The complex legacy of John Hughes

With The Breakfast Club receiving a 4K upgrade within the Criterion Collection, many may find themselves returning to the locker-lined hallways of Chicago’s suburbia through the lens of filmmaker John Hughes. 

Shortly after Hughes’s death in 2009, fellow Chicagoan and prolific film critic, Roger Ebert, distinguished the writer-director as, ​“the creator of the modern American teenager.” With references to MTV, endless shots of bleachers, and strong affinities to Ray-Ban sunglasses, there’s no denying that Hughes perfectly captured the milieu of the late twentieth-century high schooler. However, his focus and concern regarding white middle class characters neglects the more diverse survey of people that might’ve better represented the realities of actual modern American teenagers. 

Hughes’s narrow focus is apparent in three key pillars of his filmography: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’s skiving trio; Pretty in Pink’s love triangle; and The Breakfast Club’s brain, beauty, jock, rebel, and recluse, are of whom are white, straight people. And when he did try to write an ethnic minority character – Sixteen Candles’s Long Duk Dong – the results are frankly offensive. 

Therefore, Hughes owes much of his legacy to the filmmakers who came after him, not unlike certain ​’80s-era adolescent characters disregarding the guidelines set by adults. While heeding Hughes’s vision of depicting teenagers authentically, subsequent writer-directors have incorporated people of colour and the queer community into their own coming-of-age stories. Rather than the ​“safe” route of remakes, Hughes’s catalogue spawned inspired-by films that are doing the work that he didn’t.

One such entrance into the high school genre is Dope, written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa. Like its spiritual predecessors, the 2015 film unfolds over a short period of time focusing on a group of nerdy Black teenagers, Malcom, Jib, and Diggie. Famuyiwa set his comedy-drama in the predominantly Black and Brown Los Angeles neighbourhood that raised him, Inglewood. 

After an advance screening of the film in 2015, Famuyiwa spoke to an audience on his inspirations: ​“I grew up watching a lot of John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and I just felt like even though they were mainly set in middle class suburban Chicago, I could relate to these kids…I felt, well, if we were able to connect to these kids in a way, why can’t those kids from suburban Chicago connect with Malcolm, Jib, and Diggie?” Famuyiwa acknowledges the impact on coming-of-age films on those coming of age, all while staying true to the world he grew up in.

Then there’s Emma Seligman, the director and co-writer of the 2023 film, Bottoms, a raunchy high school comedy starring Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott as two teen girls on a near-desperate quest for girlfriends. While doing press for Bottoms, Seligman talked to AnOther Magazine, denoting Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as one of her ​“favourite movies of all time,” and adding, ​“I was looking for a John Hughes kind of school when scouting for Bottoms. I wanted it to feel kind of timeless … John Hughes was one of the first directors to ever take teen characters seriously.” An act Seligmann conveyed through her own queer lens in Bottoms, albeit the silliness. 

Famuyiwa and Seligman didn’t adapt to their generation on account of Hollywood pressure, they simply incorporated dialogue that one would likely overhear in a cafeteria. And while perhaps it’s for the best that Hughes, a straight, white male filmmaker, didn’t write a back and forth exchange between two people of colour grappling with discrimination, there was ample room for inclusion. Everyone should be encouraged to skip school on occasion, because life indeed moves pretty fast for all. 

A fact both Famuyiwa and Seligman appreciated and executed, while continuing to honour the VHS tapes that read ​“A John Hughes Film.” Often art, be it a song, a book, or a film, is the last stop before alienation completely closes in, making it even more critical that young people seem themselves on screen. Watching a character use familiar slang, express identifiable insecurities, crush with the same chaotic fervour, and also wear outfits they’ll regret in ten years time, can be incredibly validating. And the stories teenagers need, regardless of identity, are not ones of trauma and heart-wrenching confession, but ones of dance breaks in libraries, parades, and record shops.