The Kid is an iconic figure in American culture. I don’t know if there is a paralled in Europe. I think that Charlie Chaplin might have introduced him into our psyches in The Kid. The kid is a mixture of childhood innocence and adolescent moxy. In a way Chaplin has introduced the ‘teenager’ to the 20th century. After that there are the whole Andy Hardy series, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, or Brando in The Wild One and then from the 50s on we have all the rock’n’roll heroes from Presley to Springsteen.
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