I wanted to write something about the role of "Thriller" in 13Go30. Unfortunately, "Thriller," though fantastic, is mostly just very silly. Have you ever read all the lyrics to that song? It's really just about watching scary movies. Classic video, though, and some killer zombie dance moves.
Anyway. This did get me thinking about the role of music and music videos in 13Go30. There are three dance numbers in the film, which seems like a surprising number, even for a film in this genre. We have the classic "Thriller" group dance, the slumber-party jam-out to "Love Is a Battlefield," and Jenna's hockey-hunk boyfriend Alex Carlson's "Ice Ice Baby" striptease.
The striptease is an interesting scene. It is one of child-as-adult-Jenna's only encounters with adult sexuality. Adult-Jenna is sexually active and has a number of regular partners. Child-as-adult-Jenna would have to deal with these men and with sexuality at some point. At the same time, Jenna's only 13 and not ready for the sorts of relationships adult-Jenna has formed (and audiences might be uncomfortable with a thirteen-year-old girl in a thirty-year-old woman's body sleeping with a grown man [not an anxiety shared by the producers of Big]. How to handle the scene? With a goofy striptease.
Jenna is placed in a sexually charged situation, but Alex is changed from an actor/aggressor into a performer: he becomes someone Jenna can choose to (uncomfortably) ignore. The choice of song and Alex's awkward and vain posturing serve to further de-sexualize the scene. (This is also one of Jenna's few encounters with post-1987 music. Too bad for her.)
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