Loading...Recently (and by recently, I mean tonight when I remembered it was Thursday instead of Wednesday and I had a column due), I was trolling through Netflix in a Two Buck Chuck and heat wave daze, and it came to my attention that “Pretty in Pink” is up for streaming.
Now, everyone knows that “Pretty in Pink” is the absolute worst of all the John Hughes movies, including “Home Alone”, which is awful. (Seriously. Horrifying–do you want your kid committing acts of sociopathic violence just because you can’t catch a goddamn flight home?) PiP does not feature that kind of amoral disregard for human life, but it does feature a worse form of violence: the glorification of assholery and the beatification of the Nice Guy (TM).
Second things first: The Nice Guy (TM). Now, agency and privilege are hot topics of discussion these days, what with politicians realizing that women may be people and all, but back in ye olden days when Ronald Reagan ruled the roost and was gutting the American middle class for many years to come, women were still… Well, they weren’t people, I’ll tell you that much. These days, the 10,000 families in power at least pay lip service to the concepts of agency and respect, but that’s been literally in the last twelve months. PiP was made in 1986. You can tell because everyone looks like they walked off a yacht in someone else’s clothes, and/or they combine patterns at random and wear John Lennon glasses. (May we continue to forget his history of domestic abuse. Amen.)
Anyway, people have been pissed for years because Andie, our beautiful if misunderstood proto-Manic Pixie Dream Girl, ends up with the hot (by 80s standards) rich guy instead of her loyal friend Duckie, the goofy sidekick with a Secret Love for Andie. We know he has a Secret Love for her because he calls her every five minutes after her work shift ends. (I am not exaggerating.) She is also Very Smart, as was legally required for all poor kids in movies made between “Blackboard Jungle” and “Stand and Deliver”. (Which begs the question: if she’s so smart, why is she hanging around a guy who doesn’t understand commute times, or more importantly, healthy boundaries?)
For Duckie, “boundaries” is a four-letter word. Considering his grades, he would probably actually spell it with four letters. He not only stalks Andie at school, although she is just shy of rude to him in public, he follows her to work, deliberately sets off the burglar alarm, ignores her when she tells him she does not want to see him, tries to get in with her slacker dad, and throws a tantrum when she follows through on her original Friday night plans. Duckie. Honey. That is creepy and weird, and a perfect template for all the neckbeards who bitch about the friendzone today.
And listen, folks, Andie is not a catch. She’s judgmental, inflexible, and (here’s that word again) rude. Here’s the thing: her father refuses to be the adult in the family, what with the only taking part-time work, making his daughter wake him up and prepare meals. So I get that she has several walls of defense up against…
Sorry, I just got distracted by “The Breakfast Club”, which is a much better movie.
Anyway–Andie goes to this party with Hot Rich Guy and after about thirty seconds, makes it clear that the chip on her shoulder will not be filled up with rich guy beer, makes the nice young man feel bad about including her in his circle of (admittedly jerkwad) friends and makes a beeline for the local Alternabar. Naturally, she acts like an asshole there, too, when Duckie has hurt feelings and she decides to really lay in, meanwhile ignoring Hot Rich Guy, who happens to buy two drinks that they never get around too. Naturally, drunk Duckie forcibly kisses her boss in an attempt to make Andie jealous.
Cut to blah blah blah PROM when the movie takes a turn for the better and Andie chooses Hot Rich Guy Who Just Wants To Hang Out With The Girl He Likes over I’m A Creepy Stalker And Eight Years Of Friendship Does Not Mitigate That. And all the fans are angry.
Which brings us to the point (and the theory I have jacked from my indomitable friend Kate): Duckie Dale is a template for dudes who believe in transactional relationships between men and women. Considering these values are not so clear in “Sixteen Candles” and “Better Off Dead”, one has to ask why, John Hughes, why would you tell people that eight years of friendship means that you get to creep on your friend? Stalking never enhances a relationship. Just say no. Why would you try to make us feel bad for Duckie, sitting alone and sad on a coin-operated newspaper rack, because Andie told him she had plans and followed through with them? Why should we feel empathy for a guy who routinely ignores the agency of the woman he ostensibly loves? Why did you give all this fuel to the neckbeards and Nice Guys (TM) among us? Why would you cast young James Spader (who is ridiculous and gorgeous, especially compared to bland Hot Rich Guy Andrew McCarthy), as the villain, when he is the only direct and honest character in the whole damn movie? Why did you punish clear communication?
Unfortunately, the answer boils down to the unsatisfying “reasons”: “the 80s” and “patriarchy”. We know better now. Now we know that women are people with thoughts and feelings, who like being paid the same as a dude, who can advocate for themselves and be aggressive in life and at work. We know that they make decisions that are just as valid and reasoned as a man’s, and when they say “I’m going out with this person because I like them”, we know that the decision will be respected. We know better now. Don’t we?
Don’t we, Jill Abramson?
