Leave it to a humorless lefty to find patently offensive something that is a cult classic for millions of Americans who grew up in the 1980s: John Hughes’s “Sixteen Candles.”
In a New York Post piece, Sara Stewart is calling for the retirement of the movie, piggy-backing off a colleague’s previous posting on why the 1939 classic Gone With the Wind should “go the way of the Confederate flag.” See that story here.
Stewart seems to think Sixteen Candles celebrates "both racism and date rape":
"Sixteen Candles" … was one of my favorites. But rewatching it now, I felt about as repulsed as Ringwald’s character Samantha did when she first saw the Geek (Anthony Michael Hall).
The racism and sexism in Hughes’ movie is so over the top, I have to hope any teens watching it today would view it as a shocking, old-timey artifact. Perhaps most glaringly, there’s Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe), the Chinese foreign exchange student whose every mention is accompanied by the sound of a gong.
OK, I’ll give her that – but then Stewart takes issue with a conversation that almost every teenaged girl has with a friend – finding that “perfect boy”:
“There’s also this offhanded exchange between Samantha and her friend Randy (Liane Curtis) about finding the perfect boy.
Samantha: “You do it on a cloud without getting pregnant or herpes.”
Randy: “I don’t need the cloud. Just a pink Trans Am and the guy.”
Samantha: “A black one.”
Randy: “A black guy??”
Samantha: “A black Trans Am. A pink guy!”
Stewart insists the movie “plays out like Date Rape 101 — and both of its male leads, supposedly the heroes, are actually terrible, terrible people…” and then proceeds to “give examples”:
“Jake (Michael Schoeffling) — the supposed Perfect Guy — has a prom-queen girlfriend named Caroline (Haviland Morris), who gets so drunk at his party that she passes out. “I could violate her 10 different ways if I wanted to,” says Mr. Right. The Geek’s response: “What are you waiting for?”
Jake proceeds to put his girlfriend in the car with the Geek, telling him to drive her home and “have fun.”
The Geek gets the girl even drunker, takes her to his friends’ house and takes pictures of himself with her.
The Geek and Caroline wake up in the car the next morning and have the following conversation.
Geek: “Did we, uh . . .”
Caroline: “Yeah. I’m pretty sure.”
Geek: “Um, do you know . . . um, did I enjoy it? Am I nuts? Of course I enjoyed it. What I meant was, uh . . . did you?”
Caroline: “You know, I have this weird feeling I did.”
Because God forbid Stewart took issue with the fact that a girl gets completely wasted at a party and puts herself in potentially dangerous situations –and guess what? Girls continue to get wasted at parties and continue to put themselves in harm’s way even to this day – but that’s another story – one you won’t find a liberal feminist writing because a woman actually takes responsibility for herself and actions.
Stewart then gives a rundown on how John Hughes should’ve ended all of his classic 80’s movies – that Pretty in Pink should’ve had Ringwald choose Duckie, that Ally Sheedy’s character in The Breakfast Club should’ve been able to embrace her “gothness” and not have been subjected to a makeover— and last but not least, “Sixteen Candles should now be filed under Cautionary Tales of ’80s Cinema: “Gather round, kiddies, and check out how rape and racism used to be hilarious punch lines.”
Unreal.
