Consider two popular films, The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Nightmare on Elm Street (1984): Both, Bulkeley notes, portray the dream adventures of an adolescent girl struggling to survive in and make sense of a world filled with danger, evil, and injustice. Both, he suggests, illuminate the dreams and nightmares of American adolescents, and the failure of parents, and adults generally, to protect teenagers from threats to their budding independence.

In Oz, Dorothy's passionate assertion, "Oh, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!" conveys the message that home is the best place, the place we should never wish to leave. But there's no place like Oz, either, Bulkeley points out. In Dorothy's dream world, beauty and moral justice far surpass the imperfections of her waking world.

The film effectively uses common features of dreaming, such as talking trees and the appearance of persons from the dreamer's waking life, to immerse readers in Dorothy's story. Released at a time of growing worldwide danger, it told adolescents who had grown up in the Great Depression they could hold onto their dreams, yet contribute to their families and the world at large.

Nightmare on Elm Street taps into the experience of recurrent nightmares. Freddy, a sadistic child murderer who once lived in the neighborhood and was himself murdered by a group of residents that included the heroine Nancy's parents, comes back to life and starts murdering again. Feelings of fear, helplessness, impotence, and vulnerability, Bulkeley notes, pervade the film.

Like Dorothy in Oz, Nancy cannot convince adults that her dreams are real. After much violence and bloody mutilation, Nancy finds the strength to vanquish Freddy. Viewers know, of course, that he will return. Viewers identify not only with Nancy, Bulkeley says, but also with Freddy. For adolescent boys in particular, he asserts, Freddy expresses urgent sexual desires and the frightening feelings they prompt.

Boys often watch this and other Freddy movies together, he says, gaining comfort from sharing the experience of trying to come to terms with the "inner Freddy" in each of them. Nightmare's release in 1984 came at a macho time in American life, when power was glorified and vulnerability scorned, an added burden for adolescents already struggling with these issues.