More on the John Hughes ouvre, and The Closet of the 1980’s
A ton of great writing is out there since John Hughes died. This one in the New York Times caught my eye.
Which is not to say — I hasten to tell the children of Barack Obama and Vitamin Water — that Mr. Hughes’s movies provide a literal or comprehensive picture of that time. A lot of stuff is left out. Politics, for one thing. Black people, for another. And like many other filmmakers who solicit the favor of young audiences, Mr. Hughes has been faulted for smoothing over too many rough edges and softening harsh social and psychological realities.
The response, which will never satisfy some critics, is that his films are fables, not documentaries.
Another thing that was left out of John Hughes movies was gay people, or a gay reference of any stripe other than derogatory asides. Which, in a way, makes sense. Any fool growing up in middle class white 1980’s suburban America knew that sexual tension was like breathing in air – it was constant. High school kids are always thinking about sex, and the actors in those movies were just sexy enough to get you thinking…hmmm…..I wonder…..
When I saw these movies as they arrived in theaters, with my high school clique of over-analyzing intelligentsia, I was going through what most kids who end up Closeted go through – looking for reasons to stay in the Closet, or get out of it, both subconsciously and explicitly. How did a John Hughes movie affect that?
If there were a single gay character in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or The Breakfast Club, they were not saying. You got the sense that Judd Nelson’s stoner character might go both ways, or that Anthony Michael Hall’s character was the most gay thing ever. Most kids probably assumed the Anthony Michael Hall character in Breakfast Club to be gay, and the gay kids probably wished there was a kid like him in high school to date. And that’s before you get to the orgy fantasies every kid had after seeing Breakfast Club.
But herein lies the perfection of the Hughes fable. If Anthony Michael Hall’s character were gay, he was NOT going to come clean about it. EVER. And if Judd Nelson’s stoner went both ways, you wouldn’t find out unless you were both at a party blasted out of your minds and just horny enough to go there.
In short, a John Hughes movie helped lock The Closet door and throw away the key. In the mid 1980’s, in white middle class suburbia, it was a rather dangerous thing to be bi or gay, and out – a fact of the era which Hughes captured perfectly without even trying. Yeah, there’s probably a gay character in there – but we’ll never know. Safer that way, right?
It’s a good thing for art to be so reflective of society, but sometimes, it’s also a bad thing. Had those movies not been so perfect a reflection of the stifling, deer-in-the-headlight freeze, about gayness, a lot of gay kids might not have locked The Closet door shut, and suffered the resulting epic damage to their lives. You can’t fault John Hughes for so perfectly depicting the era, even with silence. But that’s what his movies did. Watch them again with this in mind, and tell me if I’m wrong.
Tags: gays, john hughes
August 9th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
your wrong, of course. the time was wrong, John Hughes needed his movies made and not banned. No test audience would have stood for a gay geek or Cameron lusting after Ferris. I doubt Hollywood would have approved at that time a gay character or a racial one.It would have stood out in my white bread suburbian high school in the 80’s where that does not happen today. As a teen in the outer burbs high school at the same time of his movies, NOBODY came out. Nobody wasn’t more than white. I was even made fun of for being TOO white !!! My boyfriend’s parent FREAKED and forbid our relationship because i wasn’t Catholic. In the 80’s in my school, just about EVERYONE was white. When i moved from Lakewood to Brunswick in the 80’s – Hughes movies completely reflected what was going on there. Straights with sappy love issues. Soc’s vs the Greasers / Punks, what have your alternative groups. Rich Vs Poor. the Usual crap. From the Outsiders – West Side Story, pop culture only dares touch a few racial issues and NO gender benders. I would argue that OBVIOUSLY a reference to a gay or non-white character would have been an obvious plant of the world of mulitcultural fairness, but we don’t see that until the 90’s with “my so-called life ” or even “will and grace ” to reinforce the coolness of characters in reality when it all changed. I had gay friends but we never spoke about it until after graduation, to avoid further beatings for no reason except for being different. I myself was often tortured for a close relationship with a female, but we we usually whining about guys not into us for being “too punky” or poor, really. I suspect that my 300 + facebook friends who never spoke to me then who now tell me how cool i was, were also afraid to do the same to seem as if they were “different”. John needed to make movies and any non-white bread diversion from the near wholesome ideas of “ferris” or even “uncle buck” ( i mean, clearly Buck’s girlfriend is lipstick lesbian-mechanic ) might have derailed that. The Movie “less than zero” even muffles the gay double life of all the characters ( a great book, shitty movie – there is NO anti drug message in that book and Clay sleeps with ANYTHING white ) to most certainly get the movie made. We don’t see the world wake up to non-white bread flavor in the breadbox in the real world until the fall of the wall, the popularity of smart & stupid rap music, popular culture embracing gay dance clubs ( techno & house ) , AIDS killing off our musical/artist icons and television shows with strong, cool gay characters well into the 90’s. John hardly remained hip at that point when the 90’s started up it’s grasp of reality, focusing more on children’s movies about being ” home alone “, not homo alone. Honestly, I watched those movies to learn about music, the spun stories of Blaine & Andy were a crock. The ending where she and Ducky dance off to the sunset at the prom was rejected by early test screens, scrapped and limp wristed ( obviously GAY ) Blaine was brought back for a lame ass “happy ending “. John confesses to making “some kind of wonderful” based on this guilt of perverison of the real story not told. Such a crock, he lost me with that movie but the soundtrack re-introduced me to New Order, Echo and Bunnymen, Suzanne Vega, Smiths and countless others thru his movies. John Hughes really singlehandedly brought about the mega soundtrack, the popification of alternative music and for once you heard the Psychedelic Furs on the radio, not left of the dial on WBWC in the middle of the night. He did not define real roles, he let his teen actress Molly Ringwald pick Oingo Boingo, the Specials, Nick Heyward, Altered Images and even the Rave-Ups for her movies and then thrust into the limelight of soundtrackness by trusting her knowledge of alternative / progressive pop; and here we have a better world than shaped by heavy metal hair bands or grunge. I know your agenda here is sex, but i was more into the new music introduced in “weird science ” that stupid relationships with computer generated women and a wild party to solve your popularity problem. It’s the music, kids.
djbg