Like say Brian was a Nerdy Black teenager or Andrew was a Black guy, that might have made the story a little more interesting, just noticed that there were no Black characters in this movie and a Black lead would have been different and changed things just a little bit.
sharefunny how you don't say Bender as being the black kid... 😒
and why not one of the girls be black?
Back in the 80's there was still a lot of racial tension and uncertainties. the segregation was gone and so was the banning them from making a decent and honest living. but now their kids are grown and angry and they pass that anger on to their children, who were teenagers during this time.
srsly, for a good look at how tensions were in the 80's take a look at your average episode of Night Court. the jokingly mention how tensions are high.
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Hmm I don't know about that at all!
Everyone in the suburbs then seemed pretty much the same and everyone was mixed together. I don't remember even a trace of tension between any minorities and anyone else in school back then. Granted there were very, very few minorities in most suburban schools, but they just seemed mixed in and the same as anyone else.
Actually this is a cut and paste from a different thread about a different movie, so it's not quite 100% on target for this thread but since I don't feel like typing and coming up with anything more:
(I think in most suburbs, kids from any race pretty much all wore the same mix of styles and in the 80s and listened to the same music and so on for the most part (although I'm sure there is always some region or some school where it was different) and you also didn't see stuff like the black table, the Asian table, etc. like you saw at times late 90s/00s.
Of course in the 80s most suburbs were so white that people basically had to naturally just mix together and all be the same as there were not enough people of any specific group to even be able to really make up table or clique even if anyone wanted to.
The real difference was between suburban and urban. A suburban kid of any race would be similar but quite different from an inner urban kid of any race and suburban pop culture heavily dominated mainstream style, movie, tv, music in the 80s (some urban influences seeped in no doubt, break dancing and bits of rap on the side, etc but it was nothing like how the 90s flipped to an urban dominated music and style scene).
It was sort of interesting to note that when some suburbs and especially campuses (and, on a side, note, things like TV commercials) became a bit more racially diverse later on that you actually started seeing people separate into groups more and that in a weird way it looked like the lunch room/dining hall had become less inclusive. In certain ways people spoke in more inclusive ways though and suburban kids adopted all sorts of urban styles and music, totally unfiltered, instead of rejecting it and yet the reality of looking around had this slightly weird disconnect to it since you'd see during that period entire tables/groups together all of the same race which you just didn't see back in the 80s (at least not in the areas where I saw what it was like) and you heard more talk about people getting pressured to not act 'white' and about somehow only the urban culture versions of anything non-white were considered legit.
In the 80s suburbs it seemed like you were just a suburban 80s teen/college kid and that was that. It's hard to explain it seemed like people were both more accepting and inclusive and blind to differences and yet also more separated and divisive in some ways too later on, post 80s, at least for a period there, maybe some of that stuff went away by the 10s.
In the 90s the suburbs became more urban in vibe and the urban areas didn't become any more suburban. It seemed to lead to a bit less gentle vibe to people overall in general. Grunge was so much less upbeat than 80s music and hardcore rap so much harder and harsher.)
When I watch movies, the last thing I'm looking at is what race the actor is. Of course, if this came out nowadays then it would be mandatory that at least one member of The Breakfast Club should be a minority (otherwise it would be racist), and someone like Brian would undoubtedly be 'struggling' with his sexuality. However, a huge part of this movie's charm is that it doesn't fall for any of that paranoid stuff.
I'm sure they just naturally wrote the film and cast it without thinking about race, religion or sexual persuasion. That's the best quality about films like this. They came out at a time when their only concern was making the best type of film, not about appeasing demographics or insecure people.
Death by stereo
You are spot on!
It is beyond annoying today how everyone always has to gripe that there is not a black, Hispanic, gay, etc. character in a film or TV show.
Back in the 80s nobody cared, people did not seek out racism that did not exist to get up all in arms in their faux cause du jour. Also in 80s films they cast the best actors they could find. They did not search out some girl who already has had numerous plastic surgeries or some guy who goes on some crazy diet and gym routine to get ripped for a part.
yeah. I have a hard time with people casting someone because of something when the role they are supposed to be playing doesn't call for that.
example: the remake of Annie [the one with Kathy Bates as Miss Hannigan] they have a black lady [really pretty, really friendly] be Mr Warbuck's personal secretary/administrative assistant. as fine as that is nowadays, this version was made to represent the nineteen thirties. say what? some uberly rich, almost Trump-like republican [at least the first version depicted warbucks as a republican] hires a young black lady as his personal secretary? AND THEN FALLS IN LOVE WITH HER AND PROPOSES????
I am willing to let the proposition/such slide but the secretary bit threw me for a loop. I understand the actress who played her always liked to push the bar/envelope but really? back then that would not be done. that would not be real. sorry. fail.
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Thank you.
It's kind of freaky how easily people overreact to this topic. To disagree with them, these days, is an act of bravery.
There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly west
Something like a gay character wouldn have been written because we swept that stuff under the rug back then and pretended it didn't exist. Not because of "that paranoid stuff" you mention. What does that even mean?
John Hughes, while in no way racist. (At least according everything I've read) clearly knew nothing outside of his white middle/upper middle class experience. Look at the minorities in all of his films. They're basically walking, often cases negative stereotypes of different races.
In his defense these things weren't considered racist at the time, but that's mainly just because the time period accepted negative views towards minorities or stereotypes about these groups.
I was a teenager in a mid-sized city in New Jersey in the 1980s, and I can tell you this.
We were all from blue collar, middle class backgrounds Nobody was wealthy by any means
But no one knew any black or Hispanic kids, as they all lived in the public housing projects, so we had no interaction with them. This is not racist, that is just the way it was
And when I visited family members out in the suburbs (again, not rich, just middle class) there were no racial minorities out there
Just the reality of the 1980s
But no one knew any black or Hispanic kids, as they all lived in the public housing projects, so we had no interaction with them. This is not racist, that is just the way it was
Something like a gay character wouldn have been written because we swept that stuff under the rug back then and pretended it didn't exist. Not because of "that paranoid stuff" you mention. What does that even mean?
Just watch the damn movie without thinking about them being white or not gay. That attitude is killing movies today.
It would be different then. A movie that takes such liberty with differences might have a harder time keeping it a light movie with race introduced into it. There weren't serious differences between these five kids. They were stupid differences, ones that didn't matter. Race is permanent. It's more serious and they wouldn't have been able to treat it the way they did the other differences, even in 1985 when speech was freer than it is right now.
shareI don't think John Hughes knew how to write or direct characters who weren't white. All his movies seem to cater to white anglo upper middle class suburbia.
But most teen movies in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s traditionally featured white kids, even today. I think they feel that white kids would reach the broadest audience, and then they throw in the odd black character or two. Not Another Teen Movie even made fun of this in 2001.
At least 80s TV had The Cosby Show, The Jeffersons, and Family Matters, where you could find black characters on sitcoms.
If one of the kids was black all his whining and crying would have drowned out benders crying and whining. Plus they old had Coca Cola, not a can of course orange soda to be seen.
share[deleted]
It would have been about how much "harder" it is for the black kid. And how the classes were "biased" against his people. After all, 1 + 1 = 2 only applies to white kids, right? George Washington was the first president only if you are white. And don't even get into proper grammar and spelling!
shareI, for one, would not want to hear them mutter how ridikalus a Saturday in detention would be...
Oh God. Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more.
In the remake, the athlete will be black and the brain will be asian.
~ fin ~