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In the 1980s, filmmaker John Hughes completely transformed how we tell stories about teenagers on-screen. Oh, to be a teenager. That near decade in which we are supposed to do so much, including get good grades in school, learn about love and relationships and decide on a future for ourselves, all the while trying to balance the feeling of a whole world developing inside that no one sees, only ourselves. Yes, and enjoy youth while we have it, too. It doesn’t matter where in the world you live, being a teenager comes with the pains of growing up for everybody. And no one managed to capture all that – and, later, to shape adolescence into what it still is today – as John Hughes did with his unforgettable films.
One of the defining filmmakers of the 1980s, Hughes became an icon precisely due to his sensibility when dealing with our growing years. They tend to be the most painful for anyone, and the most complex to portray. Before him, teenagers were seen in a rather stereotypical fashion, as simple moody and angsty proto-people that complain about everything. It was his understanding of the world we grow up in – especially the idyllic life the middle class tries to lead – that allowed him to put adolescence in such compelling perspectives like the ones in The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Sixteen Candles, and so on.
Sure, he doesn’t limit himself to that, either, with iconic holiday movies like Plains, Trains and Automobiles and Home Alone. But when we think about him, we think about growing up, it’s inevitable. Let’s see why.
John Hughes Knew Growing Up Isn’t Rocket Science
Coming of age is made of rituals. In the ancient cultures, there was an exact moment in which someone ceased to be a child to become an adult in the eyes of their community, usually a ceremony. The line isn’t so well-drawn in modern life, but we still have our rituals, come to think about it. School dances, prom, tests, detention, all of those are stages through which we must pass in the way of becoming fully functioning parts of society, right?
What most of these stages have in common is that they take place inside school life, so it’s only natural that most of Hughes’ characters are high school students, dealing with the many pressures of it in their own particular ways. What sets them aside, though, is how relatable their problems really are. Teenagers don’t carry the weight of the world upon their shoulders, although it may seem that way to them, so it’s important to put their issues in perspective. They are just regular people, so it should be easy to relate to them. In that sense, Hughes wrote teens that were real, with relatable issues and concerns.
In The Breakfast Club, for example, as the group bonds during detention, they wonder if they will grow up to become their parents. Pretty In Pink sees Molly Ringwald‘s Andie undergoing a journey of self-acceptance disguised as a crush and a school dance, while Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has Matthew Broderick and Alan Ruck confronting the reality that their teenage years are the ones where they’re supposed to enjoy life, as they are relatively free of responsibilities yet.
Those are relatable issues, things we all have had to go through in life, some sooner, some later. But in film, Hughes was the first major filmmaker to depict this stage of life in a sensible and dedicated way. His characters weren’t generally stereotypical, and even when they seemed so, the stories deconstructed and molded them into more than that – and that’s what growing up is all about. Few movies go deeper into teenage psyche like The Breakfast Club, and for anyone who grep up watching it, it’s impossible not to relate to at least one of their characters. They are perfect stereotypes as they enter the school library for detention because perfect definitions are easy to fall into, a safe shell to hide behind. As it progresses, though, they realize they are much more than that…
John Hughes Movies Are Filled With Life Lessons
It’s really difficult to argue with this quote by Ally Sheedy‘s Allison Reynolds in The Breakfast Club. Eventually, everybody must wear their big person shoes, and it does feel as if we just lost a part of us forever. What’s worse is that we don’t even notice when it happens – when we realize, it’s already too late. But Hughes’ work did something for the generations that grew up with it, that no one else did: it taught them not to kill the joy in this process.
One of life’s greatest inevitabilities are the responsibilities that come with growing up. You have to work, you have to get married, you have to pay your bills, and so on. When it hits us, this realization does feel like our hearts died a little, doesn’t it? But growing up doesn’t have to be a pain in all its aspects. Quite the contrary, most of that process happens way earlier than we imagine, and more constantly than we would have liked. In fact, we can see it happening to most of John Hughes’ most iconic characters. Yes, even Matthew Broderick’s Ferris Bueller.
Growing up is all about responsibility, and that’s the one single topic that permeates all of Hughes’ movies about teenagers. The three keys to understand this are The Breakfast Club, Pretty In Pink and, why not, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. They all make their characters face the reality of growing up one way of another, but they add to the responsibility mix a very important element: one’s self. As said earlier, those characters begin their movies as close as possible to a perfect stereotype, which is gradually deconstructed in order for them to grow.
Even tough guy John Bender (Judd Nelson) is forced to come to terms with who he is, as bullying isn’t really a personality. Ferris thinks he can get away with anything, and it takes crashing a Ferrari for him to realize he’s not untouchable. And Andie may choose between Duckie (John Cryer) and Blane (Andrew McCarthy), but that comes with valuable lessons in affective responsibility. And they all learn they don’t have to stop being themselves to grow, which is the essential lesson. Fortunately, no winter is harsh enough to make us kill the boys and girls we were to make it through.
Coming-of-Age Stories Changed After John Hughes
It may seem weird to imagine this nowadays, but John Hughes’ approach to coming of age changed completely how the industry and people in general faced adolescence. In fact, it’s no exaggeration at all to say that his films were instrumental in consolidating coming of age as a genre into itself in cinema. Teenagers longed for representation, too, beyond being called annoying by grown-ups, and that’s what they got.
Hughes’ movies became the quintessential depiction of the 1980s, too, complete with clothes, hairstyles and whatnot, but they do hold up beautifully even more than 40 years later. At that time, his touch was so influential, it helped shape the industry at that time, allowing for movies like Dirty Dancing and Say Anything to be the successes they were. Now, coming of age is already a staple in pop culture, and if we got to watch like Easy A in the late 2000s and Lady Bird in the late 2010s, it’s because John Hughes was there decades earlier to tell us it was okay to be awkward growing up – everyone is, really.
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