I couldn’t get too worked up over John Hughes’ death – since the teen movies he made appear to me to have merely added to an already established stage of teenaged nihilism leading to adult oblivion—much like the character in the book Mark Chapman had in his pocket when he shot John Lennon to death—except that Hughes’ shit reached a much larger audience than Holden Caulfield did. I mean, just because The Beatles sang that “happiness is a warm gun” and John L. said that they were bigger than Jesus – doesn’t really require a death sentence, does it? I often wonder if Salinger had never published – would John Lennon be alive today? I’d take John Lennon’s oeuvre over Salinger’s any time.
I just finished my syllabus for the adolescent psychology class I teach and was reminded of how I begin the class each semester…by emphatically stating that all teenagers are crazy! Oh, and the other point I try to make is that a “true” adult takes responsibility for their thoughts, words and deeds. But Hughes’ teen characters, like Salinger’s (how I detest their teen world views), move through their lives without any purpose (and certainly without responsibility)—and this observation follows on the heels of my last favoring–about how important it is for humans to have meaningful lives. I did hear once that Salinger left his self-imposed isolation to stalk some actress (so I guess he found some meaning for-a-moment). Yeah, yeah—Salinger experienced war, and that’ll put anyone on the road to oblivion—but why put that message out to thousands of impressionable minds (impressionable being the hallmark of adolescence)?
And what is Hughes’ excuse for perpetrating adolescent drivel (don’t forget that teenagedom is a long-term state of schizophrenia)? Oh yeah. He was born in Michigan – and you know what I have to say about Midwesterners…they have that foghat on. The two Hughes movies that stick out in my mind are “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off.” (Yes, I know he made plenty of other films – ‘Home Alone’ being awesome.) I’m sure most people have seen these two – (I did), and while I chuckled at “Ferris” (being a teacher and all)—the movie actually undermines the public school enterprise; suggesting that American schooling is more of a-cat-and-mouse-game, and that the structure and discipline necessary to maintain a high school are a joke. It really isn’t easy being a teacher or school administrator in an American high school these days (and it probably hasn’t been since the Viet Nam War)—so we educators don’t need the John Hughes-of-the-world adding to the difficulty of keeping adolescents off-the-streets. Educators certainly don’t need the notion of how fun it is being stoned at school (as illustrated in ‘The Breakfast Club” scene) re-enacted in countless American high schools. Do people retain information when they are stoned? Not much. More realistic are certain scenes from “Dangerous Minds” and “Freedom Writers”; but such movies do nothing to redirect teenage mindsets that are anything but disciplined or focused.
Whenever I hear of someone suffering a fatal heart attack at a young age (that’s what Hughes died of, right?)—I immediately suspect heavy cocaine usage. While I don’t know much about Hughes’ personal life—I certainly must suspect that he enjoyed the herb he glorified (he was born in Michigan after all) and partook of the white lines that crack the mirror which we should be looking at ourselves with.
And so I ask you: What did Hughes and Salinger leave us with? Anything that could take us constructively and meaningfully through time? I don’t think so. Anything that could be considered spiritually uplifting—something that might inform the teens of tomorrow? I don’t thinks so (‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles,’ aside).
Holden Caulfield was a loner (was Mark Chapman a loner too?). And Hughes was all about friends and cliques—and most of us know these only last until somebody owes somebody money. Without meaning and structure—we get nihilism and oblivion, so though Hughes’ teen vision has been stilled (he seemed to have run out of directorial gas back in ’91)–we need Salinger to stay in the mothballs (which I think he will).