I was gonna do a write-up about Pretty in Pink at some point anyway, but after yesterday’s precedings, doing so takes on a new meaning. As does Ally Sheedy’s utterance that “when you grow up, your heart dies” from The Breakfast Club. As we all probably know by now, writer-director-producer Brat Pack auteur John Hughes died of a heart attack yesterday.
So, John Hughes movies follow me, as they do for many who came of age between 1980 and 2000 (and maybe today?). His movies were a mainstay of my youth, on hand at basically any slumber party or get-together I went to. I just saw The Breakfast Club on cable last weekend when I was visiting my parents. I also just read Lawrence Grossberg’s essay “Cinema, Postmodernity and Authenticity,” which discusses the soundtracks to Hughes movies in depth.
For whatever it’s worth, my favorite Hughes movie is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Now, eulogizing Hughes doesn’t mean we can’t be critical of his work. For one, there’s obvious issues with racism (Long Duck Dong, *shudder*). For another, he wasn’t the kindest to women. Why does Anthony Michael Hall get to take advantage of the black-out drunk popular girl in Sixteen Candles for laughs and macho acclaim? Why does Judd Nelson get Molly Ringwald at the end of The Breakfast Club after spending the majority of Saturday dentention bullying and debasing her? With the exception of Andi Walsh, most of his kids were upper-middle class. And sometimes his movies are just way to slick, pat, and essentializing in their characterization (hello, Breakfast Club). There are other issues I’m forgetting, so please feel free to contribute (especially if the Hughes legacy means nothing to you).
But one thing I can’t fault the man for is how he used pop music. Pitchfork did a great tribute yesterday, so I’ll link it here.
Extending further, I’d like to highlight two female characters Hughes wrote that I hold dear, relate in some way to the project of this blog, and tend to get broadsided in the conversation. Today, I’ll offer up Iona from Pretty in Pink, written by Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch.
So, I love Pretty in Pink for two reasons.
1. The music kicks ass. And not just the use of OMD’s “If You Leave” or Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” or The Psychedelic Furs’ song of same name. Let’s not forget that we also have two New Order songs (including an instrumental version of “Thieves Like Us,” which accompanies Andi Walsh’s prom dress montage). And the use of Echo and the Bunnymen’s “Bring on the Dancing Horses” when rich boy paramour Blaine meets Andi at work melts me.
2. Iona.
Iona contemplates her next outfit
Iona was played by Annie Potts (aka Southern feminist interior decorator Mary-Jo Shiveley of Designing Women, aka the other show I’d watch with my mom growing up when we weren’t watching Roseanne). Let’s hear what Potts, Molly Ringwald, and producer Lauren Shuler have to say about both the character and the actress.
Iona is the manager of TRAX, the record store where Molly Ringwald’s Andi works. As an independent business woman, she’d be rad in her own right. That she also makes a lot of her own clothes, puts together great outfits, can put teenage boys in their place, and serve as a surrogate cool aunt/older sister for Andi, who is at once motherless (her mother has abandoned her and daughter and husband) and mothering (she has been recast to the maternal realm by her shellshocked, ineffectual father) is not to be ignored, nor is the multi-generational aspect of this female work-based friendship. She’s also one of the few multidimensional, symphathetic, understanding, and supportive adult figures that Hughes ever wrote for a Brat Pack movie, male or female.
Yet, there are two clear limits to Iona and how Hughes configured her.
1. She’s the one who pushes Andi to go to the prom in the first place, stressing how it’s a vital, normal rite of passage not to be missed by teenagers, no matter how far outside the social margins. However, it’s hard for me to take her pitch seriously when she’s wearing this outfit in the scene.
Iona convincing Andi to go to the prom, wearing this dress.
For one, Iona wants Andi to wear her dress, which may potentially queer their friendship. It certainly evinces an openness and willingness to share, which may also suggest similar class positioning. For another, as Iona’s costumes are such a clear part of her characterization, it’s easy to read the prom dress as something campy and wonderfully disposable — something to try, rip off, throw in the hamper, and trade for some other wonderful, wacky outfit.
2. Not unlike Allison, the basketcase in The Breakfast Club who popular girl Claire makes over to sporto Andy’s clear approval, Iona dresses down to land a man. A really boring guy. A (gasp!) yuppie. This seems to be an unfortunate narrative convention of many movies outside of the Hughes canon — in order to win a man (who may be intimidated by her otherwise), an unconventional woman must make herself totally unremarkable. Again, I can only hope this is merely an outfit she’s trying on. Here’s hoping that the date ended poorly and her date left her with a record stapled to his forehead. Set an example, Iona!
And with that, I bid farewell in the hopes of sparking some midnight viewings of the 1986 classic. Tomorrow, let’s discuss Watts, the masculine female ingenue in 1987′s Some Kind of Wonderful.
