Tuesday, December 6, 2011

I'VE GOT CAROLINE IN THE BEDROOM RIGHT NOW, PASSED OUT COLD. I COULD VIOLATE HER TEN DIFFERENT WAYS IF I WANTED TO: Adam's post on Christmas Story reminded me that I watched a little of another beloved piece of our shared past this weekend -- Sixteen Candles was on in the waiting-for-sleep-to-take-me hours. Since I was born in 1970, it didn't take me too long to remember how weirdly good Anthony Michael Hall was in that role. What I didn't remember, though, was what a menacing sociopath Jake Ryan was. He invited the geek to rape his girlfriend (as long as the geek didn't leave her in a park somewhere) and teenaged girls everywhere swooned? People forgave a lot in the 80s if you looked a little like Matt Dillon.

(And, as TPE mentioned below, Long Duc Dong.)

18 comments:

  1. Meghan12:13 PM

    Well, and he pretty much did, right?  Because she didn't know who he was upon waking in the parking lot and neither of them could say for sure what happened.  The fact that she thought she liked it doesn't diminish what happened.

    When I first saw 16 Candles, I didn't grasp it.  It has bugged me for a while, though, once I understood it.

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  2. See, also, the rape scene on the moonbounce in Revenge of the Nerds.  Not incapacitated, but deceived.

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  3. cagey (kelli oliver george)12:23 PM

    All of this makes me feel essentially the same as when I found out how awful Gone With the Wind was -- it had been one of my all-time favorite movies as a kid.  Sat down to watch it while in college and couldn't even finish it.  

    Sigh.

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  4. isaac_spaceman12:29 PM

    I'm not sure what happened between Farmer Ted and Caroline, and I think we're not supposed to know.  Maybe even John Hughes realized that the whole thing was disturbing if you gave it any thought at all. But let's assume something happened.  If Ted didn't remember, that means he was drunk (which was not clear from the scenes when he was drinking with Jake or getting John Cusack to take his picture with passed-out Caroline).  So let's go back to Jake Ryan.  Because he wanted to cheat on his girlfriend, he loaded Caroline (passed out) into a car with a drunk 14-year-old, convinced Caroline that the 14-year-old was her boyfriend, and then told the 14-year-old drunk driver to do whatever he wanted to Caroline as long as he didn't leave her in a park. 

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  5. You mean, when Rhett raped Scarlett and they depicted her as being thrilled the next morning?

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  6. Gleemonex12:59 PM

    Yeah, that and the happy slaves ... 

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  7. cagey (kelli oliver george)1:08 PM

    All of the above, folks.  All of the above.

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  8. And, OMG, the snippet from the carpetbagger in the streets of Atlanta to which the (former?) slave says, dumboundedly, "and a MULE?"

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  9. The Pathetic Earthling1:32 PM

    And just pretty much the whole view of the South.  Sherman didn't give 'em near half the kicking around they deserved.

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  10. Anonymous1:57 PM

    That was part of Farmer Ted's vision quest.

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  11. Adam C.2:18 PM

    For about 7-10 years after SC, I tried to convince a series of barbers and stylists to give me Jake Ryan's haircut.  They all pretty much responded, "Ummm, you know you're Jewish, right?"

    Had I thought more deeply about Jake's morals, I would have given up on pursuing the 'do much, much earlier than I did.

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  12. isaac_spaceman2:26 PM

    And yet your avatar has it, minus about two or three inches of height. 

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  13. I had the same reaction when I rewatched 16 Candles in college. I loved it in high school, but some friends of mine and I had a John Hughes movie night my junior year of college, and we were all pretty bummed after looking at it with more grown up eyes. And this was only about 5 years after it first came out. Things picked up with Some Kind of Wonderful and Ferris Bueller. Come to think of it, I think we skipped Breakfast Club because all of us had seen it in some kind of "team building/get to know your fellow teenage stereotypes" thing.

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  14. Watts3:10 PM

    There are many people who feel like he should've done more with respect to Atlanta. This thought usually occurs on I-285.

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  15. Watts3:12 PM

    I sort of assumed Farmer Ted suffered  the same fate <big> as Raj did in this year's season opener.</big>

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  16. Adam C.3:39 PM

    Back when my hair was that long and thick, it was far too wavy for the Ryan (which yes, needed height), even with a lot of product. What I've got going on now is similar only in that it's shorter on the sides and longer in the front, but such are the compromises I make to wring every last drop out of the full-head-of-hair look for as long as I can.

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  17. Genevieve4:09 PM

    My friend and I walked out of 16 Candles partway through (I think at the underwear viewing scene).  I hated it from the first sight of Long Duc Dong.  She watched the rest later and loved it, and frequently swooned over Jake.  I had no interest in seeing the rest, didn't see it until I was an adult, and found the rest of it even more disturbing.  But all along I've felt like the weird one for not liking this classic.  (I do love Ferris Bueller, and liked Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club and Some Kind of Wonderful.) 

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  18. Jennifer4:38 PM

    Has anyone here seen Auntie Mame? Wow, there's a fucked-up sideplot in that movie.

    After Mame is widowed, her nephew arranges for her to write a book, bringing in an stenographer (Ms. Gootch-- let's just say you now know where Molly Shannon has all of her characters inspired from with this total fugly nerd character) and a ghostwriter, an Irish dude named O'Bannon with a limp. Turns out he's faking the limp, especially when he's doing bounces and leaps and somersaults across the room. Anyway, ghostwriter does no actual writing compared to the other, he sponges off Mame's money and tries to woo her. He and Mame are supposed to go to some fancy dinner, but nephew asks Mame to meet his fiancee that night instead. Mame fixes up the Gootch, claims she's of blueblood stock to O'Bannon, and lets them go off in her car. The next morning, Gootch staggers home, thinking she went to a Gary Cooper movie where someone got married, and O'Bannon and the car are never seen again.

    Six months later, we find out that the Gootch is an unwed mother and the book is about to come out. O'Bannon sends some telegram demanding half of the profits because his WIFE worked on the book. Yes, apparently they got married and the Gootch had no idea. And nobody bothers to remark on the blatant moneygrubbing, instead they are all, "Congratulations! You're not an unwed mother after all!"

    WTF?!?! And that's assuming that the baby was made consentually, which...seems dubious.

    To be honest, I never liked Sixteen Candles much either between Jake's creepy behavior, Farmer Ted, and the Donger. Blech.

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