[toyg]

Teenage rebellion goes back to James Dean, arguably, with baby-boomers reacting to a calcification of postwar societies they inherited.

I think the difference now is that happy endings used to be the norm, whereas now they are not necessarily there, or the protagonists are pushed through such extreme losses that the win ends up looking pyrrhic.

This might simply be a function of the amount of productions - in the history of mankind, we've never seen so many new stories circulating so widely on so many different media. Smart authors want to look different and "real", so they might veer dark more liberally than they used (or rather were allowed, by public and editors) to.

[mrguyorama]

I mean, we can look all the way back to romeo and juliet, where rebelious teens were being unfairly oppressed by adults who just don't get it and they have to figure things out for themselves and in the end everyone dies.