Loving John Hughes Movies While Black

Growing up, I loved movies that didn’t love me back

I love 80s movies.

Even now, if I’m scrolling through the ‘movies’ menu on HBO, Netflix, or Hulu and I stumble across Youngblood or Wildcats, I’m gonna watch that movie — might even watch it twice.

I love the musical montages…even when they provide cheap storytelling. Take About Last Night. The montage to actual scene ratio is probably 3:1 in favor of montages (and I can still hear some of the music in my head just writing that line) — montages for when they met, montages for when they moved in, montages for those beautiful first months…you get the point.

But the 80s films that I loved the most, the ones that became a part of my vocabulary, were films that almost always took place in affluent North Chicago suburbs and almost always had a tad bit of racism to make all that sweet suburbanism go down.

Of course I’m talking about John Hughes films and we still have an abusive relationship today.

Being a child of divorce AND a military brat is a perfect recipe for producing a child that gravitated to the outsider-type that frequented the teen of the 80s movie.

The moral of all those movies whether it’s Better Off Dead or Revenge of the Nerds is the outsider always prevails. It’s a classic us against them…popular against the fringes type of thing.

Growing up in the 80s, we rarely saw Black people on TV or in Films. So in order for us to be involved in the story, we learned to identify with the underdog character. This becomes skewed in situations when the underdog takes on a Black character like in Rocky 1–3 where Apollo Creed is surely the “bad guy”…the popular character and Clubber Lang was the damn anti-Christ. By the time that Rocky gets in the ring, it’s too late. You can only support and identify with him.

But there were no “good” Black characters. There were scary ones, like Forest Whitaker’s character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, there were comic relief Black folk like the tree trimmers in Better Off Dead who say, “Man…now that’s a real shame when folks be throwing away a perfectly good white boy like that.” Or the stereotypical ones in National Lampoon’s Vacation who strip the Griswolds’ car and spray paint “honky lips” on it. (Harold Ramis, the director of Vacation said that scene was “the most politically incorrect sequence I’ve ever shot….” but he shot it though) All in all…there are no Black people populating these worlds.

Now that that’s out of the way, we can talk about my love for the nearly all-white films of John Hughes. We’ll only talk about three though for brevity’s sake.

I can’t say that I’m proficient in all of his teen movies. I didn’t watch Pretty in Pink & Sixteen Candles nearly as much as I watched Weird Science, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Breakfast Club. But I certainly watched his teen flicks more than all the others.

Like Paul Brickman’s Risky Business, all of John Hughes’ movies, save Pretty in Pink, were filmed in the John Hughes’ North Shore, neighborhoods of Northbrook, Skokie, and Highland Park which are predominately white. That mostly explains the nearly all-white casts. Hughes is true to his environment.

Southmoor Park, where I went to High School, located in Southeast Denver, demographically is 3% more white than Hughes’ Northbrook at 89% (but 2% less white than Highland Parks’ 91%). Had there not been the cursed forced bussing in Denver which caused a white flight of students from public schools and had us Black kids from Park Hill on the bus for a hour and a half each day, I would have never seen this area of the city…or white folk.

Not that they wanted to see us.

It wasn’t uncommon to be waiting for the bus on Hampton, a major thoroughfare in Southeast Denver, and have a carful of white people drive by and scream “nigger.”

Maybe it’s because of this reality that the racism that existed in Hughes’ films didn’t affect me. Like my brother Isma’il Latif said when I posed the premise of this article to him, those movies were an accurate depiction of similar neighborhoods all over America that were very inclusive and resistant to others.

And these movies were damn good.

First of all, if you were into music videos at the time, New Wave was the rage, and all of Hughes’ films were propelled by New Wave music. The soundtracks became just as iconic as the movies, most notably the Breakfast Club’s “Don’t You Forget About Me” — a song that put Simple Minds in many o’ teens’ collections back in the mid 80s.

They are the most structurally sound movies this side of Romantic Comedies. John Hughes doesn’t wait until the ten minute mark to let you know what’s at stake. You often get that in the first five. One character’s sweet sixteen is the day before her sister’s wedding and is going unnoticed. Five other characters have weekend detention. Two other characters can’t meet women so they make one. You get the picture.

You have pronounced first, second, and third acts and the endings are almost always wrapped up in a nice little bow.

The angst was real. The longing. The will she or won’t she go out with me. The whole getting to know the girl for the first time. School anxiety. All that type of stuff was identifiable. Sixteen year old Anthony Michael Hall had this to say about John Hughes:

John really understands a group that many people just don’t understand — young people. All these teen-age movies with the big emphasis on sex: It’s like, offensive to kids, girls especially. John understands that. He wants to make movies about real kids. People respond to films that are about people as opposed to the exploitation trash we’ve been seeing so much.

But the problems were also real. We’re just going to concentrate on the issues dealing with race. I think it’s important that we discuss these films in chronological order.

John Hughes cut his chops writing. That ‘honky lips’ scene — straight from the typewriter of Mr. Hughes. Legend has it that he cranked out Sixteen Candles so quickly that the studio green lit it while Breakfast Club was still in pre-production.

Released in May of 1984, Sixteen Candles is by far the most problematic of Hughes’ movies. The two male leads, “The Geek” and Jake are both deplorable but made to look cool and to be a heart throb respectively.

Anthony Michael Hall’s Geek is the earliest version of the Cool Geek. He’s not at all uncomfortable with invading the space of Molly Ringwald’s Sam nor is he deterred by her utter disgust with him. In the end, it pays off when Jake gifts his cheerleader girlfriend, Caroline, to him. That’s right, gifts.

Jake may be the hunk that all the girls want, but when he’s done with you, pray he doesn’t throw you over his broad shoulders and hurl you in his Dad’s Rolls Royce to be driven home by a Freshman Geek that he just met that day.

And be grateful, because he could have “violated you 10 differnt ways” but chose not to. I never thought I could be Jake but I might be able to be “cool” and funny like Hall’s Geek.

Well…except I was Black. And we learn early on that will not do.

After a demoralizing morning with everyone forgetting her birthday, Sam confides in her friend Randy and talks about how she expected her sixteenth birthday to be:

Sam: A big party, band, and tons of people

Randy: And a big Trans Am in the driveway with a ribbon around it and some incredibly gorgeous guy that you like meet in France and you do it on a cloud without getting pregnant or herpes

Sam: I don’t need the cloud

Randy: Just the pink Trans Am and the guy

Sam: A Black one.

Randy stops in her tracks.

Sam reassures her:

Sam: A black Trans Am, a Pink guy

We’re not even ten minutes in to the movie.

Black folk get off easy in this film though. Before the first act is complete, we’re introduced to our Chinese comic relief, Long Duk Dong. There’s the gong, the Chinese jokes and towards the end, they cross their Asian stereotypes and have him acting like a samurai…that’s Japan, John. Japan.

We also get a swipe at Italians via the soon to be in-laws. When they’re introduced, Godfather music plays alongside the family who we are to presume are involved in illicit business. Not funny.

But yo…Long Duck Dong still got him a woman. She may have been more interested in working out, but as he drove her home, it was clear — she was in to him.

Hall’s Geek ends up with Caroline in the end. After a night spent in the Rolls that neither she nor Hall can remember, Caroline’s sobered up and much to her surprise, likes the Geek.

If there was a Black boy (and there is in Sixteen Candles, he’s among the geeks), he’s not getting no lines, and he sure ain’t getting no play.

The Breakfast Club is by far my favorite John Hughes film, and, if it weren’t for Scorsese’s After Hours, it might be my favorite 80s film. (Excluding all things Spike, of course)

I know the film well enough to drive a person crazy by saying each and every line. And if you’re reading this, you know the film well enough not to need a summary.

Sure, there’s some crude humor but the jock doesn’t grunt in this film, the “prissy” character has depth…actually, everyone has depth and over the course of the day in detention, they learn how much they all have in common.

It’s smooth sailing. Regular high school hierarchy malarkey. Clair (Ringwald) & Andy (Emillio Estevez) are at the top of the high school pecking order. Anthony Michael Hall is, again, a geek — this time, his Brian is uncool. Bender’s (Judd Nelson) the troubled teen that’s going no where, and Allison (Ally Sheedy) might as well be non-existent. The drama lies in their interaction.

No racism there, right?

Until this…

After making an excursion to Bender’s locker, the crew take a bad turn that leads them to a gated off hallway. To divert Assistant Principal Vernon so that everyone can make it back to the library, Bender sacrifices himself by running down the halls singing “I want to be an airborne ranger.”

Vernon is livid as he tries to pin down where Bender is. Finally he catches up to him in the gym where Bender is dribbling a basketball. After being ordered out of the gym, Bender responds, “Don’t you want to hear my excuse? I’m thinking about trying out for a scholarship.”

Bender’s locked in a supply closet, escapes through the ceiling, falls into the library and he and the others blaze up his “doobage.”

Faux Blues plays as we see how each character handles their pull of marijuana. Whatever, right? Wrong. When Brian takes his hit, wearing sunglasses, he blurts out “Chicks…can not hold they smoke…that’s what it is…” in the worst, Black person accent ever. Growing up around white people in the 80s, you grew accustomed to these type of interpretations of how we talk.

It was so irritating that I’d rather them call me a nigger than do that shit. Mockery was always far worst than insult in my estimation. That move that Judd Nelson does, that voice that he takes on, and coupling that with the whole basketball scholarship, for younger me, that was a trigger to punch you in your face. When did Black folks even do that move? Or that “yo, yo, yo” thing that white people used to do? Where did these caricatures come from?

These things seem minor, but this type of stereotyping was relentless. I had all AP classes, was generally the only Black person, and dealt with this behavior on a day to day basis throughout high school. To see it in a movie felt so unnecessary. Why take a pot shot at Black folk when we’re not even in the movie and more than likely don’t even attend the fictional school?

Live as a Black person long enough in America though, these things begin to roll off your back. In a scale of being killed by police and having your water poisoned, it ranks low on assaults on our being.

I have no idea why I like Weird Science so much.

Of all the John Hughes movies, this has the least amount of story. There is absolutely nothing going on here. Two geeks find a way to make a woman with a computer. At first they’re shy with her but she breaks down their insecurities and defenses. Soon, they’re strolling the mall with her and gaining the attention of others.

This attention leads to them throwing a monster party…of course…where they grow enough courage to stand up to party wreckers and win the girls of their dreams. That’s really the movie in a nutshell.

But if it comes on, I’ll watch it.

Except this one damn scene.

Again, this scene was so unnecessary.

Gary (Hall) and Wyatt (Smith) create Lisa, as was mentioned above. I also mention that she breaks down their insecurities and defenses, right? Well, for some reason, in order to do this, she takes the boys to some dirty Blues bar populated by old Black men and what I’m guessing is Italian men...Latin? Not sure.

Gary tries to relate asking if the men get along with their parents. Kind of funny. Then he’s poured a little liquor and ordered to “drink it!” These are those scary Black men that we talked about before. But not scary like the Forest Whitaker character. He was more intimidating. These characters, slamming bottles and grabbing Gary up seem threatening.

CUT TO:

Drunk Gary, telling an older Black man, Fats, that he once was “insane for this crazy little eighth grade bitch.”

Here we go again with this pseudo Black talk. And, I get it. The humor is supposed to be this young suburban white kid vibing out, talking with this older Black man as his peer. But the assumption has to be made that this is how someone would talk to this man and that further, he wouldn’t be offended by a young person talking to him that way.

Imagine the reverse. A drunk Black kid, talking in what is presumed white talk to an older white man. Would that even be perceived as funny?

That scene was my cue to change the channel or fast forward for two minutes…or five.

The next few movies Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off stuck to the middle-class, priviliged white milieu and didn’t really veer off into the mockery of Black folk (or anyone else).

In retrospect, I think that has more to do with the times than any growth or change of opinion. The early to mid 80s was a time before political correctness, before terms like heteronormativity, intersectionality, normalizing and such were a part of mainstream language.

It was also a time where sexism, racism, & all them isms were far more overt. You had to have a thick skin growing up in the 80s. And maybe that’s why these films don’t bother me. They were like the dojo for what I had to deal with eight hours a day, everyday. And I’m pretty sure that when people talk glowingly about John Hughes wanting to make movies for teens…I did not fit that equation.

Luckily, by 1984 things began to slowly change. First there was the Cosby Show, a runaway hit on NBC and shortly thereafter Spike Lee took the world by storm with She’s Gotta Have It…but we’ll get into all of that later.

Right now I’m bout to fire up another 80s movie. I think I’ll watch War Games. (I don’t think there’s any racism in that…I don’t think there is…we’ll see)