a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by kleinbl00

    It’s hard for me to understand how John was able to write with so much sensitivity, and also have such a glaring blind spot.

It's not. National Lampoon was astonishingly sexist even when it came out; my mother bought me a couple when I was in fifth grade and I was shocked by how raunchy it was. Playboy they won't let you buy; surround the full frontal nudity with jokes and marijuana ads and apparently it's no longer pornography. Breakfast Club is three years after Porky's:

but fourteen years before American pie:

That we've now navigated to a place where we can watch Bender in Molly Ringwald's crotch and go "that ain't right" is progress and long overdue but it's also a comparatively minor transgression for the environment in which it first appeared.

I'm all about calling out the transgressions. My kid will watch Breakfast Club some day and she's gonna wonder at the unenlightened era in which it was created. But she will have figured out that it's not an anomaly; it's a piece of art worthy enough to be forgiven its flaws.





mk  ·  2425 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thank you. I missed that one. His movies made a difference to me.

Also, fuck yeah, Molly.

thenewgreen  ·  2425 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, it's a well written piece imo. It's pretty crazy that in Sixteen Candles a group of young boys are propping up the passed out prom queen to take photos with her. Also, apparently they had sex. I guess it was meant to be forgivable because both of them were blacked out, but still... its some fucked up shit. I think it probably gave rise to this, too:

WanderingEng  ·  2425 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    My kid will watch Breakfast Club some day and she's gonna wonder at the unenlightened era in which it was created.

I think her generation will look at that sort of thing the way I look at Looney Tunes. The cartoons can have horrible charictures of black people, but I know that was a representation of the times, wrong then and wrong now, and not a reason to dismiss the art entirely. Sexism is going the same way, happily.

tacocat  ·  2425 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I don't know man. Look up Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarves.

Your argument does work pretty well for Long Duc Dong though.

kleinbl00  ·  2425 days ago  ·  link  ·  

tacocat  ·  2425 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I guess I meant I don't see sexism in the eighties as ever being viewed as badly as racial caricatures or characters like Dong.

Sorry. I'm in a coffee shop so I can't watch the video. So I really can't grok your point at all. You're agreeing? Still thought I'd clarify. I make vague statements sometimes