she'd met in the neighborhood or through her sister, she made an image for herself. And I did not follow her cult. I remained the geeky girl, who didn't smoke or get piercings or tattoos. Hell, I didn't even have boyfriends. Because of the obvious recent differences between us, I just let her be, and she let me be too, although on occasions she'd voluntarily come to my rescue if I was bullied, which I silently appreciated. We haven't spoken in almost ten years now, but we keep track of each other on facebook. Her parents had a nasty divorce and she moved to a different country with her mother. She'd been through a lot, but she also got rid of her piercings and bad habits when she hit coming of age. We both graduated from college with top marks this year and I wish her the best. So I think seemingly bad people can change too, especially if they display rebellious behavior at a fairly young age, with or without counselling/coaching.

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