Dawson Casting

Dawson casting is an observed cultural phenomenon and movie trope in film and television in which many of the actors appear and are really much older than the characters they portray. The concept is observable in teen dramas such as ''Glee'', ''Gossip Girl'', and ''Pretty Little Liars'' where adults are cast to play teenage characters. An example of this is ''Pretty Little Liars'' character Spencer Hastings, who is 16 but is portrayed by actress Troian Bellisario, who was 24 years old at the time of shooting. ''Derry Girls'' is a non-American example of Dawson casting of teenage characters. The term was originally circulated on the Internet in response to the casting choices of ''Dawson's Creek,'' though the phenomenon predates that series, with examples such as the 1948 film ''Joan of Arc'', the 1978 film ''Grease'', the 1985 film ''The Breakfast Club,'' and the 1990s teen drama series ''Beverly Hills, 90210'' casting actors in their twenties and thirties to play high-school aged students.

Criticism

Canadian teen drama franchise ''Degrassi'' is often noted and praised for being one of the few major exceptions to the trope within the genre (along with ''Skins''''''), casting most of its actors age-appropriately. Franchise co-creator Linda Schuyler has been a critic of the practice as early as 1986, during the development of ''Degrassi Junior High'', where she stated that the show would cast age-appropriately due to the fact that "so much of the American stuff set in high schools is played by late teens and early 20s - and then some". She further elaborated to ''IndieWire'' in 2016 that "I like to talk about the fact that you can take a 25-year-old who looks 15 and have them play a role, but that actor is bringing 10 more years of life experience to that role. By having our cast be age-appropriate, they bring the freshness and the authenticity of that age." Samantha Wilson of ''Film School Rejects'' cites the trope as having contributed to the failure of the American adaptation of ''Skins''.

Social ramifications

It has been suggested on several occasions by critics that Dawson casting has several negative implications, specifically for adolescents. These commonly include accusations of unrealistic beauty standards, negative body image, low self-esteem, and general mental health problems, especially in regard to one's self-perception.

A clinical psychologist, Barbara Greenberg, told ''Teen Vogue'' that casting twenty-year-old actors for the roles of high-school students can worsen the struggles of adolescents, stating "It can give the message that they’re supposed to look good all the time", adding "That leads to all kinds of body-image and social-comparison issues".

References

Concepts in film theory
Film and video terminology
Film theory
Social phenomena
Tropes
Casting (performing arts)
Dawson's Creek
Adolescence

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