Though I am loath to admit boys beating girls at just about anything, when the topic is coming-of-age films, the seminal
Stand By Me clearly stands above its more upbeat female counterpart
Now & Then.
Stand By Me is darker in its themes of mortality and class and negotiating masculinity than
Now & Then’s treatments of death, romantic awakening, and adolescent drifting. That I watched
Stand By Meafter River Phoenix was long dead and Corey Feldman was troubled only exacerbated the particularly melancholy tone of the film. But of all the striking elements of
Stand By Methat beat
Now & Then, the most heartbreaking is that the whole plot of
Now & Then centers on the fact that the girls come together for each other as grown women while the boys from
Stand By Me are left estranged as adults.
In this case, fiction mirrors reality: Adult men have the fewest friends of any demographic. And as more and more people delay marriage or forgo it entirely, men are often left without strong social networks to rely on for support.
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04-07-2012, 03:13 AM
Obama Embraces National Security as Campaign Issue
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