It’s nearly impossible to think of the American coming-of-age film without thinking of John Hughes. The Chicago-born writer-director is practically synonymous with the genre, having created some of the most recognizable and memorable stories revolving around the lives of misfit, misunderstood youths. These stories — namely Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — facilitated the groundwork for contemporary films like it, introducing character archetypes and tropes about the social ecosystem of high school that would go on to define the modern teen flick.
While Hughes’ signature narrative framework took teens seriously and offered refreshing, honest insight into the emotional burdens and joyful recklessness of adolescence, it also suffered from reinforcing regressive gender and sexual politics that, even in the context of the 1980s, hasn’t aged particularly well. Of course, nothing made before, say, 2017 really does, but it’s still worth revisiting what made Hughes’ body of work so influential and how his reverent portraits of teen angst ultimately shaped current coming-of-age stories for the better.
Hughes’ 1984 directorial debut, Sixteen Candles, bears the brunt of being the most problematic and disjointed of his filmography, though it’s not without its charms. The premise follows insecure sophomore Samantha (Molly Ringwald), whose dysfunctional family members forget about her 16th birthday. She spends the day fantasizing about her crush, popular himbo Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), while trying to dodge an overconfident geek nicknamed Farmer Ted (Anthony Michael Hall), who obsessively pines after her. Like its successors, Hughes’s first feature constrains its action, drama, and comedy to small-scale settings, relying on Samantha’s desire for validation to drive the story instead of a traditional plot. He establishes a formula that positions parental figures as either oblivious and cavalier to the decisions made by their children, or caring and earnest in imparting wisdom to them; in this case, Samantha’s dopey yet loving father Jim (Paul Dooley) falls into the latter category. Most notably, Hughes weaves the narrative around the perspective of a teenage girl, a noticeable thematic departure from the already rare teen drama canon in American mainstream film at the time.
Upon release, Sixteen Candles received acclaim for its maturity in contrast to the rowdy, male-oriented entertainment that catered to young people like Bob Clark’s Porky’s and John Landis’ Animal House. In the following years, however, it received justifiable backlash for incorporating insensitive, stereotyping racial humor and date rape apologism into the fabric of the plot. The racism is most evident in Hughes’ otherizing portrayal of Long Duk Dong (Gedde Watanabe), the foreign exchange student who stays in Samantha’s house and whose exaggerated mannerisms and stilted line readings are treated as a grotesque punchline. What’s more opaque but nonetheless unsettling is the presentation of date rape as a ribald yet ultimately harmless joke. In the overextended aftermath of the film’s climactic house party, Jake tells Farmer Ted that his pristine girlfriend Caroline (Haviland Morris) is so inebriated that he could “violate her ten different ways.” Rather than partake in that horrific hypothetical, he encourages the geek to take her home instead in his dad’s Rolls Royce. When Ted and Caroline wake up together the next morning, Caroline believes the two had sex and her supposed enjoyment of being taken advantage of while unconscious and unable to give consent is implied to be good and funny.
Some may dismiss the severity of these scenes, claiming that it was just the way things were back then and that teenagers aren’t supposed to have firm moral compasses to begin with. That may be so, and Hughes certainly wasn’t the only filmmaker who conveyed this kind of crudeness, but it doesn’t quite make for a just rationalization nor does it excuse the prevalence of rape culture both in and environmental to 1980s media. For a story that ostensibly seemed to value the frustrations teen girls face in being equally objectified and ignored, it’s contradictory to use the degradation of another female character as sick comedy fodder. A shame too, since the film’s racist tendencies and sexist blindspots often overshadow its more quirky and lived-in qualities, like the sitcom antics of Samantha’s sister’s wedding or Farmer Ted’s attempt to befriend and impress Jake by fashioning martinis at the house party.
Glaring flaws aside, Sixteen Candles spawned a commercially viable template for teen comedies centered around young women, one that’s been perfected over the past few decades by films like Mark Waters’s Mean Girls, Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen, and Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. Similarly to Samantha, the protagonists in these particular stories search for acceptance amid rigid social divides by reckoning with their own insecurities. However, unlike Samantha, the arcs of these characters are shaded with much sharper complexity.
In Mean Girls, outsider Cady (Lindsay Lohan) infiltrates the top-tier clique at her new high school and embraces their hollow material and cosmetic aspirations only to later implode the group when she realizes how much power they really possess over the institution’s social hierarchy. The Edge of Seventeen also revolves around an outcast, Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld), but substitutes Mean Girls’ satirical overtones for a more understated approach, following its self-loathing heroine through her lonely, painful attempts to cultivate new relationships after a fallout with her best friend. Though Eighth Grade isn’t a high school movie, the bashful Kayla (Elsie Fisher) navigates equally chaotic terrain during her final week of middle school, desperately trying to overcome her nervous disposition by making confidence-boosting YouTube videos and socializing with her classmates.
Oddly enough, Kayla’s journey carries a few parallels to Samantha’s — the two share an ineffectual yet caring dad, an intense infatuation with a popular kid, and an uncomfortable encounter with a boy coming on to them in a car. However, Burnham accomplishes in Eighth Grade what Hughes faltered in achieving with Sixteen Candles, exploring the discomfort that comes with puberty and budding sexuality without being demeaning or facetious about it. Sixteen Candles may not have articulated these ideas in the most compelling or artful way, but as evidenced by the movies it inspired, it was definitely an effective starting point.
Following the critical and commercial success of Sixteen Candles, Hughes made The Breakfast Club in 1985, which improved upon its predecessor and contended with its preoccupation with social status to much greater effect. It set its story to a single day and whittled the various social spheres of high school down to a single group of teens: Andrew the athlete (Emilio Estevez), Claire the princess (Ringwald), Bender the bad boy (Judd Nelson), Brian the brain (Hall), and Allison the basket case (Ally Sheedy). The fivesome spend a fateful Saturday afternoon together in their school library for detention, under the supervision of the authoritarian assistant principal Vernon (Paul Gleason). Over the course of their confinement, they get to know one another and their initial assumptions gradually come undone.
The film begins on a hostile note, with Bender being the primary vibe ruiner by sexually harassing Claire, butting heads with Andrew and Vernon, and bullying Brian. Later on, though, the tone softens when everyone shares their disdain for authority and their resentment with the expectations set by their parents and their social coteries. Through uneven yet cathartic confessional monologues, Claire explains her struggle to overcome peer pressure in order to maintain her popularity, Andrew laments his inability to think for himself, Allison divulges her pathological lying, Bender talks about coming from an abusive household, and Brian reveals his suicidal ideation over a failing grade.
This notion that all teens go through difficulties regardless of their social and economic backgrounds feels pat and derivative now, but The Breakfast Club is likely the reason why. The film’s conceit seemed groundbreaking at the time because it was one of, if not the first high school movie to challenge how high school compartmentalizes students to fit into specific factions, resulting in a warped and narrow sense of empathy and perspective. Hughes concocts a fantasy where that limitation is dismantled and these students are forced to deal with the unexpected blowback of seeing each other for who they really are. At the same time, that intimacy helps them reorient their biases and briefly live out the possibility of friendship outside the invisible fetters of the high school hierarchy.
Significant as it was to deconstruct the inflexible caste system of high school, The Breakfast Club still wasn’t perfect. Once again, Hughes floundered when it came to the issue of consent (or rather, the lack thereof). During the film’s second act, Bender ducks underneath Claire’s table to hide from Vernon and touches her without her permission. Like in Sixteen Candles, we don’t actually see the act happen but we understand from Claire’s reaction that Bender crosses a boundary. Because the subtext of the scene remains ambiguous enough, it can be played off for laughs and outside of that moment, it is a funny scene. However, Hughes makes the mistake of redeeming Bender much too quickly afterwards, especially when Claire falls for him without ever demanding an apology for his treatment toward her. Again, this may seem like an annoying nitpick, but in a broader cultural context, that kind of moment plays an imperative role in normalizing those kind of inappropriate attitudes (Ringwald even noted this in an eloquent New Yorker piece from 2018).
It’s a good thing, then, a lot of coming-of-age media inspired by The Breakfast Club has learned from its mistakes. One standout example is Netflix’s Sex Education, which emulates Hughes’s thematic sensibilities and polishes his shortcomings. The series follows a diverse ensemble of British teens, all of whom belong to separate social cliques but essentially deal with overlapping issues around sexual desire. Along with paying homage to The Breakfast Club’s gang of high school archetypes and its steady balance of heightened and grounded drama, Sex Education represents a progressive correction of Hughes’s flawed blueprint. Female characters are given greater depth and agency, queer characters (nonexistent in Hughes’ films) are depicted with sensitivity, and ideas around consent and sexual ethics are articulated with much more nuance and clarity. The beguiling novelty of The Breakfast Club may have worn off, but its cultural legacy left enough of an impact to push other storytellers to do better by it.
In 1986, Hughes continued to refine his craft with his next project, Pretty in Pink. Although he is credited only as writer — Howard Deutch helmed the directorial chair this time — Hughes’ perceptive eye for high school social dynamics and ear for dialogue are still deeply felt. It also plays like a more trenchant version of Sixteen Candles: working-class Andie (Ringwald, radiant and in her element) falls for affluent nice guy Blane (Andrew McCarthy) while politely declining the eager advances of her best friend Duckie (Jon Cryer) and evading the sinister sneers of snobby yuppie Steff (James Spader).
Hughes regurgitates the love triangle of Sixteen Candles, with Duckie filling in as a goofy yet insufferable avatar for Farmer Ted, and Blane as a less douchey and more tactful version of Jake Ryan. The main conflict here, however, is that of class anxiety, in which Andie and Blane’s romance becomes a point of contention among their respective social circles. Both Duckie and Steff believe Andie and Blane shouldn’t pursue one another because of their class differences, when the two are really just projecting out of resentment over Andie’s rejection of them. That tension between their clashing worlds culminates during their first date when Andie tells Blane not to drive her home because she doesn’t want to see where she lives. Where The Breakfast Club flirted with the political implications of its characters’ interactions, Pretty in Pink renders them completely overt.
That said, Hughes’s tale of young, star-crossed lovers is at its most brilliant and least clunky when it doesn’t revolve around its central couple. Though it’s mostly a minor subplot, Andie’s relationship with her single down-on-his-luck father Jack (a quietly devastating Harry Dean Stanton) is the most heartfelt and affecting part of Pretty in Pink; she inhabits the role of a caretaker, while he avoids finding a job due to the lingering grief of his ex-wife’s absence. This source of friction between the two not only poignantly subverts Hughes’s usual indifferent parent-restless child dynamic, but also builds more dimension to Andie’s yearning for upward mobility. Additionally, Pretty in Pink benefits from Andie’s sweet friendship with her supportive and supremely cool co-worker Iona (Annie Potts). As the most interesting and likable supporting character, Iona helps Andie on her journey toward self-actualization by offering her warm, sisterly sage advice and a dress for the prom. Andie takes in Iona’s wisdom and hybridizes the outfit with one that Jack buys for her, symbolizing her authenticity and individuality in a sea of conformity and classism.
Despite these developments, Pretty in Pink’s cute and predictable prom ending doesn’t do Andie’s journey justice. Originally, she was supposed to end up with Duckie, but audiences at test screenings and Paramount executives were unhappy and confused with the pairing, leading Hughes to revise the finale so that Blane ended up with Andie instead. Hughes himself was disappointed with the alteration. Had he been able to maintain it, the original conclusion would’ve made for a much more daring resolution, one in which Andie’s rejection of Blane could be read as a repudiation of upper class gatekeeping. But regardless of whom she ended up with, Andie’s story was less about finding love and more about harnessing her self-worth on her own terms, not based on the expectations of others.
That pursuit of self-determination seems to be one of the major influences behind Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird. Expanding on Andie’s predicament around social and economic ascendance, Lady Bird’s title character (Saiorse Ronan) has a mission to attend college on the East Coast in order to literally and metaphorically break away from her authoritative mother (Laurie Metcalf) and humdrum, working-class life in Sacramento. As one of the most remarkable coming-of-age stories to come out in recent memory, Lady Bird echoes Pretty in Pink’s themes on social status, romance, and ambition just as much as it fills in the gaps it left. Lady Bird has Andie’s red hair, pink prom dress, sad dad, and a longing to live in a big, fancy house, but her motivations to escape don’t necessarily revolve around the men in her life, nor do they lead toward a conclusion where she gets the guy. Instead, Gerwig opts for something much more profound, showing how the path toward realizing our ideal self cannot be easily resolved by one person, place, or thing. Hughes only scratched the surface of that notion, carrying all the pieces with him but stumbling to connect them together.
Luckily, in the same year Pretty in Pink came out, Hughes released what would be his funniest, smartest, and most quotable teen-centric effort, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. The premise involves Ferris (Matthew Broderick), his neurotic best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck), and his girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara) playing hooky from school and performing the reality of adulthood without all the responsibilities and obligations that accompany it. The only people standing in Ferris’s way are his older sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) and his suspicious vice principal Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), both of whom begrudge his deft ability to swindle his way out of trouble.
Ferris Bueller is where Hughes’ creative vision for the teenage experience crystallized. All the formal and thematic elements that defined his work before — slapstick humor, righteous antagonism against authority, fourth-wall breaking, existential dread about the future — coalesce in a way that just works. By dramatizing the ultimate teen fantasy of skipping school, Hughes allows space for his central trio and the audience to enjoy a blissful ride of youthful indulgence, whether that’s watching a baseball game at Wrigley Field, appreciating art at a museum, or crashing a Chicago street parade with a rendition of “Twist and Shout.”
Much of the film’s success is also due to the magnetic chemistry and lovable performances from Broderick, Sara, and especially Ruck, who brings unexpected melancholy to his role as the depressed, long-suffering Robin to Ferris’s Batman. Some believe this isn’t even Ferris’s movie, since he’s the only character who seems to change the least, and that it’s really about Cameron’s journey in confronting his rage over his dysfunctional family and his jealousy over Ferris’s zest for life. Ferris’s sister Jeanie deserved more of a spotlight too, as her bitterness toward her brother and her thwarted endeavors to catch him made her character incredibly relatable, thanks in part to Grey’s phenomenal acting. But in positioning Ferris as the protagonist, Hughes forms a compelling argument emphasizing the importance of living life to its fullest while you’re young, a principle that Hughes bookends through Ferris’s voice.
Attempting to replicate that earnest ethos following Ferris Bueller has led to some mixed results. The most egregious instance would be the ill-conceived 2014 film Expelled, starring Vine sensation Cameron Dallas as a charmless Ferris knockoff whose carefree lifestyle reads as more obnoxious than appealing. Fortunately, there are plenty of other current Hughesian stories that capture and even elevate Ferris’s endearing exuberance for rebellion and love for his friends. Greg Mottola’s Superbad, Kay Cannon’s Blockers, and Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart pushed their dorky heroes to celebrate the experience of being young, wild, and free before their high school careers end. Will Gluck’s Easy A gave us Emma Stone as a plucky 17-year-old whose give-no-fucks attitude launches her from a nobody to a somebody, and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower showed how friendship can be both thrilling and deeply healing.
Hughes’s teen oeuvre was never perfect, but its sophisticated and introspective glimpses into the frustrations, humiliations, and occasional ecstasies of growing up were often more than enough to offset its defects. Like most cis white male artists who create instrumental, if not somewhat questionable work, Hughes should be praised for cultivating a reliable cinematic language as much as criticized for perpetuating ideas around sex and gender that were shallow at best, incredibly offensive at worst. Holding these two contradictions in tandem is precisely what makes both Hughes and our own teenage experiences so compelling to come back to. Watching Hughes’s movies as a preteen, I was enamored by the idea of adolescence, unaware of how romanticized Hughes made it seem. Reviewing his work now with a more critical eye as a somewhat jaded postgrad, I feel both a pleasant nostalgia for and a visceral embarrassment of my teen years. Much like Hughes’ films, we tend to judge our younger selves very harshly in retrospect, but there’s just as much relief to be found in regarding those memories as pivotal to shaping us into the people we were meant to be.
