Test screenings are standard in Hollywood
now, but they were not quite as widely employed in the mid-1980s,
which makes all the more remarkable what happened to John
Hughes’ 1986 teen classic, Pretty in Pink. Pretty
in Pink is a fairy tale of Andie (Molly Ringwald), a girl from
the literal wrong side of the tracks, who attempts a relationship
with the wealthy Blaine (Andrew McCarthy), much to the chagrin
of her poor friend, Duckie (Jon Cryer). Succumbing to the
pressure of his rich friends, Blaine breaks his date with
Andie for the prom. As the ending was originally shot – reserved
today only in the tie-in novel, which had been pressed before
the screenings – Andie attends the prom anyway, out
of defiance. She meets Duckie outside, and they enter together.
H.B. Gilmour writes:
All activity on the dance floor stopped. . . . Andie and
Duckie stood proud in the silent ballroom, all eyes on them.
And then, finally, someone moved. The crowd parted. And Blaine
McDonough walked slowly toward them. . . . Andie took [Duckie’s]
hand and walked him out to the dance floor. The crowd separated
around them again, leaving Andie and Duckie alone at the
center of the floor. . . . Blaine thought Andie had made
this night a real graduation night for him. He watched her,
his eyes brimming with pleasure at her graceful beauty.
According to Jonathan Bernstein in Pretty in Pink: The
Golden Age of Teenage Movies, test audiences were upset
by an ending in which Andie’s
and Duckie’s “poor but honest moral superiority
gnawed deep into the corrupt souls of the richies who were
forced to deal with their own worthlessness.” Weaned
on optimistic Reagan-era perceptions of social mobility,
the audience “wanted to see the poor girl get the rich
boy of her dreams. They didn’t
care about the dignity of the oppressed.” Hughes caved
in and changed the ending, and the poor girl got the rich
boy. A year later, though, the downtrodden of the American
high school got their revenge in Hughes’ Some Kind
of Wonderful, marking a shift in attitudes toward the
rich, the poor, and the possibility of their peaceful coexistence.
In the year between Pretty in Pink and Some
Kind of Wonderful,
something made it permissible for a poor boy to choose a
poor girl and acceptable, even heroic, for people to keep
their “proper” station. This trend downward,
visible in the difference between these films but indicative
of the era’s teen cinema in general, coincided with
a burgeoning public cynicism that clouded usually positive
perceptions of upward mobility and the attainment of wealth
in America. The interplay between the cinema and the economic
landscape of the Reagan years is deepened by virtue of Reagan’s
own very personal ties to acting and show-business. Movies
had made Reagan, and his image was in turn indelibly stamped
on American cinema during his tenure in office. First in
the guise of economic conservatism and relentless optimism,
representations of class and social mobility evolved considerably
in films of this period, often mirroring the economic and
political landscape at the time. The unbridled optimism of
Wall Street during Reagan’s first years in office,
followed by problems that arose after the start of his second
term – insider-trading scandals, record-level unemployment,
Iran-Contra – find themselves reproduced in an increasingly
cynical, cinematic portrayal of class, wealth, and social
mobility toward the end of the decade. Pretty in Pink and
Some Kind of Wonderful offer a convenient focal point for
reading this national and representational rupture, a moment
that illuminates what will later be seen as the malaise of
Generation X, the pivotal point at which it became creditable
not to rise.
I. Reaganomic Optimism and the
National
Fantasy of Upward Mobility
When I was in grade school, they told me that when
I grew up I could be whatever I wanted. And I believed them. — Emilio
Estevez in Wisdom (1987)
“The people love Ronald Reagan,” wrote journalist Max
Hastings of the London Times in 1986. He went on to quote
one of his colleagues, British journalist Steve Hayward: “Reagan
understands, as our media and intellectual elite do not,
that the most prevalent feature of American character is
forward-looking optimism.” Reagan himself personified
the central tenets of the economic policy that would win
the trust of most Americans: a firm belief in the possibility
of social advancement, the inevitable reward of hard work,
and the virtuous pursuit of wealth. Reagan was his own
narrative of upward mobility, having grown up in a family
that was,
in his own words, “poor,” and his autobiography
details his rise. Reagan’s embodiment of the fairy-tale
rise prompted Lou Cannon of the Washington Post to write
that the “obligatory mythology for modern Republican
Presidents requires that they be of humble origin, preferably
born in a small town, and that they share a vision of an
America redeemed by the values of hard work and upward
striving. Ronald Wilson Reagan qualifies.” Despite
his family’s
poverty, Reagan “believed that success was there
for the taking,” and he carried with him from the
outset the optimism that would characterize his presidency.
This optimism bolstered a positive perception of wealth
from the first moments of Reagan’s inauguration on January
20, 1981, an inauguration made all the more captivating because
of political circumstances (American hostages in Iran had
been guaranteed release that very day). Haynes Johnson points
out that “never in all the previous inaugurations had
a president come to power under such intensely publicized
circumstances.” Reaganites unanimously delivered a
clear message of glitter and gold, and The Washington
Post’s extensive coverage of the inaugural weekend pointed repeatedly
to the opulence that characterized the events. Donnie Radcliffe
wrote, “The Republican aristocracy took over Washington
this weekend, making it safe again to put on diamonds and
designer gowns.” Elisabeth Bumiller added, “Forget
the Republican cloth coat. This year: mink.”
But the inauguration masked a darker national truth. One
week prior, Newsweek had proclaimed in enormous
letters on its front cover, “Economy in Crisis.” A
public opinion poll from ABC News on February 20th, one
month to
the day after Reagan’s inauguration, revealed heightened
public awareness of the dire state of the American economy.
Despite the acknowledgement that conditions were worsening,
though, the polls indicated an even firmer belief that
it would strengthen in the coming months. Responses to
other
questions on the same survey situate the attitudes of those
polled within the rubric of American class perceptions.
Fully 89% of those polled claimed familiarity with Reagan’s
proposed economic policy, which involved a series of three
tax cuts for those in higher income brackets. Respondents
overwhelmingly opined that the proposed cuts would hurt
the poor and benefit the wealthy. Despite this imbalance,
a vast
majority of 72% approved of these measures regardless
of who would be hurt. Reaganomics, if the polls
are to be believed, was embraced by a count of about three-to-one,
numbers that offer key insights into the perception of
class
and the public’s class allegiance at the outset of
Reagan’s first term.
The optimism reflected by Reagan and by the poll numbers
was initially bolstered by an actual improvement in the
nation’s
economy. Six months into his first term, Fortune magazine
contentedly reported that “after-tax incomes should
climb briskly over the period ahead – 4% a year in
real terms compared with a 1% rate in the last year and
a half.” The outlook was even stronger by the end
of 1981, and Fortune’s year-end panel of
experts on the economy, including Fed. Chairman Alan Greenspan,
prophesied
a “robust recovery.” Given the rosy path envisioned
by economists, it is no coincidence that, according to
Haynes Johnson, “the Reagan years saw the reemergence
of luxury as a national goal.” The desire to rise,
which some consider a staple characteristic of American
culture, had
an emboldened authority reflected in the films of this period.
II.
Cinematic Optimism and the Narrated Fantasy of Upward Mobility
I’ve never seen such a vulgar display of wealth in
my life! How do I get one?
— Andrew McCarthy to Rob Lowe in Class (1983)
In
her 1986 review of Pretty in Pink,
Pauline Kael makes a statement that usefully frames the
cinematic portrayal
of social mobility during the Reagan years:
In the movies of the twenties and thirties, it was common
for heroines (and heroes) to be ashamed of their poverty
and to feel a vast social gap between them and the secure
rich. But in the years after the Second World War, as
people moved up in the society, the movie fantasy of
marrying
rich lost its romantic appeal. Has this fantasy been
returning in eighties movies such as “Flashdance,” “An
Officer and a Gentleman,” “Valley Girl,” and “Pretty
in Pink” . . . ? Whatever the reason, class consciousness
has been making a comeback, but not in any kind of realistic
or political context; what we’re getting is strictly
the fantasy theme of love bridging the gap.
Outside of the marriage plot, upward mobility organizes
a multitude of other films from the 1980s: All the
Right Moves (1983), Trading
Places (1983), Risky Business (1983),
Class (1983), The Breakfast Club (1985), Brewster’s Millions (1985), Back
to School (1986), and Down and Out in Beverly
Hills (1986). In these films, questions of social mobility
are raised, but the optimism (what Kael calls “fantasy”)
proves too strong, and any real issues broached are either
blatantly ignored or thoroughly sugared over.
Studios made numerous movies for teens in the 1980s,
largely due to what Bernstein terms a sudden rise in “adolescent
spending power,” the side-effect of a general economic
boom. (The PG-13 rating, introduced in 1985, testifies
to an increase in movie-going teens at the time.) Narratives
depicting an upward rise often focus the age at which
we
make life-impacting decisions about our future, the Bildungsroman story
leached through the Horatio Alger bedrock. Bruce Robbins’ work
on what narratives of upward mobility reveal about class
relations and perceptions is particularly instructive.
Robbins’ reading
of Good Will Hunting makes the lingering presence
of Alger in the film quite clear, but his attention to
structural
specifics provides a foundation for reading social mobility
in various contexts. For example, the character identified
as “the therapist” in Good Will Hunting is
a pivotal one in that story and others. Robbins refers
elsewhere
to “mentors, counselors, benefactors, fairy godmothers,
gatekeepers, surrogate parents,” the donors adduced
by Vladimir Propp as crucial elements of folktales. Robbins
also considers larger social contexts of the upward rise
and measures the gap between fantasies of national advancement
and the harsher realities. Such narratives are important,
Robbins argues, because they disclose perceptions of
class relations and ultimately testify to the permanence
or permeability
of class.
Upward-mobility films in the early 1980s tend toward
either industrial escape or metropolitan finance. All
the Right
Moves, Flashdance, and An Officer and
a Gentleman all
emerge within this first framework and laud the movement
from
industry to middle-class comfort, or at least the prospect
of it.
In All the Right Moves, a high-school football
player (Tom Cruise) wants out of his small Pennsylvania
steel
town,
and his key to escape is a college athletic scholarship.
He explicitly
details his desire for realignment within the process
of production, from proletarian to managerial class,
from
steel-mill worker to engineer, and, though the usual
hurdles are employed,
the conclusion makes everything right. All the Right
Moves and similar films that followed it, like Flashdance and
An Officer and a Gentleman, register their disgust
with manual
labor. The films’ approbation of upward mobility
is explicit, usually in the positive reactions of those
who
remain behind. In perhaps the most gratuitous example
of this, the spontaneous applause of Debra Winger’s
co-workers in the factory, when Richard Gere walks in
and quite literally
carries her out to a better life, reassures the audience
that the rise is good.
On Wall Street, a film like Trading
Places typifies the optimistic depiction of such possibilities.
In
Trading
Places, two wealthy
brothers, the Dukes (Ralph Bellamy and Don Ameche), simultaneously
engineer the downfall of one of their brightest brokers
(Dan Aykroyd) and the rise of a homeless con-man (Eddie
Murphy),
all for a one-dollar bet. When the two victims anticipate
the scheme and exact revenge, their weapon of choice
is the stock market. Using inside information, they bankrupt
the
Dukes on the trading floor, simultaneously making millions
for themselves with capital provided by a butler (Denholm
Elliott) and a prostitute (Jamie Lee Curtis). Perhaps
most
telling is that the worst punishment the film can devise
for the Dukes is impoverishment. Trading Places was prescient
in its portrayal of insider trading, a plague that would
be exposed only later in Reagan’s presidency, but
its general fixation on finance is typical for its time.
On Ferris
Bueller’s (Matthew Broderick) day off from school,
for example, one of the few places he chooses to hang
out, right after Wrigley Field and the Sears Tower, is
the stock
exchange. The camera lingers, transfixed, on the changing
numbers, while Ferris and his friends discuss their future.
In other movies of 1986 and 1987 – e.g., Quicksilver and The
Secret of My Success – as in Hollywood
in general, the market provides the means of punishing
evil,
rewarding
good, and offering a ladder to social climbers.
Reagan-era Wall Street was dominated by flamboyant arbitrageurs
like Ivan Boesky, a bestselling author (Merger Mania)
and a vocal fan of greed. In a 1985 commencement address
at
Berkeley, Haynes Johnson reports that Boesky “was cheered as
he said, ‘Greed is alright.’” Oliver Stone’s
Wall Street (1987) considered the possibility that Boesky’s
gains were ill-gotten. Boesky was not formally charged with
insider trading until November of 1986, but it is clear that
insider trader Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) is modeled
on him, right down to Gekko’s speech on the virtues
of greed. Wall Street is not Gekko’s story, though,
but that of Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen), a young, upwardly-mobile
broker with working-class roots who, at one point, informs
his working-class father (Martin Sheen) that “there
is no nobility in poverty anymore.” Gekko takes Fox
under his wing and pressures him to gather illegal information.
The market is Fox’s downfall, once he is caught, but
it is also still his savior; Fox’s own network of investors
successfully defeats Gekko’s buyout of the airline
that employs Fox’s father. Wall Street still trembles
at the power of the market, but its message is slightly muddled
and its morality more complex. It is miles away from the
absolute glorification of trading in Trading Places, or even
in Quicksilver one year prior, but it clearly comes at a
conflicted time. By 1987, public opinion of Reagan and what
he represented was in flux. Faith in the almighty market
as an engine for upward mobility, and fantasies of class-permeability
in general, pervade American cinema in the early 1980s, and
John Hughes enters this dynamic when he lets the poor guy
get the rich prom queen in The Breakfast Club (1985), and
the poor girl get the rich guy in Pretty in Pink. However,
the differences between Pretty in Pink and Hughes’ next
movie, Some Kind of Wonderful, chart the starker pessimism
of the decade’s end.
III. Reality Bites
You want the truth? You want the plain truth? You’re
over.
— Eric Stoltz to rich rival in Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)
Pretty in Pink and Some
Kind of Wonderful bookend a rupture in the portrayal of class in American
cinema
of the
1980s. Pretty in Pink was released in February 1986, and Some
Kind of Wonderful opened exactly a year later. Without
insisting
on a strict equation of public mood swings and cinematic
trends, it appears that, somewhere in between these
two films, the Reagan sheen had worn thin. The economic disillusionment
that took hold became a constitutive element of the
very teenage generation that many of the movies of the 1980s – and
certainly those of John Hughes – targeted.
In May 1986, Wall Street received the first of several
blows that would change its course. According to Gordon
Henry writing
for Time, a 33-year-old mergers-and-acquisitions specialist
named Dennis Levine became the subject of “the largest
insider-trading complaint ever filed by the SEC.” Wall
Street envisioned a scandal on par with Watergate, because
investigators – and the press – publicly concluded
that, as Susan Dentzer reported in Newsweek, he “may
have plugged into a network of financial community tipsters,
possibly arbitrageurs…or other sources with access
to material nonpublic information.” Everything indicated
that the cheating was widespread, and it was Levine who ultimately
fingered Boesky that fall. The fate of the stock market during
the following year spelled disaster for public confidence
in Reagan’s economic stewardship, as it was generally
agreed that the administration had let the market run out
of control. The Dow wavered early in 1987, finally climbing
to record heights in September. The following Monday, however,
it suffered the largest single-day loss in its history, roughly
twice the drop of 1929 that had ushered in the Great Depression.
Reagan’s approval ratings of 68% at the outset of his
first term fell to 57% when the Levine scandal broke, and
they continued to slide. By mid-1987, the Iran-Contra scandal – broken
when an American cargo plane was shot down over Nicaragua
in October of 1986 – and the collapsing market had
eviscerated the president’s numbers, which ended
a full 20% lower than they were when he entered the White
House.
Polls in November 1987 equated Iran-Contra with Watergate,
the same terms Wall Street had used to describe its own
scandals.
Bernstein’s assessment of teen movies in the 1980s
contrasts the optimism of that decade with the pessimism
of its predecessor, with “the fear, paranoia, frustration
and uncertainty of America post-JFK, post-Vietnam and post-Watergate” (3).
The 1980s certainly began on an optimistic note, but
American cinema after about 1986 records a different
story.
IV.
To Rise or Not to Rise?
To be honest, trying to look like a yuppie is pretty
exhausting. I think I might even give up the whole
ruse – there’s
no payoff. I might even become a bohemian like these
three. Maybe move into a cardboard box on top of the
RCA building;
stop eating protein; work as live bait at Gator World.
Why, I might even move out here to the desert.
— Douglas Coupland, Generation
X (emphases his)
Newsweek’s David Ansen
pulls no punches in his review of Some Kind of
Wonderful.
John Hughes, he writes, “must
have written Some Kind of Wonderful so fast
he failed to notice he’d written it once before,
under the title, ‘Pretty
in Pink.’ Only the sexes have been changed.” Benjamin
DeMott, in The Imperial Middle, makes a
similar pronouncement, claiming that “the story
is the same.” In
many ways, Ansen and DeMott are correct: the number
of obvious
parallels between the two films demonstrates that
Hughes is simply cashing in on an established formula.
Both movies
feature an outcast high-schooler vying for the affections
of someone from the other side of the tracks, tracks
which are actually included in the opening shots
of both films.
The parallels in question underscore some fundamental
differences, though, and these differences ultimately
speak to a clear
shift in perspective. They begin even with the films’ soundtracks
and the role that the soundtracks play in the construction
of the narrative. The soundtrack of Pretty in
Pink,
for example, prizes wistful tunes like OMD’s “If
You Leave,” Nick
Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (“Wouldn’t
it be nice to be on your side/Even if it was for
just one day?”), and the Smiths’ “Please
Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.” The
title track – “Pretty
in Pink” by The Psychedelic Furs – thematizes
class difference, telling of a poor woman and her
wealthy lover. The soundtrack to Some Kind of
Wonderful,
by contrast,
revolves around the Rolling Stones song, “Miss
Amanda Jones,” from which the lower-class protagonist’s
love interest takes her name. The tune is ubiquitous
in the film and chronicles a wealthy girl’s
movement down the social ladder.
Some Kind of Wonderful clearly represents Amanda’s
(Lea Thompson) involvement with Keith (Eric Stoltz) as a
movement downward, and, because of this, we can categorize
her as “rich,” as Ansen and DeMott also do, even
if her social status is deliberately ambiguous. The situation
is already more complex than in Pretty in Pink; Some
Kind of Wonderful is not the fairy tale of a poor boy courting
a rich girl, but rather of a poor boy courting a similarly
poor girl doing her best to escape poverty. The wealthy Blaine
in Pretty in Pink ultimately proves himself worthy of Andie,
but Some Kind of Wonderful refuses to redeem any of its more
comfortable students. Despite her perceived status, Amanda
Jones is poor. “Do you know where she’s from?” Keith
asks, and Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson) acknowledges that
Amanda is indeed from “our sector, but she runs with
the rich and the beautiful, which is guilt by association.” The
ending of the film resolves the ambiguity by having Amanda
abandon her upward social mobility in favor of individual
strength. This final act justifies the unmediated scorn of
upward struggle embodied by Watts throughout the film. As
DeMott points out, the film’s conclusion permits both
Keith and Amanda to win, but DeMott’s reading of this
conclusion as an erasure of class misses the important point
that the only class erased is the upper one, the same class
that Pretty in Pink’s ending embraced one year
earlier. This crucial difference is, on closer examination,
reflected
in every possible point of comparison between the two
films and relentlessly troubles the notion that Pretty
in Pink and Some
Kind of Wonderful reflect similar paradigms
of social class and mobility.
If we read these two films as stories of upward mobility – as
the fairy tales whose pattern such stories follow – then
the role of the mentors or donor figures in Pretty
in Pink and Some
Kind of Wonderful becomes important. In both movies,
these enablers encapsulate the film’s overall conception
of class and its rigidity. Andie’s mentor in Pretty
in Pink is Iona (Annie Potts), the Protean manager of the
record store at which Andie works; she is Andie’s constant
friend and source of advice. The first shot of Iona shows
her in punker leather gear, her hair spiked, but she next
sports a towering beehive hairdo as she croons along with
the Association’s “Cherish.” Finally, as
she gives Andie a gown for the prom, Iona is dressed conservatively,
readying herself for a date whom she admits is a “yuppie.” This
transformation mimics Andie’s own romantic aspirations
even as it encapsulates the entire movie. Keith’s facilitator
in Some Kind of Wonderful, the skin-headed delinquent Duncan
(Elias Koteas), remains, for the duration of the movie, precisely
as we first see Iona in Pretty in Pink, clad in punker leather
and looking intimidating. After meeting him in detention,
Duncan ultimately engineers Keith’s entire date with
Amanda Jones, gaining the couple entrance into the art museum
where his father is a security guard, and having one of his
henchmen break open the gate to the Hollywood Bowl for them.
Duncan magically appears at the party of Amanda’s wealthy
ex-boyfriend, Hardy Jenns (Craig Sheffer), the film’s
climax, where he physically intervenes to help Keith and
Amanda against her rich friends’ interference. Duncan
and Iona perform similar narrative functions, but Duncan
never becomes a yuppie. His presence in Some
Kind of Wonderful is a constant nod to the high school’s disgruntled
untouchables.
The final showdown in Some Kind of Wonderful further
separates it from Pretty in Pink and signals another
departure from
the upward-mobility format. Apart from the protagonists
and their close friends (Duckie and Watts), the other
members of their social class involve themselves
to different degrees.
Andie’s friends – save Duckie – mysteriously
disappear thirty minutes into the movie, obviating the need
to include them in the conclusion of the film. All the audience
hears from them is, “Andie are you going out with a
rich man?” before they vanish and Andie stands oddly
alone. Duckie, unimpressed with her decision to cross the
class barrier, protests, “They’re gonna use everybody,
including you,” but by the end he admits, “You’re
right, Andie, he’s not like the others.” In Some
Kind of Wonderful, Keith has no friends but Watts as the
movie starts, but the disenfranchised come out in full support
once he is linked with Amanda Jones. Issues of class segregation
give way to vicarious male sexual fulfillment (“Hey,
by the way, congratulations, dude, man, she’s smoking”)
and pure class revenge, as when Duncan crudely says to Keith, “Congratulations
on your latest coup…Anytime somebody from the outside
lifts a woman from a guat like Jenns, man, we can all find
cause to rejoice…Punch her apron one time for me.” A
riot-like class frustration animates the small army that
supports Duncan at Jenns’ party, where they intervene
to protect Keith. Whereas, in Pretty in Pink, Andie’s
fellow working-class students simply disappear, Some
Kind of Wonderful paints the working-class support for Keith in
vengeful terms. The poor do not want to become or even avoid
the rich in Hughes’ version of 1987; rather,
they want to destroy them. The irremediable anger is
commensurate
with
a plot structure that refuses to resolve class conflict.
If the final showdown and reconciliation in Pretty
in Pink occur at the very institutional prom, the adult
institutions
are powerless to mediate in Some Kind of Wonderful.
What
remains is a private party with no supervision.
The imaginary geography of upward mobility, the physical
space in which the romantic coupling of the poor
protagonist and her or his rich love interest is
permitted to occur,
also shifts between 1986 and 1987. In Pretty
in Pink,
neutral space is the only locale for inter-class
romance. On their
first date, Blaine and Andie attempt a party at his
wealthy friend’s enormous house and a working-class nightclub,
and both crowds refuse them. Blaine takes Andie home, where
the goodnight kiss and their first real connection take place
not on Andie’s porch or in Blaine’s BMW, but
on the street, between the two zones. For their next on-screen
meeting, they are banished to the stables of Blaine’s
parents’ country club. When Blaine approaches Andie
in her corner of the schoolyard, he feels uncomfortable,
saying, “I don’t think I’m very popular
out here.” Likewise, when Andie confronts him in the
hallways of the school, he asks, “Can we talk about
this later?” This trend, built up throughout the film,
relaxes in the re-shot ending, when Duckie is romantically
approached by a rich girl on the dance floor at the prom.
Conversely, when Duncan’s working-class army attempts
a similar move at Jenns’ party at the end of Some Kind
of Wonderful, the rich girls roll their eyes in disgust,
and – however humorous the presentation – there
will be no conciliation, no common ground. Significantly,
the only kiss that Keith and Amanda share takes place on
the stage of the empty Hollywood Bowl, all emphasis on the
supreme superficiality of the event in a space of performance,
in a city of illusion and transitory celebrity. By the film’s
end, the link between the poor boy and the apparently
rich girl is erased when Keith chooses to close the
film out
with his lower-class, tomboy friend Watts in his arms.
Some Kind of Wonderful’s moratorium on upward mobility
reverses the happy ending of Pretty in Pink and is echoed
unendingly in the decade that follows. This rupture was partnered,
at the time of its filming, with another change in John Hughes’ usual
mode of operation. Until Some Kind of Wonderful, every movie
Hughes had made had been shot in or around Chicago, Illinois,
where he was raised. “Chicago is what I am,” Hughes
said during interviews to promote Ferris Bueller’s
Day Off in the summer of 1986, as Sharon Barrett reported
in the Chicago Times; Hughes went on to reiterate that he
would continue filming his movies in Chicago. However, within
weeks of that interview, locations for Some Kind
of Wonderful were finalized in San Pedro and Hollywood, California. This
move may not seem significant, but it represented a stunning
change from established form, since the vast majority of
upward-mobility stories mentioned above focus on the Steel
Belt or the Big Apple, loci of blue-collar industry or of
white-collar Wall Street. Once Hughes stepped westward, he
abandoned the teen-film genre completely, but the films and
music that soon emerged did so in the western states. The
dark comedy, Heathers (1989), a classic of teen anger that
launched the careers of both Shannen Doherty and Christian
Slater, takes place in southern California. Cameron Crowe’s
Say Anything (1989) and Singles (1993), and the emergence
of grunge music and its slacker ethos in the form of Nirvana,
Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains took place in Seattle. Songwriter
Beck wrote the Generation X anthem, “Loser,” in
Los Angeles in 1992, after moving back there from New York
City (its classic chorus repeats: “Soy un perdedor/I’m
a loser, baby”). Richard Linklater chronicled the X-ers
of Slacker (1991) and the X-er prototypes of Dazed
and Confused (1993) in Austin, and Ben Stiller’s Reality
Bites (1994)
was also set there. Teen movies generally stayed west, until
Kevin Smith moved them to the Garden State in Clerks (1994)
and Mallrats (1995), and Larry Clark’s disturbing Kids (1995) took place in New York City. Hughes’ move
to Los Angeles for Some Kind of Wonderful somehow coincided
with the extrication of the teen movie from the upward
mobility
story.
Ultimately, reading Some Kind of Wonderful as a narrative
of upward mobility emphasizes the manner in which
it refuses such mobility. The ending to Some
Kind of Wonderful is
so different from the final moments of Pretty
in Pink that we
have to wonder how Newsweek’s David Ansen actually
could have watched both films to their conclusion and
still insisted that they were the same. In two works
so evidently
about class and the lines between classes, it matters
very much that in one, the poor girl gets the rich
boy, and
in the other, the poor boy selects instead a member
of his own
class. DeMott, who ignores the narrative structure
of the two films, likewise misses this key distinction.
The ending
that Hughes had tried to hitch to Pretty in Pink in
1986
had been shot down by his test audiences; one year
later, it was given the green light, grossing a respectable
$19 million on a miniscule production budget.
Bernstein opines, in his comments on Some Kind
of Wonderful, that it lacked the “youthful naiveté” of
its predecessor: “The picture just seems a little tired.” Typically,
films that dealt with social mobility or inter-class romance
into the early 1990s did so either cynically or in a manner
that empowered the lower-class characters. Consider Say
Anything,
in which an entire scholastic rise is rendered dubious when
the protagonist’s father is incarcerated for having
supported her with embezzled money. In Mystic
Pizza (1989),
Julia Roberts, a waitress, informs her Porsche-driving lover
that he is “not good enough” for her; at the
end of the film, she leaves him in the kitchen to perform
assembly-line cooking tasks while she relaxes on the porch.
Pretty Woman (1990) sees Roberts forcing the acrophobic Richard
Gere to climb her fire escape to win her back. These pictures
play on the same wish-fulfillment fantasies omnipresent in
the films examined above from the early years of Reagan’s
presidency, but class relations have shifted. The rich
boys are made to work for the love of their poor girlfriends,
who dictate the terms.
When measured against the economic and political
background that informed them, American cinematic
representations
of class and social mobility in the early 1980s appear
generally
to mirror their environment. The critical blindness
to a crucial difference between two of the more prominent
examples
of such representation in the teen subgenre – Pretty
in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful – whitewashes a
moment of national rupture and misses a critical opportunity.
In and around 1986, the national psyche had shifted from
the money-driven optimism and positive perception of the
rich that prevailed during the early Reagan years to a pessimistic
economic outlook and lost trust in the very president who
had embodied the former optimism and materialism. The mid-
to late-1980s approached the topic of wealth and its attainment
with a great deal more suspicion. This jaded perspective
of upward mobility becomes an integral part of the ethos
of Generation X, the generation raised on movies like those
of John Hughes; the so-called “slacker” culture
of the early 1990s represents just the most extreme
example of this disillusion.
September 2006
From guest contributor Geoffrey Baker |