Molly Ringwald doesn’t condone rape jokes in Sixteen Candles
By Tribute on October 3, 2018 | 5 Comments
In a recent interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Molly Ringwald took a look back at some of the classic roles that catapulted her into stardom in the 1980s, and she definitely has some concerns, particularly with the movie Sixteen Candles.
The 1984 John Hughes coming-of-age film starred Molly as Samantha Baker, a moody teenager pining after Jake Ryan (played by Michael Schoeffling), a handsome senior jock. In one scene, Jake makes a comment alluding to taking advantage of his unconscious girlfriend: “I’ve got Caroline in the bedroom right now, passed out cold. I could violate her 10 different ways if I wanted to.” Later in the film, Caroline is tricked into believing Ted (Anthony Michael Hall) is Jake — and the two have drunken sex together.
Now, especially after watching the movie with her teenage daughter, Molly says she finds scenes like these very troubling.
“I do see [Sixteen Candles] differently,” she said. “I mean, there were parts of that film that bothered me then. Although everybody likes to say that I had, you know, John Hughes’ ear and he did listen to me in a lot of ways, I wasn’t the filmmaker.”
Molly, now 50, admitted it was not Hughes’ intention to make another raunchy comedy like Porky’s or Animal House, but what was deemed acceptable and unacceptable in the ’80s is certainly different from what we consider acceptable or unacceptable today.
“I feel very differently about the movies now, and it’s a difficult position for me to be in because there’s a lot that I like about them,” Molly said. “And of course I don’t want to appear ungrateful to John Hughes, but I do oppose a lot of what is in those movies.”
In April, she wrote an essay for The New Yorker titled “What About ‘The Breakfast Club’? Revisiting the movies of my youth in the age of #MeToo.” In it, she examined another one of her classic films and cast a critical lens over the sexist and racist undertones, particularly a scene in which Judd Nelson’s character, Bender, is implied to have inappropriately touched Molly’s character, Claire, beneath a library table.
“If I sound overly critical, it’s only with hindsight,” she wrote. “Back then, I was only vaguely aware of how inappropriate much of John’s writing was, given my limited experience and what was considered normal at the time.”
Although she does not condone her past movies portraying sexual assault as a norm of teenage life, Molly told NPR she is proud of her career and believes Hughes’ movies were able to relate to young people and give them much-needed reassurance about their struggles.
“Having a teenage daughter myself, I know that it’s not always easy to get teenagers to talk,” she said. “But these films sort of break through that. There’s something that really touches teenagers, especially The Breakfast Club I feel like sort of gives them permission to talk about their feelings — say that teenagers’ feelings really matter. And I think that’s a really powerful message.” ~Caitlyn Clancey
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I agree that it was a different time and place, but I remember watching that scene where he’s got his face under the desk and cringing and wondering what I would do, but she obviously didn’t want to get him in trouble. He was already in so much trouble at home, at school, and yeah, he’s a jerk and it should not have ended with her being with him at the end, I found that to be unlikely, but to want to save someone from their stupidity, he was basically just being a jerk. I’ve had guys be jerks to me and I swat their hands away and tell them to get a life, but I feel like more than that is unnecessary. I seem to recall she does something like that (gets angry at him afterwards), it’s not like she doesn’t respond at all in a negative way once the teacher (who is an asshole) leaves the room.
I don’t condone revisionism.
I don’t condone revisionism, either. It is important to revisit these movies as a benchmark of how far we’ve come. If you look back at films from before the feminist movement, the attitudes expressed therein are now foreign and archaic. The ’80s are a little closer to us than that, but will be even stranger in another 20 years, when the teens of John Hughes’ films are speaking to their grandchildren. If they make you cringe, it’s because the attitudes of the day were wrong, and people have done much to change them… And we still have far to go!
People seem to forget how disgusting 80s movies were towards women. Dont even get me started on revenge of the nerds. Sure it was a different time but I think any woman anywhere at any time would have a problem with those scenes. “Hey molly, spread your legs for judd” like no girl keep them shut. She should have put her foot down about that one
Yeah, but she was what? 16? There are women in their 30s who are afraid to “put their foot down” when asked to do something they consider skeezy. Why couldn’t Judd have said, This doesn’t seem appropriate considering I’m in my 20s and she’s a teen? Although actually, it wasn’t her crotch in the scene, they used a double. Both she and her mother refused to have her do it.