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Some Kind of Republican: Was John Hughes really in favor of teen rebellion?
Slate ^

Posted on 09/26/2006 5:22:00 PM PDT by slowhand520

Some Kind of Republican Was John Hughes really in favor of teen rebellion? By Michael Weiss

Posted Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006, at 4:36 PM ET As far as adult teen whisperers go, John Hughes has enjoyed a remarkable staying power. Anyone who grew up in the '80s—or just caught the decade on reruns on rainy Saturday-afternoon television—can probably remember high school as much for its unique misery as for the Breakfast Club references it evokes. Hughes was in his 30s when he became successful, and he managed to make teen cinema intentionally funny and less condescending toward its core audience, whose lingo he either spoke or helped invent.

Hughes was also the first Balzac of homeroom, arguing that what stratified public education as much as looks, popularity, or natural herd instincts was net worth. Even those dismayed by the cheap sentimentality and wafer-thin plotlines of his films could at least appreciate seeing class presented as not something you skipped but were defined by. Hughes, though, was never quite the antagonist of the status quo he made himself out to be. He was actually a political conservative, and his portrayals of down-and-out youth rebellion had more to do with celebrating the moral victory of the underdog than with championing the underprivileged. In Hughes' hormonal vale of tears, snobs and elitists were the ones who ruined wealth for everybody else.

(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 1980s; cinema; conservative; embourgeoisement; generationreagan; genreagan; genx; hollywood; hollywoodrepublican; johnhughes; movies; nationallampoon; pjorourke; reagannation; theeighties
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1 posted on 09/26/2006 5:22:01 PM PDT by slowhand520
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To: slowhand520
the true nemesis of Ghost Busters wasn't Gozer but the EPA

rotflmao-that guy will always be the EPA to me.

2 posted on 09/26/2006 5:28:49 PM PDT by icwhatudo (The rino borg...is resistance futile?)
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To: icwhatudo

Ditto. Gregory Peck.

He had slimer taken away in the cartoon and he tried to have him "executid", he splattered to chuncks and reformed. :D

Anywho, good read.


3 posted on 09/26/2006 5:35:47 PM PDT by knightofchaos
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To: slowhand520

"Sure enough, there's Harold Ramis—another Lampoon alum, who directed Hughes' screenplay for Vacation—reflecting on the Chicago Seven hearings in a recent interview with the Believer: "They ran up and down the street, smashing car windows and stuff. My first reaction was, 'Yeah, right on!' But then I thought, 'Wait, I'm parked out there.' " The polite term for this gentle rightward shift when it happens to artists and intellectuals is embourgeoisement.
What a shame the philosopher of puberty never warned kids about that."

I'm glad John Hughes didn't use his films to try to shove philosophical life lessons down our throats.


4 posted on 09/26/2006 5:38:25 PM PDT by Redgirl (Osama should send Rosie O'Donnell a thank-you note.)
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To: slowhand520; qam1

Man is this article dripping with disdain or what?


5 posted on 09/26/2006 5:46:04 PM PDT by Alkhin (Thieving tyranny is all they offer.)
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To: slowhand520

Hughes' Best Film post-Breakfast Club

6 posted on 09/26/2006 5:48:47 PM PDT by Recovering_Democrat (I am SO glad to no longer be associated with the party of "dependence on government"!)
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To: Recovering_Democrat

Best soundtrack too!!


7 posted on 09/26/2006 6:05:27 PM PDT by Redgirl (Osama should send Rosie O'Donnell a thank-you note.)
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To: Kellykoop

ping


8 posted on 09/26/2006 6:19:55 PM PDT by Redgirl (Osama should send Rosie O'Donnell a thank-you note.)
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To: slowhand520
As a connoisseur of the classic-era National Lampoon (1970-79), I can tell you John Hughes was a fantastic and hilarious addition in the late 70's. I remember the "Pants-Down Republican" piece well... it summed up the feelings of many a young Republican rebel at the dawn of the Reagan era: a return to the values of the old America of our Dads and a rejection of hippie liberalism, but without the uptight stick-in-the-mud "fogeyism" the left branded the right with.

When the great Doug Kenney left the Lampoon around '75, publisher Matty Simmons handed the reins to PJ O'Rourke, to the horror of the staff left-wingers like Tony Hendra and Sean Kelly. These guys have held grudges to this day against O'Rourke, always bad-mouthing him, while PJ was responsible for some of the funniest material they ever did, including the High School Yearbook Parody (with Kenney) and the brilliant Sunday Newspaper parody, among many, many other pieces. O'Rourke and Hughes were SO funny, you would literally shake with laughter. They were that good.

It goes without saying that Hendra and Kelly were never, ever funny. Intellectual, yes. Funny, no. I have the back issues to prove it.

9 posted on 09/26/2006 6:32:30 PM PDT by Jhensy
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To: Jhensy

Underwear for the Deaf. The Bulgemobile. "Time has passed him by, and so shall we."


10 posted on 09/26/2006 6:59:44 PM PDT by Steely Tom
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To: slowhand520
The '80s were cool bump

If you leave, don't leave now
Please don't take my heart away
Promise me just one more night
Then we'll go our separate ways . . .

11 posted on 09/26/2006 7:05:05 PM PDT by Tribune7
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To: Recovering_Democrat

I haven't seen it in a while, but the bicyclist and the following lawn mowing ballet were memorable.


12 posted on 09/26/2006 7:21:33 PM PDT by Calvin Locke
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To: slowhand520

I wish Hughes would get back to doing his best material again. His kiddie films are really grating and subpar, and the best film he has done in the past 18 years is "Reach the Rock", which I doubt most folks around here have even seen or heard of.


13 posted on 09/26/2006 8:35:53 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (Cheney X -- Destroying the Liberal Democrat Traitors By Any Means Necessary -- Ya Dig ? Sho 'Nuff.)
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To: slowhand520

I was always curious who selected the music for his movies? Did he or someone else did it. Where else could you hear the Smiths and New Order in a soundtrack.


14 posted on 09/26/2006 9:15:37 PM PDT by art_rocks
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To: art_rocks

his best film was "Planes,Trains,and Automobiles" in my opinion-it had humor but also real human emotion and the song playing at the end was "Every Time You Go"-Hall and Oates-what an inspired choice


15 posted on 09/26/2006 9:19:47 PM PDT by steamroller
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To: Jhensy
including the High School Yearbook Parody

I don't remember which parody it was (the one with the cheerleader without the panties), but something I found really interesting was the choice of the school sports mascot... A Kangaroo.

University of MO, Kansas City has "The Fighting Kangaroos!" People wonder why I break out in laughter whenever the talk about "The Roos!"

Mark

16 posted on 09/26/2006 9:20:01 PM PDT by MarkL (When Kaylee says "No power in the `verse can stop me," it's cute. When River says it, it's scary!)
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To: Alkhin

I always find pieces like this kind of funny for about a half page or so, then they start to get irritating when you realize how deeply this writer is marinated in second-rate popular culture, like a permanent graduate student at an equally second-rate University where they actually write theses on subjects like this.


17 posted on 09/26/2006 9:26:19 PM PDT by supremedoctrine
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To: Alkhin; ItsOurTimeNow; PresbyRev; tortoise; Fraulein; StoneColdGOP; Clemenza; m18436572; ...
Xer Ping

Ping list for the discussion of the politics and social (and sometimes nostalgic) aspects that directly effects Generation Reagan / Generation-X (Those born from 1965-1981) including all the spending previous generations (i.e. The Baby Boomers) are doing that Gen-X and Y will end up paying for.

Freep mail me to be added or dropped. See my home page for details and previous articles.

18 posted on 09/27/2006 5:42:54 AM PDT by qam1 (There's been a huge party. All plates and the bottles are empty, all that's left is the bill to pay)
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To: slowhand520
Some Kind of Wonderful is the prolier-than-thou retelling of Pretty in Pink. It has the two hard-up best friends, their gender roles swapped, wind up together. Keith (Eric Stoltz) is the male Andie who, in the ridiculous space of a two-second flashback, realizes that Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson), the tomboy Duckie, is the one for him.

I didn't know that. But I am still in love with Eric Stoltz.

19 posted on 09/27/2006 7:09:54 AM PDT by retrokitten
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To: MarkL

I am an UMKC alumni!


20 posted on 09/27/2006 7:27:36 AM PDT by KC_Conspirator
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