John Hughes, Teenagers, and the Corporate American Dream
Arts
Film + Digital Media Critical Studies Thesis
John Hughes's memorable 1980's teen films are considered by many to be "classics." With an aesthetic emblematic of the time, his films also told young audiences to buy into a conservative agenda sought strong, powerful depictions of men and, subsequently, poor depictions of women. In my investigation of Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (both 1986), I analyze the ways in which Hughes's text functioned to keep women at home and out of the workplace, and at the same time, promoted the masculinity of corporate idealism. Because his films were so popular, many of the tropes incentivized by John Hughes and the Reagan administration, such as the makeover, were re-used in later teen movies in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Not only does this result in portrayals of teenaged girls and young women unable to get ahead by way of intellect alone, these films and their successors also boosted adulation for the 'con man' so familiar to us today.
