Sixteen Candles

[osprey_archer]

I went to see Sixteen Candles, and HOLY CONSENT ISSUES, BATMAN. They were showing this at the ArtCraft and I do like seeing movies there, even though eighties teen movies and I often don’t get along, so I went to see this and good Lord. You know, we complain about the current crop of umpteen thousand dystopias, but at least they don’t include the male lead complaining that his current girlfriend is passed out drunk in the bedroom and he could totally go violate her, but he’s just not attracted to her now that he’s noticed Molly Ringwald.

He actually uses the word violate and no one is like "Hey, maybe you shouldn't violate people, like, just as a policy, whether you're attracted to them or not."

Instead this sterling gentleman sends his girlfriend home with a guy he barely knows (a geeky freshman who has already tried to initiate sex with Molly Ringwald by climbing on top of her. Twice. The second time is after she's all GET OFF ME), and of course they totally end up having sex, which neither of them can remember afterward! But it’s totally okay because they both kind of think that it was good.

There is also a minor recurring character with a neck brace, which keeps getting in the way of her attempt to use drinking fountains, which I originally thought was a poignant comment on something or other about high school, but on second thought I think the director just included it for physical comedy.

There’s also a Chinese exchange student named Long Duk Dong, and the movie uses his name exactly how you might expect.

I also hated The Breakfast Club when I saw it. Maybe I should just steer clear of John Hughes movies forever after.

Comments

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

Rape jokes were considered funny in the 80s - or at least complaining about rape jokes was widely treated as prudish killjoying. Of course today there are still plenty of people who find rape jokes funny, but it was much more a feature of mainstream entertainment twenty or thirty years ago.

I think John Hughes has the reputation he has because he was less mean-spirited than the majority of "teen movies" being made at the time, which tended to be either cruel sex comedies or horror films in which groups of teenagers were chased down and slaughtered. That's Roger Ebert's picture, I don't know how accurate it is, but he was a big booster for John Hughes (and also some other movies about teenagers that came out around the same time, Say Anything and Mask are two that I remember) because he'd been watching a lot of really terrible movies about teenagers made by people who apparently hated teenagers, and next to them John Hughes seemed warm and compassionate and to have a comparatively healthy attitude toward sex and toward people who happen to be young.

Again, I have no idea how accurate that picture of the 1980s teen-cinema landscape is. But I can believe that John Hughes movies were among the best of a bad lot.

ETA This isn't an attempt to convince you to like John Hughes! I don't like John Hughes either, if being bored by The Breakfast Club twenty years ago is sufficient reason to say I don't like a director.

[littlerhymes]

Sixteen Candles is one of the John Hughes movies I haven't seen but yeah, I agree on the rape joke thing being much more unremarked upon in the 80s. (FYI don't ever watch Revenge of the Nerds. ...though it might be possible to write an interesting paper on the changing position of the nerd in society from 80s through to now esp in view of gamergate etc. But I digress.

Perhaps it's a generational thing. I find the teen movies and tv shows of my time (i.e. the 90s) FAR SUPERIOR to everything that came before and after. Obviously, it's not that I'm out of touch - it is the children and the olds that are wrong.

Out of Hughes' teen movies, the one I'd rec without hesitation would be Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink I can take or leave as movies, though as cultural touchstones they're worth examining.

[ladyherenya]

I started watching Sixteen Candles and gave up partway through. This makes me very glad I didn't stick with it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yup, I started watching this and it sent me screaming for the hills. NOOOOOOOOOO. Awful.

[silverusagi]

All I know about this movie is that is the favorite movie of Mary Ann from The Babysitter's Club. That detail was mentioned like every other book.