some kind of wonderful

i must admit something right here and right now: i love john hughes's movies.  for the uninitiated these include: the breakfast club, pretty in pink, 16 candles, ferris bueller's day off, weird science, and my all time favourite some kind of wonderful.  if you have never  enjoyed the viewing pleasure of these films, i suggest you get on it.  

the thing is that--perhaps the breakfast club aside--none of these movies are particularly profound or insightful post-view.  when i first started watching these movies i watched like any awkward adolescent might: for entertainment and for the fantasy of the finding love at 16 and fitting in with the popular kids (or losing that ever-pressing need to).  all of the films are about similar things and address similar themes, all are emblematic of the decade in which they were made (the 80s) and they all take place during high school.

now that i have graduated from that sometimes fun often painful chapter of my life, and moved onto the next (as university student--more fun, less painful), i watch these films and see the pureness that makes them.  high school is an extraordinarily common stage for any cultural text--there are songs about it, books and tv shows set during it, but films are perhaps the most prolific and common when it comes to representing it.  recent efforts include the vulgar and comedic (superbad and the american pie series) to those that attempt to be insightful and realistic (juno stands out in my mind).

what's different about john hughes's movies is their truthfulness.  they aren't realistic in any sense: there is always a happy ending, usually involving the loser/poor kid with the popular/rich/hot kid.  but it's the interaction between the characters that is so truthful--the way they all struggle to fit in and rise above or through the status quo.  when i think back on high school now, this is what it was all about--finding your place within the establishment.  it is almost eerie, the way that my own school of 800 girls in uniform somehow melded into a community that isn't far off from the ones represented in the world of john hughes and the real world beyond that.  

when i watch these movies now it's with a little nostalgia for a time when little problems seemed like the whole world and going to the big party each weekend was a big enough goal.  but these films are still fantasy--if only we could all fall in love and fit in.  if only the beautiful boy had kissed me over my 16 candles, or i had written a letter to the principle explaining that you can see us as you want to see us.  somehow, even after our lives have moved beyond this stage, these movies are instantly relatable.  like ferris bueller famously said: "life moves pretty fast.  you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."  this is what these films are about--enjoying our high school experience when we couldn't.