American kindness – Weekend – Kommersant
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The 1980s all over the world are the time of waiting for a nuclear apocalypse, or at least a third world one. “Red Heat” blows from the east, James Cameron threatens a techno-apocalypse in “Terminator”. But with all this, the 80s is also the time for a return to the American dream (it is no accident that the fashion for the 50s rises, the golden age of American consumerism, quite peacefully adjacent to post-punk decadence). Reaganomics promises abundance, there is a future – because America already seems to be the best place to live. The basic credibility of the American world perfectly translates the corpus of sharp-toothed teen comedies produced by John Hughes and his imitators. The action in them takes place just in the space of the American dream – a low-rise suburb where rosy-cheeked boys and girls with neat haircuts grow up. Hughes, chuckling, carefully guides them through all the crises of growing up. It’s okay that your parents forgot about your birthday, teachers left you to marinate after school, and classmates look right through you. Hurry, put on your old sneakers and run to skip school, because these days are the best in your life.
Being a Soviet schoolboy in the 80s meant being 10 times happier than your parents. I started first grade in ’82, the year the carriage race started. I remember how the teacher announced the death of Chernenko – the class, already taught by mournful experience, jumped up from their seats, unable to contain their joy at the upcoming extraordinary day off. What seemed unshakable, heavy, true – in fact, the adult world, settled before our eyes, opening up the prospect of unprecedented space. In 1986, a delegation of Danish youth visited our school. The young people were dressed in black leather, two of them had green Iroquois on their heads. A cheerful Danish punk approached the liveliest of the class and, laughing, made the same crest on his head.
It became somehow unpleasant to look at the pioneer tie – its kumach seemed ugly against the background of bright fluorescent acrylic, which the guests were wearing. A year later, my aunt sent me a hat of the same shining color from Canada – I looked at it as a beacon that will lead us all into the wonderful world of jeans, chewing gum and white sneakers. We saw these in films about the fun life of American schoolchildren – on videotapes. Every day opened new flaws and wormholes in the old world. The new world we knew only from videos and TV spots seemed infinitely comfortable. The heroes of many of these films, even hooligans, were much more pleasant than high school students from our cinema, who were certainly touched by some secret, as if innate vice.
In fact, they also had a hard time. In the 80s, being a teenager in America meant living in hell. Well, judging by the array of movies of that time. The niche of young adult films, which are so in demand now, especially on streaming, not only was not filled, but simply did not exist. But there were numerous greasy comedies in the spirit of National Lampoon and horrors about the misadventures of high school students, the outcome of which was a foregone conclusion. The blades of Freddy Krueger, the knife of Mrs. Voorhees, the mechanical inevitability of the Terminator, symbolizing the thesis “There is no future”, or the stale spirit of the men’s locker room, in which stupid sexist jokes are heard (as, say, in Bob Clark’s sex comedy “Porky”) – that’s Scylla and Charybdis, which no American teenager from 16 and older could avoid. Add to this the complete irrelevance of all teen TV shows to the direct experience of the youth audience: to begin with, the teenagers there were played by actors in their thirties, whose appearance could not arouse any empathy in the public, but only an inferiority complex about their own acne and ungainly figure.
A hand of friendly help to guys in old sneakers and girls in boiled jeans was extended … again by cinema. But something else. A new teen-comedy pioneered by a woman, not by accident. Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out in 1982 and proved to the viewers of a generation what the opening of the megamall was for the film’s heroes themselves – teenagers living in the quietest coastal suburbia. Shining nickel child of Reaganomics and new consumer culture – a giant shopping center – in their eyes looks like a real miracle park, a source of new sensations, a place of romantic dates. He gives them leisure, gives them work and hope.
Hope for the opportunity to grow up and leave the cramped and disgusting parental nest. Megamall, a symbol of terrible neoliberalism and corporate capitalism, devouring people right in the cradle, is shown by Heckerling not from the height of adult consciousness – but from the bottom up, following the motley crowd taking off on the escalator, from the perspective of an enthusiastic teenager. How easy it is for my generation to understand this delight! In the second half of the 80s, reports from malls, from pop concerts, from the most ordinary American outback will be shown on Soviet TV – and all this snow-white, neon, denim, fluorescent splendor will have an effect on us, similar to the vision of a giant, similar to a Christmas tree toy , a flying saucer in Spielberg’s Alien. Here, by the way, is another movie from the 80s that inspired confidence that the Earth is, after all, a friendly place. Not even for a small, shriveled turtle from outer space.
Heckerling’s abundance of commodities serves as the foundation upon which the dramaturgical machine of sex comedy erects a monument to America, the land of immanently good people. The world of high school in Ridgemont is not without a single vice that teenagers suffer from: bullying, obsession with sex (as a social activity that provides prestige in the team), abortion, drug use, hopelessness. But the American world turns out to be indulgent towards everyone – and even a junkie surfer who constantly chews pizza in history lessons will earn the respect of an annoying teacher and pass the test.
But if Ridgemont High simply gave hope for the best, John Hughes’ cinematic universe already instilled confidence – in itself, in its mission, dignity, and finally, in the fact that children of the 80s are better than their parents. Baby boomer Hughes did for the next generation what he himself was deprived of: in the 50s, when he was growing up, teenagers in the movie were portrayed mainly as delinquents with miscarriages and on motorcycles; their rebellion was doomed (by Hollywood). In his universe of just four films, Sixteen Candles (1984), The Breakfast Club (1985), Ferris Bueller’s Best Day (1986) and Pretty in Pink (written by Hughes Howard Deutsch, 1986)—they turn out to be vulnerable, insecure, but by no means destructive nihilists. Even a teenage rebellion and a flagrant violation of school discipline are filmed here as a fun vacation. all the same boring suburbia in Chicago – watching a carnival, wandering the streets, watching art. Walking the path of Antoine Doinel, on the edge of the law, he looks the wisest and happiest of people. It seems that such an escape from the norms of any morality into a space of pure – and completely devoid of a taste of transgression – freedom was possible exactly then, in the wonderful 86. The world is fresh and beautiful, it was created for absenteeism, frantic runs through the streets, passionate showdowns. conflicts and oppositions, but, having come to peace with yourself, you will also come into harmony with the world – as another detainee teaches the heroine sitting in the police station. Yes, in the Hughes universe, enlightenment can hit you anywhere. Even under arrest. Here the delinquent may turn out to be the wise man, the abuser the victim, and the class queen the unhappiest of girls (see The Breakfast Club, filmed as a theatrical play in which schoolchildren serving a disciplinary arrest in the library take turns removing their social masks, turning to each other and the viewer with his defenseless, tearful, half-childish, real face).
Hughes’ films radically, although not immediately, changed the rules of the game in the niche of “youth cinema”. Undoubtedly, not devoid of edification, at the same time they were made not so much to teach their young viewers a lesson, but to give them a comforting feeling: the world, full of unfair adults, stupid and cruel classmates, is still kind. And all the problems and sufferings of adolescence are not a whim. The future is.
He loved his characters and the audience. And the audience responded to Hughes in return: his films collected excellent box office in those same multiplexes at shopping centers. They, along with frivolous blockbusters, made a reshaping of the film market of the 80s, a decade in which the youth audience, having received pocket money, irrevocably became the main one. His careful and delicate attitude towards heroes who sometimes do outrageous stupidity became mainstream decades later: the reference “gentle” series for teenagers “Sex Education” is the direct heir to Hughes’ comedies.
His films are often compared to Godard’s films of the 60s. Both of them were able to capture the fresh spirit of a rapidly changing time (Godard’s analogue of Hughes’ films is the eccentric dramedy “Male-Female”, which raises then-relevant questions of sex, race, pop culture, class antagonism, but is based on the classic material of Maupassant). Both also worked with Molly Ringwald (in the 86th, in the wake of the success of Hughes’ comedies, Godard invited the star of his films to his adaptation of King Lear). True, against the backdrop of the politically biased Godard, Hughes may seem like a toothless, kind-hearted, complacent layman, one of those thanks to whom the hawk of neoliberalism, Reagan, came to power. Yes, his films today seem to ignore issues of race – but when it comes to class issues, Hughes is no less conscious than Godard. The final film of the Hughes tetralogy, “Pretty in Pink”, is devoted to the problem of misalliance – she, a girl in a self-line, living in a poor area, friendzones the same bohemian boy in a second-hand jacket and meets with a future yuppie, terribly embarrassed of her origin. By all the laws of bourgeois dramaturgy (and the realities of Reagan’s America, which was going through dramatic social stratification), this alliance is doomed. In a similar case, the brilliant James Cameron even had to sink a transatlantic liner just to prevent the hero DiCaprio from violating the unshakable class boundaries. And Hughes really wrote a break in the characters in the original script. But, seeing the disappointment of the audience at the test screenings, reluctantly changed the ending from realistic to happy, introducing the viewer into a sweet delusion, deciding to disrupt his own worldly lesson. This is the only violent moment in John Hughes’ filmography. At least for us, ordinary Soviet schoolchildren of the late 80s in second-hand jackets.
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