Thirteen Movie

The movie thirteen touched many important factors of adolescent’s development. Some of the ones I want to concentrate in this paper are: family system, developmental tasks, and peer pressure.
The movie begins with Tracy, the main character, as a normal teenager whose life seems from the outside “ok”. However, even at this point in the movie, there are hints of Tracy’s inner pain and discomfort or distress with her world. Tracy lives a tough life. Her parents are separated, and do not have a good relationship. Tracy lives with her mom and brother in a suburban low to middle class neighborhood. Her mom, Mel, is a recovered addict, who works as a hair dresser. Her dad, Travis, is a somewhat rich executive, who works all the time and barely visits his family. Her older brother, Mason, does not get along with Tracy, and sees her as a somewhat loser. Morever, Mason does spend time with his dad more often than Tracy. Since the beginning of the movie, we can have a good picture of the family roles in this household. Mel does not take the authoritarian parent role. In fact, she plays the parent-friend role, and does not have deep and good communication with her son and daughter. We also come to learn that Tracy sometimes takes the role of “parentified children”, whose has to take her of herself in many occasions. I assume this role is also taken by her brother usually, since they do not show his experience. Moreover, at this point Tracy has been surrounded by good friends, as her neighbor Noel. Although they are not much seen in the movie, I do believe that their presence made Tracy stay somewhat grounded.
Furthermore, Tracy’s life switches when she met Evie Zamora. Evie is the new popular girl in school. She’s seductive, rebellious and all the boys want her. The first time Tracy sees Evie, she dislikes her because she believes that Evie has everything that she lacks of, and one of them is popularity. This is when we started perceiving peer pressure in Tracy´s life.