Everything I learned about how to be a teenager.
… and if I’m honest, a lot of how I shaped the adult I want to be, or at least the tiny seedlings of the way I learned how to critically think about otherness, class, and empathy got planted while watching movies written by John Hughes.
John Hughes died today at 59 from a heart attack.
Thank you for writing teen movies with unresolved awkwardness and not always the happy ending we were hoping for. Thank you for writing and directing teen movies featuring actually talented teen and young actors. Thank you for showing us characters we could love and relate to that weren’t the popular characters or the prettiest. And speaking of that, thank you for an entire generation of girls who aspired to be Molly Ringwald instead of Hannah Montana.
Thank you for mirroring the reality that often the teens DO understand what is happening far better than the adults, and often we didn’t have a trusted adult to turn to. Not at school, not at home. Sometimes, many of us had to be adults long before we were ready, like your characters.
You didn’t win oscars, but I sincerely hope that you had some awareness of how comforting your art has been for my generation and how influential it was and continues to be in pop culture.
Specifically for: Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and even (secretly, I still watch this at Christmastime) Home Alone.
You will be missed and remembered well.
I couldn’t find clips from The Breakfast Club to embed, so here are links:
“The door is way too heavy, sir.”
Dear Mr. Vernon,
we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole saturday in detention for whatever it is we did wrong, but we think you’re crazy for making us write an essay telling you who we think we are.
You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out, is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal.
Does that answer your question?
ps. Lesbians, tomboys and “best buddy” girls everywhere thank you for Watts.
August 11th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Didn’t he pepper his movies (or at least 16 Candles) with the word “faggot”?
August 11th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
He definitely didn’t put that word in all his films, because I own two of them and have seen several others countless times.
He tends to set up several situations between bullies and/or jocks and nerdy/effeminate characters. So when the word is in the films, it is usually to that effect and it’s never made me feel like it wasn’t clear who the asshole/offensive person was supposed to be in that situation.
The only time I’ve ever seen any kind of offensive situations/ stereotyping/language was actually in “16 candles” – and it was in regards to a very date-rapey/misogynistic situation where a kid basically gives his drunk girlfriend to a geek to sleep with her. (and it’s implied that she kind of gives drunken consent, but then doesn’t remember).
That’s the only thing in his 80′s teen films that bothered me. His other mainstream comedies have had a number of other things in poor taste, but it also depended on what he was writing for. Many of those were not in his creative control (the National Lampoon Franchise for example).
The other thing in “16 Candles” that is absurd and offensive is the gratuitous, over the top, horribly racist Asian character portrayal… which people are divided over – whether or not he was satirizing or not. It is SO over the top (a gong sound plays when he appears), that it’s likely that he was making fun of the characterization of Asian people in American movies.
I think it was probably intentional, but also, may be one of those things that got laughs and went over people’s heads so it didn’t really work as satire? I honestly don’t know.