Pretty in Pink

[osprey_archer]

I watched Pretty in Pink, and… I actually kind of liked it! Which is surprising, given that my general reaction to eighties teen movies is to yearn for all the characters to die in a fire. But this time the only one I would have fed to the flames was Duckie, who spends most of the movie demonstrating the worst excesses of Nice Guyism. When his friend Andie finds a guy she likes, Duckie behaves like an incontinent yappy dog trying to mark his territory. I yearned, yearned for Andie to throw her Coke in his face.

But Andie is not the kind of person who throws Coke in her friends’ faces, no matter how obnoxiously they act. Her enemies, yes, but her friends she looks after, even if it gets her into trouble. The principal finds this baffling: she’s such a smart girl, she’s won a scholarship to college, can’t she keep her head down till she graduates?

She’s a poor girl in a rich school. The constant stress of knowing that other people look down on her, of the unfairness of it all, sometimes makes her snap.

This tension is what animates her relationship with her boyfriend Blane, an adorable yet clueless rich kid. He thinks that he can overcome the social boundaries between them through the power of love. He clearly has never faced a real obstacle in his life before and has no idea how to handle it: when it turns out that love actually doesn’t conquer all, he crumbles and breaks up with Andie.

Then Blane realizes that he’s made a huge mistake and grows the beginnings of a backbone. As he tells Andie, “I always believed in you. I just didn’t believe in me.”

I kind of think Andie will find someone more well suited to her in college, but I did like Blane: for all his faults he completely adores Andie. Also he’s not Duckie. For this alone he gained many points.

Having said that, at the end even Duckie redeems himself a bit. He realizes that, in fact, Andie does not belong to him. She loves him, but she’s not in love with him, and shows no sign of ever being in love with him, and Duckie finally accepts this and bows out gracefully. Or at least, gracefully compared to how he was acting before. (For this the narrative rewards him with a beautiful blonde girl, which made me want to throw things, but so it goes.)

Comments

[artemis_wandering]

I never really thought about it, but damn you're so right on the whole "nice guy" thing with Duckie. Interestingly, he's my mom's favorite character. She always thought they should end up together. Just shows how often that narrative is sold as romantic? Maybe that explains why these "nice guys" feel so justified in their anger - they've been taught to romanticize their position.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think it's fairly common for people to think they deserve something just because they want it, but I think that attitude is romanticized in the media more often for men than for women, and it probably does tend to make Nice Guys feel more justified.