3. He Is A Racist
You ever seen a film called The Palm Beach Story? It's truly a great film. One of Preston Sturges' best. Not as good as The Lady Eve but every bit the comedy that The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek is. Anyway I was reading a review of the film in this collection of film reviews I had and in the review, written by David Ansen, he makes a critical summation in regards to a racially insensitive comedy routine that Sturges placed at a key point in the film. The scene is a bit between a black porter on a train and his particularly foul and deprecating treatment by a traveling gang of all white eccentric millionaire game hunters. Ansen states that:
Undoubtedly one of the slapstick summits of the 1939's and 1940's comedy this immortal sequence also contains what has become the movies one mark of shame - its utterly stereotypical treatment of the terrorized black porter as a popeyed servile comic foil. Sturges may have been the most unconventional Hollywood humorist of his day but in racial matters he was a very conventional white man of the 1940's
You find a very similar situation with John Hughes. He may have been one of the greatest screenwriters of all time. He had a great mind for comedy and a wonderful insight into the affairs of teenage life but in racial matter he was a very conventional white man of the 1980's. Throughout many of his landmark films (both written and directed) there are numerous examples of racial stereotypes and cultural insensitivity. The most famous example of course is his depiction of Asian American Long Duk Dong (played by Gedde Watanabe) in Sixteen Candles. You remember him right? He's hard to miss since a gong sounds whenever he enters the scene. As Susanna Gora recounts in her excellent book detailing the rise of 80's youth culture on screen titled Don't You Forget About Me:
"Dong was a walking punch line, an impossibly uncool teen with a thick indeterminate Asian accent who tries out his English by exclaiming such now well worn phrases as "Whass happenin', haahstuff?" He uses a fork and spoon as chopsticks, gets drunk at the party at Jakes Ryan's house (where he frolics with his newfound "sexy American Girl-friend!"), and ends up passed out on a front lawn pleading, "No more yanky my wanky- the Donger need FOOD!"
I can't help but think Blake Edwards sighed a sigh of relief when Sixteen Candles was released because finally someone had another grand example of Asian American stereotyping to acknowledge as horrendous instead of the legendary one he provided in his film Breakfast At Tiffany's.
Yet as I mentioned earlier there are many more racially insensitive low-lights to be found all throughout Hughes work. Other such famous examples include. 1. National Lampoon's Vacation = Car ride through the ghetto.
Sad to say that the only black people the Griswald's see on their legendary trip to Wally World are jive talking pimps and hub cap stealing hustlers. Well.......there is also the other security guard they meet at the park. At least he has a position of power.....which Clark demeans when at gunpoint he makes him get on all fours like a dog and roll over. 2. Sixteen Candles = Pink Guy, Black Car
Ah yes, the great Sixteen Candles. Who can forget Samantha Baker's epic trials and tribulations endured at the hands of Grandparents, nerds, China-men, and a totally inconsiderate family who forgets her birthday. It would be worth it however if only she could share a loving kiss and tender embrace with the man of her dreams. Granted that man has to be pink. But hey give Sam some credit; at least she wanted the car to be black. 3. Weird Science = Hanging at the bar.
Granted Anthony Micheal Hall is hilarious in this scene. Its just sad to see his comedy have to be based solely on Black stereotypes. After Lisa took them on a trip like that I would have to wonder what exactly was put into her programming. Maybe some Aryan philosophy lessons got downloaded by mistake. 4. Ferris Bullers Day Off = "Hey man what country do you think this is?"
Thumbs up for Ferris here. At least he wants to include people of all races in his day off...as long as they're stealing his car or doing an impromptu Thriller dance during a parade. Other than that they can get lost Why Hughes needed to include such reprehensible stuff in his movies is a mystery. Granted, Hughes himself was the first to admit his cultural ignorance when he said that "I'm not going to pretend I know the black experience", which I completely understand. But why oh why Mr. Hughes are the only other cultural experiences you know all stereotypical ones? Perhaps I'm of the mindset that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. I understand that you may not know a whole lot about Chinese culture, but if that's the case then why do you even have a character like Long Duk Dong in your movie in the first place. Why is that the only thing you chose to recall or emphasize about the people of the orient? Of course there are the people who'll say that Hughes is just being realistic. As Molly Ringwald points out "for that time in the suburbs of Chicago it's pretty accurate" (the racial segregation she means). Okay, I guess I can buy that. Hughes was just trying to be realistic with his depiction of certain all white suburbs and communities. As Susanna Gora put it:
"and indeed the world Hughes understood and set his films in was overwhelmingly white, more accurately so than, for example, the oddly Caucasian New York of Woody Allen's movies"
To that I would have to ask, why is racial realism the only type of realism Hughes chose to emphasize in his films? He certainly didn't emphasize realistic high school settings like in Sixteen Candles where the flat chested 16 year old ends up with the Calvin Klein model who ditched his ridiculously good looking girl friend to be with her. He didn't emphases realism when in Ferris Buller's Day Off he showed a super charming rouge holding the city of Chicago in the palm of his hand for one day and doing whatever he wanted including illegally sneaking on parade floats and leading the city in a sing a long of Twist and Shout and Danken Schoen. If he was willing to stretch the limits of imagination in those parts of his movies then why not in others. I'm a little bit perturbed and suspicious of this Hollywood tradition of having a grand imagination in every part of the movie making process except casting. Oh sure we can explore other worlds and fight dungeons and dragons which of course is all totally fake, but put a black lead, a Mexican lead, or an Asian lead in the role (who isn't a stereotype) and suddenly you've gone too far and your ability to suspend belief is over taxed. I suppose it all boils down to a sadly warped perspective. Like Hughes himself stated he didn't know anything about the black experience. Well what exactly did he want to know? As far as I know black people speak the same language, have the same parts, experience the same pier pressure and worry about the future just like white people. The same goes for any kind of race you can name. Would it have killed him to diversify his movies a little bit. Great talent doesn't make up for having a poor demeaning vision of other races. If anything it can make your talent seem more hollow and less insightful. I know Hughes made some great strides in portraying well rounded and captivating teen melodrama on the screen and we fans of his are forever thankful for that. It's just sad that many of the great movements in filmmaking culture, be it D.W. Griffiths narrative advancements in Birth of a Nation or John Hughes social explorations in his teen films, always seem to be accompanied by such horrible instances of cultural insensitivity.