Sheesh, I had a Tempo. You’re braver than I am!
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Yeah, yeah, yeah…go for the cheap laugh at my expense!
Well, that IS the same model and year as my car #1.
There is a tiny ‘Easter Egg’ in RoboCop: A car chase scene ends with a baddie plowing into the back of a parked car which explodes into a fireball. Guess what the parked car was?
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A car that won’t run is a very safe car!
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“I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.” - Marshall McLuan
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It has been interesting, reading this thread as I avoided most John Hughes movies when I was a teen (for the record, I am also a 50 year old who graduated from high school in 1985). The only one I saw close to when it came out was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and that was only because I liked Wargames. Movies never interested me when I was a teenager, except for the Star Trek and Star Wars movies, or pretty much anything that was fantasy or science fiction. And even then, I preferred to spend my monies on floppy disks, role playing supplements and independent comics. So a lot of midwestern, suburban teen culture went by me without me noticing it. Even though I was squarely in that demographic.
And I did read Molly Ringwald’s essay through to the end, and maybe it’s her writing or the fact that we are roughly the same age (my daughter is currently in college), but I can’t find a single part of it that I disagree with. (EDIT: that is high praise, especially in the geekier circles I still frequent. Sorry if it isn’t clear.)
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Alas, I’ve not yet seen a good framework for thinking about problematic people and their work. I mean, dead people, it’s easy enough, you can talk about both aspects, and that’s fine. But, say, what about Polanski when he was still making movies? You see one, you are putting money in his pocket, you are showing that there is a market for his work, which helps him keep making movies, so, for me, that’s very problematic. In his case, I boycott his work (and, frankly, his viewpoint is too disgusting for me to want to anyways, from what I’ve seen). But, where and how to draw that line? What does rehabilitation look like? People who change and try to make amends for past behavior should become acceptable, but how should that work?
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This really was an excellent read, thank you.
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This article (and discussion) hits a number of my favorite things:
- the 80s
- film studies
- loud opinionated women sharing their opinions
I watched nearly all of John Hughes’ films on cable in the 80s. In my twenties, married with a kid and working full time, his films took me immediately back to the horrible high school years I had so recently left. These were not the teens in most of the other movies, these seemed like people I knew in high school but with 80s fashions and better cars.
These movies were also firmly of their time. The 80s were not a fun time to live through, unless you were an investment banker. They were very sexist, misogynistic, racist, classist; it was the time of AIDS and Ronald Reagan.
If you stop appreciating art because of the failings of the artist, you’d be censoring yourself from much great art. And movies are a collaborative art - the director is just one large cog in a machine with hundreds of them. Do you diminish the writing, the cinematography, the costumes, the sets, the lighting and sound, and the acting because the director (or producer, or star, or whoever) is an asshole? Watching a film whose director is an asshole makes me appreciate the craft and talent of the rest of the cast and crew, who put up with that shit to make this thing that I’m enjoying.
And Molly Ringwald herself? Good on her that she’s sharing a considered look back at a time when bad behavior is being outed in the press (what an outdated phrase!)
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I don’t know enough about the films to really comment directly. Though I remember Molly in Spacehunter! (barely - its been a long time)
I did see the Breakfast Club, but it has been so long ago I don’t remember much. I am not a huge John Hughes fan, though I did like Ferris Beuller. I am the right generation, but not really the right genre. Though to be fair, I may be missing out on something.
To the over arching theme, the way I see it “problematic” films and art are “ok”, but we should be fine with acknowledging that they may be perpetuating bad things, from racism, to sexism, to homophobia.
And to be clear, films and art can include those things and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. First we can use it as sort of a doorway to see what was considered typical attitudes and gain a little bit of understanding of the past. History isn’t always pretty.
It can also be a tool if they are mirrors reflecting society, and or a lens to either focus on it, or on oneself, it is using such things for “good”. To try to show the ugliness to combat it or make people aware or create some reflection.
Of course hate for hates sake is usually just tripe, lazy writing, and one dimensional story telling.
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I was responding to someone else’s comment
In a forum where anyone can respond to your comment.
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Did @magdalene suggest that the films be censored? I didn’t see that her comment, but maybe I missed it?
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There are two notable things here. One, there is a lack of critical examination of all the ideas in this essay, and two, a lot of the things being brought up in the comments involve things that are considerably more “problematic” than any John Hughes movie. No one needs to feel bad about enjoying his movies because of a few problematic elements. They are unusually thoughtful for 80s movies targeted towards teens, also, they were broad comedies targeted towards teens that were made in the 80s when everyone was less socially conscious.
Here is my unsolicited opinion on what is and isn’t problematic based on things brought up in this essay and perhaps things not brought up in the essay.
The scene she brings up, when it is implied that Bender does something inappropriate to her under the table is a brilliantly executed piece of comedy. The one or two second upskirt shot combined with Bender moving forward gives you the visual information needed to understand what has happened, which is not explicitly shown. Bender, a transgressive character, transgresses, is kneed in the face for his actions, and once the tension of the scene is relieved, Claire makes it very clear that what he did was not ok. In addition to being a brilliant comedic scene that includes elements of admittedly juvenile titillation, it establishes sexual tension between the characters, and is utterly fitting behavior for the character of Bender. And these characters are in fact, juveniles. Teenagers being portrayed as sexual creatures is not problematic, it’s accurate. This movie was made for older teenagers and the fact that her 10 yr old was shocked by this scene just means that a 10 yr old shouldn’t be watching it. This whole scene and its aftermath rings absolutely true, and is part of the reason this movie is so powerful to watch as a teen.
I just watched “The Breakfast Club” recently, and I found the scene in which Bender verbally abuses Claire to be absolutely brutal. But it’s supposed to be, it’s just even more brutal in this day and age of greater sensitivity to this behavior. He is being an abusive asshole and none of the other kids approve of it. This scene is powerful, not problematic. There is no endorsement or normalization of speaking to women in this way. It is clear that his words hurt her. The fact that Claire ends up being romantically involved with him is not all that surprising, really. Charismatic rebel archetypes can be quite popular with young women.
What is problematic about this movie is the treatment of the other girl, Allison. She is treated poorly by everyone, especially the boys, and her existence is validated in the end by becoming a “pretty girl”. Pretty enough for attention from the jock. Her complete lack of social status is a justification for everyone, even the nerd, to treat her badly.
On to Fast Times. The iconic scene in which Phoebe Cates bares her breasts is literally a male fantasy in a sex-based dramatic comedy. A scene which ends in comedic humiliation when the male in question is caught masturbating in a place where he should expect privacy. Female nudity in an erotic context is not “problematic” unless it is included someplace it doesn’t belong. Ironically, the amount of teenage boys that have masturbated to this scene has to be quite staggering. I haven’t seen this movie in a long time, but it has a female protagonist, and it handles sex quite frankly and realistically, if I recall. And she ends up with the boy that actually cares about her feelings.
Sixteen Candles, by contrast, has a lot of problematic elements, but the brief nudity in the beginning is not one of them. The person looking at the boobs in question was Molly Ringwald’s character, and it made her feel self-conscious because she was still in her gangly teenage phase, where as this girl had the body of a full grown woman. I remember all that clearly, because boobs.
I don’t remember the movie that well, because I wasn’t that interested in the story, but I remember that an Asian stereotype was played up for laughs, and I would consider that to be officially “problematic”.
The single most problematic element, which has already been mentioned here, is the treatment of the girlfriend. She is an unlikable, unsympathetic character, but this is used to justify having non-consensual sex with her. This is a toxic idea which is normalized in the movie. This same exact thing was done in the Revenge of the Nerds movie. That is officially “problematic”.
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Well, good to know that you get to decide what’s problematic and what isn’t.
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Ditto. The Breakfast Club came out while I was a junior in High School and I was incredibly attracted to the quirky character Ally Sheedy played. I despised the makeover scene then, and still do now.
But it’s still one of my top ten films, probably due to where I was in my life when I saw it and how I felt about myself at that time.
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That’s the thing though. “Problematic” is undefined, and is constantly being redefined whenever someone with a voice decides something new is problematic. Just because someone has a problem with something doesn’t automatically make it “problematic” in any broad social sense. The things that I declared to be problematic were the things that, in my opinion of course, can be substantially argued and defended as being problematic without having to resort to abstraction, or emotional appeals. The things I claimed weren’t problematic wouldn’t cause someone from a more sexually liberal country to even raise an eyebrow.
There are some around here who sure as hell try to; that’s for sure. I just get louder.
Unfuck 'em if they don’t like it.
You rang?
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Have you read Molly R’s New Yorker essay?
You’re coming across like yet another smug dude, telling women that their objections to commodified sexual objectification are all just make-believe nonsense, which they would keep to themselves if they were only as smart as you.
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I doubt that. I still have the earring a girl gave to me in high school. I haven’t worn it (or any other earring) in almost 30 years, but it has sentimental value. I do sometimes still wear flannel and ripped jeans though. 
More on topic, few if any shows or movies from the 90s back fit into modern culture. We’ve come a long way. Even the classic feel-good shows like Andy Griffith and I Love Lucy don’t match today’s morals. Tried watching MASH again a year or so ago and that’s a great example of one that’s probably best left as fuzzy happy memories. In today’s light, the racism, sexism, and homophobia seem extreme. Even Friends, from the '90s, seems pretty homophobic.
But they are portrayals of where we were at as a culture at a point in time. And humans are humans. In The Honeymooners, Ralph’s catchphrase is a threat to beat his wife (“One o’ these days, Alice… bang, zoom, straight to the moon!”), but he never does, and she’s portrayed as the smart one that keeps things running smoothly despite his antics. So in a way it’s misogynistic and in a way it’s the exact opposite.
We change, and some of the old things are painful to watch, but they represent who we were, and they hold that human context. The fact that characters that you like behave in ways that you don’t like, and that even though it was the norm at the time, there was a subtext that it was wrong, is just portraying the human condition.
30 years from now, we’ll probably all be appalled at the things that we’re saying and the way that we’re acting today. But we’ll still be the same people, and not that different from the generations that came before.
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Speaking of films being of their time! “recommend being at the airport 45 minutes ahead of time, especially at this time of year”, LOL.
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