Ain't that close to love?
When my son was born the midwife commented on his oily skin - "he'll be a spotty teenager". My own skin is noted for its sebaceous quality, so my reaction wasn't surprise so much as anticipatory fellow-feeling - tempered by the utter inability to imagine this eight-pound armful as a teenager, spotty or otherwise.
He's nearly eleven now and he's just got his first spot. I guess it all starts now. I wish him luck.
But I've got solid proof that he's not a teenager yet. We were watching The Breakfast Club last night (online DVD rental, it's a great system) when he walked in. He asked what it was about, and we told him the setup - five kids are thrown together in a Saturday detention class and we see what happens. He was baffled - he literally could not comprehend why anyone would want to watch a film with no plot, as he put it.
You have to have been a teenager, I think, or else still be one. My son had walked in on the effective, understated scene where the teacher cracks and challenges Bender to a fight. Bender, whose own father regularly beats him up, shrinks into a corner looking scared, bewildered and above all stuck. It's as if he's realising that his whole repertoire of bullying and violence depends on adults not replying with greater force - but that adults ultimately, inevitably, will. I can't imagine even explaining that one scene to my son for another year or two. (Mind you, all of that goes for nothing in the crawl-space blonde-joke scene that immediately follows, where Bender's back to playing a cross between Tony from West Side Story and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. But it's that kind of film - the point's been made, so it moves on.)
I didn't see The Breakfast Club when it came out; it's a bit odd seeing it now, when I'm the age of the older-generation characters (the kids' parents, the sadistic teacher, the philosophical janitor). Some things which I expected to grate were surprisingly bearable - chief among them the ghastly scene where Molly Ringwald's character gives the Ally Sheedy 'basketcase' character a makeover, turning her from a nervy urban gipsy into a kind of sleepwalking Pre-Raphaelite mannequin, and hence enabling her to get the guy (in the shape of Emilio Estevez, 'the athlete'). I'd love to think this was ironic, but I don't think John Hughes really does irony, or not at anything above a Readers' Digest level ("His parents wanted him to be a success, but it was the pressure they put on him that made him fail!") If I'd seen that scene back in the 80s I would probably have walked out there and then. Now... meh. It doesn't offend me, because it's so clearly not about me. It could even be the kind of thing kids do.
On the other hand, I was irritated by some things which would probably have rung true to me back then. So Bender ('the criminal') has problems with his parents, notably that they get drunk and beat him up. It comes out over the course of the day that 'the athlete' has problems too - specifically, he has problems with his parents and their expectations of him. Ally Sheedy's character has problems with her parents (they ignore her); the Molly Ringwald 'princess' character has problems with hers, too (they're divorcing and use her to get at each other). The nerdy Anthony Michael Hall character doesn't appear to have any problems, until it turns out that he's contemplating suicide because he's not getting high enough marks... to satisfy his parents. I mean, come on, kids! Isn't even one of you losing sleep over your prospective choice of career or your gender identity or a lack of friends or illegal drinking or illegal drugs or illness or your penfriend not answering your letters or your cat dying, or anything apart from your parents? Always with the parents! They haven't got it easy, you know, and I'm sure they're all trying to bring you up properly (with the possible exception of the Bender household). We didn't ask for you to be born, you know. Well, OK, I suppose we did in a sense, but we didn't ask for you to be teenagers.
Still, they were nice kids. The dancing scene was another one which would have had me groaning and tutting twenty years ago - what's this doing here, it's just an excuse for a cut-price pop video.... Last night, I have to say, I found it really charming. I've retrospectively hated my teenage years for a long time (my twenties weren't that great either), but that scene in particular made being a teenager look like a lot of fun; more to the point, it stirred a few vague memories suggesting that it might occasionally have been like that. As I head towards being the father of a teenager - a role I'm sure I'll screw up horribly, just like everyone else - it'll be good to have those memories to hand.
And I wish him luck.
When you're a kid they tell you it's all grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have kids and that's it. The truth is, the world is so much stranger than that, so much darker and so much madder - and so much better.
He's nearly eleven now and he's just got his first spot. I guess it all starts now. I wish him luck.
But I've got solid proof that he's not a teenager yet. We were watching The Breakfast Club last night (online DVD rental, it's a great system) when he walked in. He asked what it was about, and we told him the setup - five kids are thrown together in a Saturday detention class and we see what happens. He was baffled - he literally could not comprehend why anyone would want to watch a film with no plot, as he put it.
You have to have been a teenager, I think, or else still be one. My son had walked in on the effective, understated scene where the teacher cracks and challenges Bender to a fight. Bender, whose own father regularly beats him up, shrinks into a corner looking scared, bewildered and above all stuck. It's as if he's realising that his whole repertoire of bullying and violence depends on adults not replying with greater force - but that adults ultimately, inevitably, will. I can't imagine even explaining that one scene to my son for another year or two. (Mind you, all of that goes for nothing in the crawl-space blonde-joke scene that immediately follows, where Bender's back to playing a cross between Tony from West Side Story and Shaggy from Scooby-Doo. But it's that kind of film - the point's been made, so it moves on.)
I didn't see The Breakfast Club when it came out; it's a bit odd seeing it now, when I'm the age of the older-generation characters (the kids' parents, the sadistic teacher, the philosophical janitor). Some things which I expected to grate were surprisingly bearable - chief among them the ghastly scene where Molly Ringwald's character gives the Ally Sheedy 'basketcase' character a makeover, turning her from a nervy urban gipsy into a kind of sleepwalking Pre-Raphaelite mannequin, and hence enabling her to get the guy (in the shape of Emilio Estevez, 'the athlete'). I'd love to think this was ironic, but I don't think John Hughes really does irony, or not at anything above a Readers' Digest level ("His parents wanted him to be a success, but it was the pressure they put on him that made him fail!") If I'd seen that scene back in the 80s I would probably have walked out there and then. Now... meh. It doesn't offend me, because it's so clearly not about me. It could even be the kind of thing kids do.
On the other hand, I was irritated by some things which would probably have rung true to me back then. So Bender ('the criminal') has problems with his parents, notably that they get drunk and beat him up. It comes out over the course of the day that 'the athlete' has problems too - specifically, he has problems with his parents and their expectations of him. Ally Sheedy's character has problems with her parents (they ignore her); the Molly Ringwald 'princess' character has problems with hers, too (they're divorcing and use her to get at each other). The nerdy Anthony Michael Hall character doesn't appear to have any problems, until it turns out that he's contemplating suicide because he's not getting high enough marks... to satisfy his parents. I mean, come on, kids! Isn't even one of you losing sleep over your prospective choice of career or your gender identity or a lack of friends or illegal drinking or illegal drugs or illness or your penfriend not answering your letters or your cat dying, or anything apart from your parents? Always with the parents! They haven't got it easy, you know, and I'm sure they're all trying to bring you up properly (with the possible exception of the Bender household). We didn't ask for you to be born, you know. Well, OK, I suppose we did in a sense, but we didn't ask for you to be teenagers.
Still, they were nice kids. The dancing scene was another one which would have had me groaning and tutting twenty years ago - what's this doing here, it's just an excuse for a cut-price pop video.... Last night, I have to say, I found it really charming. I've retrospectively hated my teenage years for a long time (my twenties weren't that great either), but that scene in particular made being a teenager look like a lot of fun; more to the point, it stirred a few vague memories suggesting that it might occasionally have been like that. As I head towards being the father of a teenager - a role I'm sure I'll screw up horribly, just like everyone else - it'll be good to have those memories to hand.
And I wish him luck.
When you're a kid they tell you it's all grow up, get a job, get married, get a house, have kids and that's it. The truth is, the world is so much stranger than that, so much darker and so much madder - and so much better.
posted by Phil at 2:38 pm
1 Comments:
But who has ever smoked dope and danced like that?
It was like they had drunk 10 cans of Red Bull each!
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