Sorry to hate—once again—on a recently deceased beloved creator of popular entertainment, but I have to. Not just to be contrarian (as a darling friend accused me of being, just yesterday!), but to voice a legitimate criticism of John Hughes’ work that I have held in recent years.
I should say that, if I die, I would want people to look at my work clearly, for what it is, and not to confuse their judgments about my work with their feelings of appreciation for me as a person. Can’t we hold these two things separate?
To get to my gripe, John Hughes’ work will never, to me, be considered truly great work because of the string of casual homophobia that runs through all of his teen movies. All of our favorites. All of those movies we now, collectively share and reminisce over. All of these seem to have characters that reinforce the pressurized teenage use of homosexual pejoratives.
One of my favorite Hughes movies—a film I will share in communion with my sister in perpetuity—Sixteen Candles, is the culprit from which I derive the subtitle of this article. The self-empowering use of the word “fag” by Molly Ringwald’s “Samantha” toward the nerd-geek “Farmer Ted” (played by a scrawny, if tenacious Anthony Michael Hall), is just one example (and notable because it is uttered by a female character) of how Hughes teens understand and wield the power of institutional homophobia. I don’t have the research to list just how many times a gay slur punctuates these iconic scenes of teenage turmoil, but I encourage everyone, as they review the canon of Hughes films (as we all will now) to take notice of the numerous ways this form of homophobic game play crops up.
Now, the ways in which these slurs are used are always casual (if I recall correctly), and are never more than a simple fact of the socio-political rules that define teen relationships. They are often (again, if I recall correctly) not targeted at identified homosexual characters, but, rather, are employed in their more pervasive usage, whereby the slur is used to belittle a male heterosexual character; to challenge his power; to intimidate him; to ridicule him. While not as outwardly destructive as the kind of bigotry directed at suspected or openly homosexual characters, it is no less damaging, particularly in how it sustains the illusion of the assumed heterosexuality of the person who uses the pejorative while putting the recipient of the pejorative on the defensive of his own compulsory heterosexuality.
If you don’t think these moments send loud and clear messages to young people who lap up these films for all the other wonderful, smart things Hughes movies offer, you’re wrong. There is no shortage of homophobic reinforcement in our culture, and in the 1980s, homophobic discourse had not yet reached the roadblock of political correctness that, for better or worse, has squeezed out much of the room that slurs like “fag,” “faggot,” “queer,” and “homo” used to have.
But taking into account the era in which these films were made does not excuse Hughes’ recurrent use of these homophobic slurs. Did it accurately capture teen life in the 80s? Perhaps. But wouldn’t that still be the case today? I can’t imagine that youngsters have stopped ridiculing each other via these homophobic tropes (in fact, just the other day, my boyfriend and I were walking past some pre-teenage kids, one of whom had pulled his shirt off and was sort of gyrating and dancing as we passed; a friend of his was quick to point at him but say to us, “He’s gay! He’s gay!” It was cute, and funny, although by bf made a good point, “In a few years they’ll be pointing at us”). But today, these slurs would more likely be used in film to critique the homophobia inherent in the experience of youth (much like Brüno targeted homophobia as it actively sought to elicit it). In important contrast, Hughes’ homophobia is always used in a way that affirms the empowerment of homophobia via the positive, clique-inclusive currency of the slur; i.e. the user is always elevated above the receiver, who is laughed at. Let’s also keep in mind that these films are not documentaries, but are scripted, pre-meditated, and edited compositional works of film art.
I’m not saying we can’t enjoy these films. I don’t even need to articulate how many great things we can take away from them. But we should keep in mind that as we enjoyed these movies, we also absorbed the dark ethos of teenage homophobia. And that, no matter who you were, or how much you did or did not understand sexuality and issues of sexual orientation, when Samantha called Ted a “fag,” you knew you didn’t want to be one.
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