Molly Ringwald on the gross sexual behavior in Sixteen Candles

Pee Wee’s Big Adventure?

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Real Genius has to be on the ‘approved’ list!
As a budding scientist at the time, I loved it, and as a real-life professional scientist, I still have a soft spot for it. Smart, strong female character, some teenage romance, revenge against the bad guys, and a wacky, brilliant perma-student. What wasn’t to love?

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Some Kind Of Wonderful springs to mind. I need to re-watch that again with a more critical eye.

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Many people manage to grow as a person without making millions of dollars perpetuating rape culture :slight_smile:

Yes, surely the teenage star who had nothing to do with writing that movie and didn’t even play one of the problematic characters is the one who deserves the blame for perpetuating rape culture.

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Huge fan of Real Genius, the movie is certainly great.

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You’re implying that she’s a hypocrite because she’s spent the last 35 years continuing to make movies with vintage 1980s attitudes toward rape while also decrying them. Any evidence of this?

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Well, we’re free to disagree. This is probably not the best analogy, but I managed to know the Iraq war was wrong while a teenager, while many much older folks seem to have issues with this until it came time to run for higher office.

I’ve seen scores of people who worked for the NSA post Jewel v NSA act shocked at the Snowden relationbships, then capitalize on perception that the NSA are “elite hackers” to pivot to lucrative private industry careers under the guise of strong principles.

Or writing the biography that helped shape the myth that got a fascist elected only speaking out after decades, sitting atop a fortune.

I’m sorry if I came off grumpy, but I’m really tired of a larger trend I see playing out in society, of people enriching themselves doing questionable things then feigning ignorance/principles after they’ve accumulated their fortune.

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IIRC Red Dawn even has a scene where the older crashed pilot politely shuts down one of the kids who develops a crush. They could have gotten away with some “it’s the end of the world” logic given the release date but didn’t, which is admirable

Wasn’t a giant plot point that they cut a hole to spy on the women’s locker room?

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Not to mention the “gym laundry as aphrodesiac” scene (i.e. take her up there, and anyone can score). Or Peewee applying a condom before a date.

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One problem that movies have never really solved is how to portray realistic relationships without glorifying them. Same problem that they have with war movies. I recall Oliver Stone’s Platoon also faced this dilemma, as it was supposed to show how much it sucked to be a soldier.

I never watched Sixteen Candles, was never a fan of The Breakfast Club and saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as a vicarious fantasy more than as anything else. And I was Class of 1985, so I should have been in the target demographic.

All that now written, I like Molly Ringwald the person. I like her writing, and I will accept her statement as being honest. Fnord.

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Agreed, that’s not a great analogy.

And I happen to think it’s actually a good thing when people grow to recognize the problematic aspects of projects they once took part in, whether that person happens to be a veteran who realizes the war they fought in was a mistake or an actor who realizes that a movie they helped make had a troubling attitude toward consent.

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Sure, but it’s weird that we seem to give more respect to those who made bad decisions then recant than those who have been standup humans consistently :confused:

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I’ve only seen Ferris Bueller once, but I do seem to remember that Jeanie gets arrested for making a prank 911 call after her principal actually did break into her house and jump out at her. Not advocating or normalizing sexual assault, but it never sat well with me that she got arrested for making a completely legitimate 911 call about what she had every reason to believe was an attempt at sexual assault (and still was breaking and entering, or at least trespassing. I forget how he got inside).

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He crawled through the doggie door, unless I’m mistaken.

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CollegeHumor was way ahead on this one.

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OK then: I hearby congratulate and celebrate your feat of getting through the 80s without appearing in any films that are problematic in retrospect. :trophy:

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Here’s the thing; human beings are flawed as fuck and highly fallible… especially while we’re still young.

There are very few folks in existence who have ‘always’ been standup people, unfailingly. That’s an unrealistic metric to apply to even the most virtuous of us…

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I was never comfortable with Weird Science. It was just too creepy. Real Genius was pretty bad, but not quite as bad. Sixteen Candles and the others might have ridiculously stereotyped and exaggerated characters, but there was a core of a real story with real characters.