There's quite a few films out there that, when looked through the prism of our current societal moment, they can look pretty bad and pretty outdated.
While it's easy for us to point out these flaws and how misconceived they are, it's a different story altogether when someone who had a hand in them gets involved. So it goes that Molly Ringwald, she of John Hughes classics like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, wrote an article for The New Yorker where she reevaluated her work with her daughter - who's now the same age as she was when she did her first acting work - in light of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement.
As you can expect, seeing the kind of stuff that happens throughout these films - especially in Sixteen Candles, with the whole underwear thing - makes for some uncomfortable viewing that Ringwald discusses in the piece. Not only that, there's also the relationship that develops between her character in The Breakfast Club and John Bender, played by Judd Nelson, that basically began from him sexually harassing her at the beginning of the day.
"At one point in the film, the bad-boy character, John Bender, ducks under the table where my character, Claire, is sitting, to hide from a teacher," writes Ringwald. "While there, he takes the opportunity to peek under Claire’s skirt and, though the audience doesn’t see, it is implied that he touches her inappropriately. I was quick to point out to my daughter that the person in the underwear wasn’t really me, though that clarification seemed inconsequential."
It's not all bad, as Ringwald admits that there "is still so much that I love in them, but lately I have felt the need to examine the role that these movies have played in our cultural life: where they came from, and what they might mean now."
You can read the article in full here.
Via The New Yorker
