Word: bursteinã
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...eternally single. Jake never develops as a character and never moves beyond his infuriating inferiority complex. The highlight of his portion of the film comes when he gets drunk with his brother, a sequence that is funny but lacks any dramatic punch. This was truly a wasted opportunity on Burstein??s part, as this storyline adds very little to the film. These flaws, however, do not cripple “American Teen.” Burstein transports the viewer back to high school, opening a window into the lives of real people whose challenges are wholly relatable...
...Burstein??s final product, however ambitious, proves to be only a partial success. The author is linked inescapably to the content of the retirement letters, which do not provide new insight into the issues the reader is most probably interested in—namely, slavery, abolition, and interracial affairs...
...study of these issues—which Jefferson rarely addressed during his political career—that Burstein??s work proves so valuable, for only through an investigation of his retirement papers can one understand these private parts of Jefferson’s life...
...only in the two chapters about Jefferson’s views of slavery and Jefferson’s affair that Burstein??s writing really thrives. Jefferson is portrayed as a political ideologue stuck in a dilemma—on the one hand advocating the equality of all men, and on the other owning slaves and repeatedly expressing no support for abolition efforts in the early nineteenth century...
...Burstein??s work suffers from a vicious “catch-22.” When he does use Jefferson’s retirement correspondence effectively, the work is historically and academically useful, but uninteresting. On the other hand, when Burstein does get to the issue that we all really want to read about and does expose Jefferson as torn between two opposing values, he drifts from his methodology and undermines his point...
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