Race Politics in 80s Comedies

i derailed the ILX, coach me up: the "White Straight Guy Who Sucks" Narrative and corresponding lack of "... Who Sucks" in anything other than indie snooze thread by posting about how the movie Adventures in Babysitting reflects a conservative, racialized fear of cities, blackness, poverty, public welfare, etc. others pointed out such anxieties can probably be traced in many movies of the period. in case anyone wants to talk about that stuff, i'm starting a thread. i'll repost the relevant posts below.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/it/thumb/2/20/Soul_Man_1986.png/280px-Soul_Man_1986.png

In a 2013 interview with the AV Club, Howell talked about Soul Man and his impressions of it nearly three decades later.

"…I still don’t understand, and I guess this is just my own ignorance, the fact that certain people really hate the whole blackface idea, because this isn’t a movie about blackface," Howell said. "… It’s not like I’m Al Jolson in blackface singing Mammy. I understand that that could be seen as very offensive and even irresponsible. But Soul Man, it’s 180 degrees from that. It’s an innocent movie, it’s got innocent messages, and it’s got some very, very deep messages."

Howell went on to point out that Robert Downey Jr. played a similar role in 2008's Tropic Thunder. "The difference is that he was just playing a character in Tropic Thunder, and there was no magnifying glass on racism, which is so prevalent in our country. I guess that’s what makes people more uncomfortable about Soul Man. But I think it’s an important movie."

adventures in babysitting has really fucked up 80s reaganite crypto-racist politics. i can feel what a drag i'm being because i loved it as a kid--vincent d'onofrio!--but i can't help it. it's true. i think i wrote a post about it like 11 years ago on this here ilx.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:30 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is not exactly the same thing, but I realized a couple of years ago that the movie Adventures in Babysitting is a huge apologia for Reaganite politics. There are a bunch of different ways this manifests itself (including "scary" black people on the El and the fact that Elizabeth Shue=good guy because she's a virgin), but the scene that most fully drives it home is when the Elizabeth Shue character is on the phone with her friend, whose rescue is the whole impetus of the film. The friend is at a bus station which is portrayed as the deepest level of hell. The friend has commandeered a phone booth which is usually occupied by a homeless man. While friend is on the phone with ES, homeless man returns and knocks on the door of the phone booth, imploring, "that's my home!" ES's friend, with whom we're meant to sympathize, kicks the homeless man's personal effects out of the booth (I remember slippers) and shouts, "you just moved!" I used to love this movie, but it is some chilling shit to rewatch.
― horsehoe (horseshoe), Sunday, February 12, 2006 4:42 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol "chilling" i was such a drama queen in 2006

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:35 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Re: Adventures in Babysitting: I only remember the bit where she "sings" the "blues" assisted by appropriately sympathetic black musicians, to appropriately wild acclaim. Which totally happens all the time, in the clubs. You know, those blues clubs that I totally go to. All the time.

― rhymes with month (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:41 AM (54 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is not exactly the same thing, but I realized a couple of years ago that the movie Adventures in Babysitting is a huge apologia for Reaganite politics. There are a bunch of different ways this manifests itself (including "scary" black people on the El and the fact that Elizabeth Shue=good guy because she's a virgin), but the scene that most fully drives it home is when the Elizabeth Shue character is on the phone with her friend, whose rescue is the whole impetus of the film. The friend is at a bus station which is portrayed as the deepest level of hell. The friend has commandeered a phone booth which is usually occupied by a homeless man. While friend is on the phone with ES, homeless man returns and knocks on the door of the phone booth, imploring, "that's my home!" ES's friend, with whom we're meant to sympathize, kicks the homeless man's personal effects out of the booth (I remember slippers) and shouts, "you just moved!" I used to love this movie, but it is some chilling shit to rewatch.
― horsehoe (horseshoe), Sunday, February 12, 2006 4:42 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol "chilling" i was such a drama queen in 2006

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 9:35 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha amazing. I like your close reading, but I also think this was just kind of an 80s movie trope about NYC.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:43 AM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

er, about cities, rather. I think it was Chicago.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:44 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was chicago. you're probably right that it was all of those movies, but it feels particularly brazen in Adventures in Babysitting. particularly cold in its calculations about whose safety and well-being viewers are supposed to care about? i don't know. this is really not what this thread's about. good to discover i have had no new thoughts in 10 years.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:48 AM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Fish out of water" is a hallowed comedy trope. In 80s movies it (at least sometimes) cut both ways, with the uptight whiteys being redemptively loosened by their surprise interactions with more-diverse influences. Cf. Beverly Hills Cop etc.

― rhymes with month (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:48 AM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if i were going to write a book of cultural criticism about the 80s and reagan's cultural legacy and white flight and representations of blackness and the city, i would devote at least half a chapter to adventures in babysitting

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:49 AM (46 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd read it

― rhymes with month (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:51 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah. Maybe the whole trope is sort of conservative -- barbarians (homeless/"crazy people"/knife-wielding thugs) breaching the gates of the city and such.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:52 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i guess i should watch AiB!

i thought he was just a greenhorn who didn't know how to play the game.

This is certainly the contemporary inside-politics def of "loser" -- even a non-neophyte like Bill deBlasio gets tarred with a version of it.

― helpless before THRILLARY (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:52 AM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dr. Morbs, I wish you would! I think it's sort of valuable in its crystal-clear articulation of a really fucked-up ideology. like hitchcock films are for laura mulvey's feminist criticism.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:55 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(i understand that hitchock films are better than adventures in babysitting.)

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:56 AM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

However no Hitchcock film included a cameo from Albert Collins, so therefore your argument is invalid.

― rhymes with month (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 10:59 AM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

prob not Topaz

― helpless before THRILLARY (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:00 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg that scene! so cringey. maybe another half-chapter about white people singing the blues in 80s movies. or maybe that's the same half-chapter.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:00 AM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah you could definitely get a lot of mileage out of "soul" in 80s movies

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:01 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Soul Man" is a chapter in itself.

― rhymes with month (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:02 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weird science has a scene like that too
why am i still following this thread

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:02 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's one "good" black dude in the scene with the knife-wielding black people on the El. if i remember correctly, he sacrifices his own personal safety to save Shue and the kids she's babysitting.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:02 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Blues Brothers" obv

― rhymes with month (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:03 AM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i promise i will stop posting about this soon, but there's a kind of bipolar philo/phobic interaction with blackness and black culture even within AiB. (i've actually never seen Blues Brothers; maybe its politics are different)

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:07 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean i guess it's philo toward black culture and phobic towards actual black people unless they value white lives over their own.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:08 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that makes it seem a lot older than the 80s...

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:09 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ugh, i'd forgotten all that stuff about Adventures in Babysitting - but horseshoe otm, it is all cringe-inducing.

― 'they pelted us with rocks and garbage' (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:12 AM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel like this could be its own thread but I don't know exactly how to define the parameters

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:13 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead seems like an (I think?) less problematic film that fits this thread's premise. She is basically the equivalent of the SWD slacker loser who "finds inner strength" when thrust into a situation.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:14 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Even White Suburbanites Sing The Blues: Reaganite audience-identification in the "Adventures In Babysitting" narrative and corresponding lack of "a thread about this" in anything other than probably some old threads we can't find now

― 'they pelted us with rocks and garbage' (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:14 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and racism

― 'they pelted us with rocks and garbage' (Doctor Casino), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:14 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:15 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think Aykroyd is on record that he would've liked more than 30 seconds of John Lee Hooker in TBB, but the studio had other ideas (tho i'm sure John Landis wd've been fine with a 4-hour movie). Still that was undoubtedly a gateway for many teens to those artists, an argument could be made.

― helpless before THRILLARY (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:17 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there was probably a better way to do that. sorry if it's hard to read!

which thread?

ILX, coach me up: the "White Straight Guy Who Sucks" Narrative and corresponding lack of "... Who Sucks" in anything other than indie snooze

should i watch soul man? i...don't want to.

Excellent stuff. I hope there will also be room for things like "Club Paradise" and its treatment of post-colonialism and drugs? Also "Coming to America" could bring a fruitful batch of topics.

Oh, and let's please unpack "Revenge of the Nerds." The ostensibly-marginalized viewpoint characters are the smart straight white guys (who happen to be somewhat socially awkward). Meanwhile you have the gay black guy bringing some measure of intersectionalism avant la lettre. And the historically black fraternity as deus ex machina in the final act.

itt: people yell at me for never having seen Trading Places.

I was in seventh grade when I saw AIB in the theater and the blues scene horrified me. I didn't get the racial politics yet – I just felt embarrassed for everyone on screen.

i didn't get the reaganite coherence of the "scary" blacks on the El + the scene with the white suburbanite's triumph over the homeless man at the bus station (ugh, who take the bus, right?) until i rewatched as an adult. it was one of those experiences where it was on cable and i was like, oh i love this movie!, and then became progressively dismayed as i watched.

maybe another half-chapter about white people singing the blues in 80s movies.

Is the Otis Day & the Knights stuff in "Animal House" the ur-example of this?

but the point of this thread is not really to be dismayed; more to figure out what the deal is with 80s comedies' attitudes toward race and related cultural/political matters.

I feel like a lot of this is also connected to Death Wish and similar movies, like the idea of white bourgeois folks "reclaiming" urban space makes its way from dark, gritty violent fantasy into tamer comedies.

i should probably finish reading The Invisible Bridge to post in this thread. perlstein talks about that kind of thing.

ain't nobody leaving this thread 'less he's singin' the blues

i haven't seen animal house either! i've seen the john hughes movies and random other 80s comedies about white people who live in the suburbs, but clearly i lack a thorough grounding in the era.

I think Animal House is different; it at least comes about from an organic-for-what-the-movie-is sequence of events and the related racial issues are foregrounded in how it's played in the movie (from what I remember)

Pretty much no black people in John Hughes movies

i'm interested in Coming to America as a counternarrative about the city, where it can be a difficult place to live, but citydwellers are people we identify with rather than fear. also i love that movie, so i sincerely hope it doesn't turn out to be deeply fucked up.

xp no but fear of black people is present in 16 Candles, for example:

"a black guy????

no, a black car. a pink guy."

fear of black men and white women having sex, no less. nice. that movie also has long duk dong, of course. it's a gem.

I'm pretty sure an entire book could be written about the myriad of ways in which the Pat Morita scene from Night Patrol is epically fucked up and endemic of a style of humor that's...well, I was gonna say 'of another era altogether' but it sadly seems like that era is making a sad return.

I saw Sixteen Candles waaaaaaay after the fact (possibly after 2000?) and my general reaction was to stare aghast at the screen and feel incredibly embarrassed by how funny I found parts of it

part of why posting about adventures in babysitting seemed worthwhile to me this morning is that we're clearly still living with the effects of this kind of fear. some of us are dying from it.

I saw Sixteen Candles waaaaaaay after the fact (possibly after 2000?) and my general reaction was to stare aghast at the screen and feel incredibly embarrassed by how funny I found parts of it

― http://porno (DJP), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 12:08 PM (18 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i loved that movie and tried to ignore the awful parts. it is sort of fascinating as a document of the times.

It really is!

it's the same way moments like the line about "it's a shame when people throw away a perfectly good white boy like that," delivered by a black garbageman in Better off Dead strike me now. that's not a racist moment, and it's funny (or at least i found it funny as a kid), but it's a little weird? or not weird but telling about...something i don't fully understand.

the way white directors in the 80s wanted to make use of black people, maybe?

thank you for reminding me to rewatch Better Off Dead

Hollywood Shuffle came out in 1987...maybe not a coincidence?

xp yeah i mean i love Better off Dead

Man, that Weird Science scene is even worse than I remember. Just a complete CF of racism and misogyny. (And noted white guy John Kapelos playing a Latino.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9GBuciv20A

There are probably cringey race and gender politics in it, but Better Off Dead is a wondrous movie that I will defend to my grave.

i don't know if there are cringey moments in Better off Dead, at least race wise. i just find that white boy moment...interesting. in part because it's such a throwaway.

i think part of why this is so fascinating to me is that these movies shaped me, and like, it's a little sad to me in retrospect how hard i worked to dispel the cognitive dissonance of the racism of 16 Candles so that i could pretend i could ever be molly ringwald.

but also, i didn't understand how useful the information those movies provided about the culture around me was at the time. and then rewatching them as an adult, i have all these belated eureka moments.

Don't forget the date rape in 16 Candles!

yeah i was just thinking about all the exemplar of rape culture stuff in 16 candles.

a conservative, racialized fear of cities, blackness, poverty, public welfare, etc

John Hughes is to blame

well, John Hughes and George Wallace and D.W. Griffith Thomas Jefferson and America

Better Off Dead is great and largely free of this imo - the "perfectly good white boy" thing doesn't strike me as racist in its construction or delivery

xp

i feel like who's to blame for it is less interesting than the fact that it's out there. fuck ronald reagan, though.

xp i don't think it's racist either, just racially interesting

Hughes is just the biggest offender in the 80s - he led the way, was wildly popular and widely imitated. The racism (and misogyny) were hand-waved away, and it consistently and unapologetically shows up in all his 80s work.

There were decent comedies in the 80s that dealt with race better, had integrated casts not composed entirely of stereotypes etc (fave that springs to mind is Buckaroo Bonzai)

Last time I watched Buckaroo Bonzai, I felt kinda queasy about the portrayal of Professor Hikita, particularly in the flashback sequence.

Even though not a comedy, death wish was the first thing that came to my mind in this thread. A weirdly sincere and explicit articulation of this fear instead of the normalized "uh oh, public transit" that were supposed to take as a given

I watched the Warriors last night and it's unusual how humanized the gang members were for the period. It's like a path not taken and instead we ended up w Charles Bronson's america

My favorite movie of the 80s is Big Trouble in Little China, which could have gone very badly, but I think gave all of the individual characters lots of room to express individual personalities. On the other hand, it still plays into some stereotypes in the wider scope - exotic orientalism, asian prostitution among them. But I think that there are so many exceptions and inversions of that stuff in the film that I can let some of that broader stuff go.

yeah :(

xp

I think there are lots of ways in which race plays out in movies that are interesting beyond the explicitly racist, also

Like the scene horseshoe is talking about in "better off dead" (probably my favorite comedy of this era) is one good example but the most common is the white&black characters uniting for a more important cause trope *shakes hands like in Predator* which feels like so much soothing of anxieties abt unpaid debts

"Better off dead" is my fav comedy of this high school /Hughes-esque style in this era, I mean

idk Prof Hikita in BB has a thick accent, but he's not portrayed as a buffoon or an object of ridicule iirc. In contrast to Long Duk Dong or Takahashi the difference is p stark.

xp

yes! that is totally a thing. there are a lot of...conflicting racial desires? at work in some of these films.

xxp to deej's white and black people team up trope

i feel like who's to blame for it is less interesting than the fact that it's out there

yeah, so so much of the pop media i basically marinated in during the 80s sort of defensively articulated the sensibility and experience of suburban-dwelling, middle-class white people. cities = dangerous & scary. people of color = either nonexistent or weird/scary/funny. poverty = gross, someone else's problem. in john hughes, along with the casual racism and misogyny, there's an almost desperate bubbling of reality so as to fit safely within a specific audience's comfort zone.

when it comes to 80s pop culture, a sort of performative naivete was (and still is) a big part of the appeal, but looking back, it permitted & perpetuated a depressing kind of tunnel vision.

good call on Big Trouble too, love that movie

xp

idk Prof Hikita in BB has a thick accent, but he's not portrayed as a buffoon or an object of ridicule iirc. In contrast to Long Duk Dong or Takahashi the difference is p stark.

xp

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 1:01 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it was not in the entire movie. Specifically in the flashback to 1945 or whatever, and I can't find a good clip online to confirm what it was that bothered me. "Horry Toledo" possibly?

Eh, nevermind, Found a brief clip of Holy Toledo and he doesn't switch the l for an r.

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/f8f85a77-2d6e-4a8e-be7f-dcdf392e9011

Even though not a comedy, death wish was the first thing that came to my mind in this thread. A weirdly sincere and explicit articulation of this fear instead of the normalized "uh oh, public transit" that were supposed to take as a given

I watched the Warriors last night and it's unusual how humanized the gang members were for the period. It's like a path not taken and instead we ended up w Charles Bronson's america

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Wednesday, 13 July 2016 16:56 (20 minutes ago) Permalink

Yeah, I actually started to write a post to the other thread about the Warriors and AiB as contrasting versions of the Homeric journey through urban decay.

The idea of empathizing with gang protagonists and their fear of/conflict with other gangs is not something you find in many other films. The whole movie is a lot closer to expressing some kind of left class politics vs the bourgeois version in AiB.

I also have a theory about the race politics of Death Wish. Wanna hear it?

Yeah, I actually started to write a post to the other thread about the Warriors and AiB as contrasting versions of the Homeric journey through urban decay.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 1:19 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

do it here!

xp yes!

I watched Adventures in Babysitting again not too long ago and found it to be a weird mix of racially/culturally icky and too sanitary. Like, it is playing off of numerous middle-class fears about urban spaces (as the more unabashedly trashy Vamp did better, and which Scorsese's After Hours obviously did A LOT better) but every African-American or scary-looking, hook-wielding truck driver basically wants to help these white suburban kids out. And despite the weird subplot about the Playboy centrefold being Shue's doppelgänger, she becomes a curiously asexual object when in the urban environment--the threats all vaguely violent, never sexual. It's toothless.

I still love the opening scene set to the Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me," though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuKeUAavpnU

Oh, I mean I didn't really have a lot more than that to say re AiB vs Warriors, just that both have the Homeric journey thing happening (and iirc Warriors even has greek references), but the Warriors protagonists are much more of the world they're in than Elisabeth Shue's character, and in that sense it feels more in the spirit of the classical stories.

As far as Death Wish, I would need to flesh this out more, but it struck me that, early in the movie, the criminals are white, but, as the movie builds, more black criminals are introduced/killed, and it felt to me like the latter was the real fantasy at the heart of the movie but the white criminals in the beginning served the function of easing the audience in and making it seem kosher. Almost like an ultra-hardcore porn scene that starts out with some kind of softer core premise.

I don't know whether (or how much) to blame Hughes specifically. I kinda suspect he viewed himself as being a basically accurate observer - of an extremely monochrome world. Maybe he felt he was being true to his experience, which was full of micro differences but unfortunately lily-white. Maybe he felt he didn't understand black people well enough to portray them accurately (which is probably true).

"Breakfast Club," for example, is entirely about people not understanding one another due to preconceptions.... and yet is totally devoid of persons of color. That is one of the most conspicuous disappointments (betrayals? derelictions?) of 80s culture. A lost opportunity.

In his defense, Hughes didn't do the majorly tone-deaf things like "Soul Man." He didn't give us the reggae scene in "Club Paradise." He didn't try to make "Tapeheads." He didn't attempt things like the blues club in "Adventures in Babysitting," because he largely stuck to what he knew: a white suburban high school.

I still cannot believe Soul Man ever got made.

For anyone interested, Matthew Specktor has a really thoughtful analysis and partial defence of Death Wish that was published as a monograph a few years back.

In his defense, Hughes didn't do the majorly tone-deaf things like "Soul Man." He didn't give us the reggae scene in "Club Paradise." He didn't try to make "Tapeheads." He didn't attempt things like the blues club in "Adventures in Babysitting," because he largely stuck to what he knew: a white suburban high school.

there's a scene in a blues bar in weird science with anthony michael hall doing an "old black man" voice

i feel like accusing or defending Hughes is beside the point. there are toxic attitudes toward race in his movies but he didn't invent them. he should be held accountable for upholding/proliferating them, absolutely, but isn't like the "black guy/black car/pink guy" conversation solely reflects John Hughes's individual discomfort with a black man dating a white woman, and that's totally idiosyncratic and specific to him. these movies are about us.

xpost

Hughes not the only one who ever thought that was OK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIJ53t7Pgag

there's a scene in a blues bar in weird science with anthony michael hall doing an "old black man" voice

which is posted upthread

"Breakfast Club," for example, is entirely about people not understanding one another due to preconceptions.... and yet is totally devoid of persons of color. That is one of the most conspicuous disappointments (betrayals? derelictions?) of 80s culture. A lost opportunity.

As a counterpoint, the way The Breakfast Club is constructed very closely mirrored my experiences in junior high and high school as the only black male in my graduating class; the monochromaticism explicitly matched my experience and it was pretty easy to (for example) vibe with the chunks of Judd Nelson's, Anthony Michael Hall's and Emilio Esteves's performances that directly mirrored experiences in my life because of how singularly the characters were drawn and how much that environment matched the one I was living in.

Fair points to all above - JiG, right, I was forgetting that. Mea culpa.

Hughes, like a lot of content creators, might conceivably answer that he's caught between the poles of "why don't you have any black people in your movies" and "what do you know about black people; how dare you?"

Which would be a better argument if there weren't countless examples out there in the world of how it can be done well vs. done poorly.

BC is easily the least egregious of Hughes' films precisely because it's so small in scope and constructed basically like a theater piece/character study. Yes it's lilywhite but that makes sense given it's premise/construction.

xpost

Hughes not the only one who ever thought that was OK.

http://www.youtube.com/v/RIJ53t7Pgag&fs=1&hl=en

― rhymes with "blondie blast" (cryptosicko), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 1:35 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not quite the same, but of the same ilk:

https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJqZ9SFd-6akJI-phdXBaXa2qTU30uLoJZsYxhJTuEBmtJ1gK3

“This album could not have been made without the help of the following people: My main mazain and co-potato head Robert Craft, the unwavering patience of Motown Records and lastly and most importantly, the big cat upstairs. Once upon a time, after wandering around in a daze for 12 years, in a hot, steamy, stankin’ Thursday night late in June 1986 I walked into a low-down and dirty dive called Club Babylon. It was my kind of place. On stage was a band who within 10 seconds had my little pink R&B toes tappin’. I knew I’d get along with these guys immediately. They all had dirty under their fingernails. I approached the bar, I ordered a Lamey Lo and quicker than a cat may blink its eye, the leader of these rhythm merchants said, “Hey Bruno, wanna sit in?” The rest as they say in this crazy mixed-up patchwork quilt of a town they call Hollywood is history. Your pal, Bruno.”

i think pretty in pink is inoffensive, too, maybe? (full disclosure: i am psychotically obsessed with pretty in pink)

Pretty in Pink is offensive for other, non-racial reasons imo

haha okay but james spader is so evil-hot!

The larger point about The Breakfast Club is that introducing a non-white person into it, given who it was created by and when it was made, changes it from a story about how a somewhat divergent group of students in weekend detention bond over shared experience and common ground and into "non-white person teaches white people to be the best white people they can be" and I don't know about you but I am fucking sick of that movie.

As a counterpoint, the way The Breakfast Club is constructed very closely mirrored my experiences in junior high and high school as the only black male in my graduating class; the monochromaticism explicitly matched my experience and it was pretty easy to (for example) vibe with the chunks of Judd Nelson's, Anthony Michael Hall's and Emilio Esteves's performances that directly mirrored experiences in my life because of how singularly the characters were drawn and how much that environment matched the one I was living in.

― http://porno (DJP), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 1:38 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is how for many young gay dudes Anthony Michael Hall coded as gay. Same with Duckie in PIP.

Point well taken, DJP.

I mean don't get me wrong; I am pro-representation. I am not pro-representation without meaningful purpose. If you're including a non-white person just to include one, or to teach your white characters a Very Special Lesson, you are probably going to tell a better story if you stick with your white cast.

Same with Duckie in PIP.

the fact that Duckie is explicitly made *not* gay in the movie is really, really weird and possibly it's biggest drawback

(ie, there is a non-trivial difference between having a significant non-white character whose non-whiteness is an authentic-feeling representation operating in the larger confines of your story and having a non-white character that feels like it's there to check off a quota or teach the white characters something about their racist misconceptions)

(and most movies in the 80s were not going to navigate these waters particularly well because the wider culture had spent the past 20 years arguing about them and then pretending like they didn't exist)

xxp the original ending of the movie hinges on Duckie not being gay iirc?

there's more than one ending?

just reposting this from the other thread:

this is not exactly the same thing, but I realized a couple of years ago that the movie Adventures in Babysitting is a huge apologia for Reaganite politics. There are a bunch of different ways this manifests itself (including "scary" black people on the El and the fact that Elizabeth Shue=good guy because she's a virgin), but the scene that most fully drives it home is when the Elizabeth Shue character is on the phone with her friend, whose rescue is the whole impetus of the film. The friend is at a bus station which is portrayed as the deepest level of hell. The friend has commandeered a phone booth which is usually occupied by a homeless man. While friend is on the phone with ES, homeless man returns and knocks on the door of the phone booth, imploring, "that's my home!" ES's friend, with whom we're meant to sympathize, kicks the homeless man's personal effects out of the booth (I remember slippers) and shouts, "you just moved!" I used to love this movie, but it is some chilling shit to rewatch.

― horsehoe (horseshoe), Sunday, February 12, 2006 4:42 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love this post. this movie is so fucked up! the blues club too...what was going to happen if they didn't sing the blues? was albert collins going to murder them?? did the villains have to sing the blues??? how much time was left for albert collins to perform if everyone in the venue had to sing at least once????

all the penelope ann miller bus station stuff was rough. in retrospect the best characters were the tow truck driver and the kid sister, probably. but i still like the movie as a sort of perfect melding of ferris bueller and judgement night.

― nomar, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 6:56 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and oh man they left that dude on the facade of the crain communications building at the end of the movie. he was still there after the credits!

― nomar, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 6:58 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

xp: http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2014/03/12/movie-legends-revealed-pretty-in-pink-originally-ended-with-andie-duckie-together/

there is a non-trivial difference between having a significant non-white character whose non-whiteness is an authentic-feeling representation operating in the larger confines of your story...

In my memory "Fame" did okay on this count, no?

i forgot all about The Lords of Hell on the subway. a gang truly from walter hill's cutting room floor. though they were led by a young Clark Johnson (whose IMDB credit is:)

Adventures in Babysitting (1987) as Black Gang Leader

ideal PiP endings, ranked:

1) Duckie realizes he is gay, finds some support from Andie, who can now hook up w rich guy guilt-free
2) Duckie's not gay, and he and Andie get together
3) the actual ending

xp

Man, I can't believe that I completely blocked out that "jazz man" scene from Weird Science, even though I've probably seen it a dozen times. Makes me wonder what else I've been repressing from my childhood movies

have nothing to add rn other than that i want to see Burglar again. it was my favorite movie for a while when i was like 10-11 years old

i like the actual ending of Pretty in Pink!

In his defense, Hughes didn't do the majorly tone-deaf things like "Soul Man."

Well, he wrote this scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwBoa-NbNL8

I watched the Warriors last night and it's unusual how humanized the gang members were for the period. It's like a path not taken and instead we ended up w Charles Bronson's america

Walter Hill's movies are actually pretty good with race stuff a lot of the time. The Warriors and Extreme Prejudice (in which the same dude who played Lamar in Revenge of the Nerds plays a computer genius) and, I mean, even in 48 Hrs., it's not like we're supposed to be nodding along with Nick Nolte's character's racism - he's an ugly racist, end of story.

duckie is legible as gay and closeted, but he's also legible as just a straight dude who doesn't act in a hyper-masculine way, which means in the binary gender normativity factory that is high school, he reads gay.

also jon cryer and molly ringwald generate no heat.

also also i remember reading somewhere that john hughes changed the ending because he didn't want to send the message that across-the-tracks love stories were doomed, which seems well-intentioned, if handwring-y.

i think i am in an extreme minority in finding andrew mccarthy's blane a compelling character, to be fair.

anyway, race politics.

also: "If You Leave" should have been set on fire

i think i am in an extreme minority in finding andrew mccarthy's blane a compelling character, to be fair.

― horseshoe,

He could've been if McCarthy had had a rabbit bite his ass every time he had to act.

but see, when i was 13, i was in love with andrew mccarthy. shameful confessions!

also: "If You Leave" should have been set on fire

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 2:19 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whaaaaaat. i think i lack critical distance on this important film.

http://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m8hq8kFY551qaqs9zo1_500.gif

It's amazing to me that both The Toy and Hardly Working were made in the '80s.

Worth a read: https://thedissolve.com/features/forgotbusters/427-the-toy-gave-richard-pryor-his-hollywood-nadir/

In The Toy, a rich father arranges for a grown man to be purchased, or at least rented, as his prepubescent son’s playmate for a week. In the original, that man was played by impish white actor Pierre Richard, a regular Veber collaborator. In the Richard Donner-directed remake, he’s played by Richard Pryor, a casting choice that gave the film a disconcerting racial element that, in a more enlightened era, would have shut down the project. The connection to slavery wouldn’t be quite so pronounced—yet still very present—if the film established that Pryor’s character, the proud but financially desperate Jack Brown, had been hired as the nanny of a spoiled little white boy, or even his personal assistant. But The Toy establishes, in no uncertain terms, that Jack Brown is being bought for the amusement of a deranged moppet.

America tolerates an awful lot of racism, both in pop culture and in everyday lives. But every once in a while, something comes along that should be too racist even for our society, yet we somehow manage to allow it anyway, out of greed, ignorance, or a stubborn refusal to recognize it for what it is. An intense form of cognitive dissonance then sets in. Obviously, Columbia in the early 1980s couldn’t make a movie where an obnoxious white child purchases a black man as kind of a fun, modern form of slavery, and yet The Toy exists, and was a big hit. Just as obviously, no studio would be offensive or ignorant enough to introduce an interracial romance in 2003 with the song “Jungle Love,” yet that sequence exists in Bringing Down The House.

Argh, I had forgotten that movie! I remember it making me really uncomfortable even when I was like 7 years old.

and that movie was a box office hit

if you identify w/ ringwald's andy and like andrew mccarthy, then pretty in pink is probably fine. but if you identify w/ cryer's ducky, it's cruel and sucks.

so Ronald Reagan vs. Ron Reagan

I might actually watch Pretty in Pink someday, but having seen the Gedde sequences has been enough for me to avoid it my whole life

that's 16 Candles

if you identify w/ ringwald's andy and like andrew mccarthy, then pretty in pink is probably fine. but if you identify w/ cryer's ducky, it's cruel and sucks.

― oculus lump (contenderizer), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 2:30 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

duckie is not uncreepy in his slavish devotion to andie

I might actually watch Pretty in Pink someday, but having seen the Gedde sequences has been enough for me to avoid it my whole life

As has been pointed out, you're thinking of Sixteen Candles, but sub in Jon Cryer lip-syncing Otis Redding and you're back on solid ground.

oh yeah, right, mb.
all right maybe i'll finally suck it up and watch PiP then

oh yeah, the try a little tenderness scene.

feel like that fits the love-of-black-culture-predicated-on-absence-of-actual-black-people theme

My favorite John Hughes movie has John Candy lip-syncing "Mess-around", so yup!

John Candy lip-syncing "Mess-around"

this is actually great though

also: "If You Leave" should have been set on fire

this is an insane thing to say

As far as Death Wish, I would need to flesh this out more, but it struck me that, early in the movie, the criminals are white, but, as the movie builds, more black criminals are introduced/killed, and it felt to me like the latter was the real fantasy at the heart of the movie but the white criminals in the beginning served the function of easing the audience in and making it seem kosher. Almost like an ultra-hardcore porn scene that starts out with some kind of softer core premise.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive), Wednesday, July 13, 2016 12:28 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ebert touches on this a bit in his review of DWIII
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/death-wish-3-1985

The neighborhood is ruled by a gang headed by Fraker (Gavan O'Herlihy), who wears a reverse Mohawk: He keeps his hair on the sides, but shaves down the middle, to make room for a gang symbol in war paint. O'Herlihy looks a little like Richard Widmark, and is quite satisfactory as a snarling, sadistic creep. He is also, of course, white. One of the hypocrisies practiced by the Death Wish movies is that they ignore racial tension in big cities. In their horrible new world, all of the gangs are integrated, so that the movies can't be called racist. I guess it's supposed to be heartwarming to see whites, blacks and Latinos working side by side to rape, pillage and murder.

thank you, Dan >:[

Xp

John Candy lip-syncing "Mess-around"

this is actually great though

The integrated street gang with a white leader thing always seemed to be dogwhistling to me. "You know what the gang would REALLY look like, right, guys?"

So according to this, the second guy killed in the movie is black, which is a little different than my memory. But IIRC it takes a while for that to happen, and the rapist/murderer trio that opens the film is white and includes Jeff Goldblum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5OZBrd7POg

Being reminded, just now, that The Toy exists makes the existence of Soul Man less shocking.

I can't find the clip from Hardly Working with Lewis as the hibachi chef on YouTube anymore, but it's worth tracking down. It's like he just finished watching Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany's and said, "You call that racist, movie from 1961? Just you wait!"

many xposts but

"the fact that Duckie is explicitly made *not* gay in the movie is really, really weird and possibly it's biggest drawback

― Οὖτις, "

we just rewatched this again recently and while this bugged me in the past, this time it rang more true, but mainly in the sense that I remember, now, how many gay friends I had in high school in the 80's who were closeted and would never have really been 'out' at that time. They'd come out later, in the 90's, in college.

duckie is not uncreepy in his slavish devotion to andie

― horseshoe, Wednesday, July 13, 2016 11:35 AM (1 hour ago)

true, though i'm not sure i saw that clearly in 1986

teenage obsessions are often creepy

great thread so far.

the Death Wish connection makes sense to me. thinking about the warriors in this light also makes me appreciate escape from new york that much more - whatever its flaws, it's really not about a journey into the terrifying world of the urban racial Other. OTOH you have the film of bonfire of the vanities, where de palma pulls his punches imo, not really conveying the irrational "omg poor black people?!?!" flopsweat for tom hanks's miscast WASP monster when he inadvertently finds himself riding around in the south bronx.

i haven't seen sixteen candles except for walking in very near the end, just as the date rape was taking place, and being made so uncomfortable by the whole thing that i've never been able to grasp what anybody sees in the movie.

the Better Off Dead moment suggests this thread: top 100 most racially awkward movie moments though i think this thread is onto something more specific.

was about to bring up the toy. ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

so so much of the pop media i basically marinated in during the 80s sort of defensively articulated the sensibility and experience of suburban-dwelling, middle-class white people. cities = dangerous & scary. people of color = either nonexistent or weird/scary/funny. poverty = gross, someone else's problem.

great post.

I feel like just the "oh shit, we accidentally got off the highway in the SOUUUUTH BROOONX" scene showed up in at least half a dozen movies or shows from my childhood.

re the "perfectly good white boy" line in better off dead

it's a great bit! it's like the film steps back for a moment, abandoning the john-hughes-style close focus, white people looking at white people, and allows this anonymous passerby to narrate the scene. for a second, you see the teenage protagonist's first world problems through someone else's eyes.

I've always assumed that The Toy is actually a horror movie

Wish I could find a clip of the Kids in the Hall sketch where Mark McKinney doing "Mississippi Gary" breaks character to talk about how awkward the bit is - "Well, I suppose you're wondering what the hell I'm doing, imitating an eighty-year-old blues guy like that. Uh, I guess it's not something I should be doing. I don't really know much about the Southern blues experience, the whole Mississippi delta thing, really, I'm from Vermont. It's not like, that I wouldn't want to know more about the whole Southern blues thing, uh, it's just that there weren't a lot of blues guys around when I was growing up, uh, they tend not to be skiers."

I feel like just the "oh shit, we accidentally got off the highway in the SOUUUUTH BROOONX" scene showed up in at least half a dozen movies or shows from my childhood.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwBoa-NbNL8

I love how some SNL-type sax signifies 'hood.'

Written by John Hughes, of course.

in When Harry Met Sally there's like one black actor who speaks and it's a waitress who Sally is kinda giving pain-in-the-arse instructions to for 20 seconds. it's pretty much my favourite comedy ever so it bugs me that it's you know, peopled not just mostly but almost entirely by white people. and it's New York! same goes for Big, which has 2 non-whites the entire movie; a non-speaking janitor and a non-speaking sleaze wandering around a motel.

I've always assumed that The Toy is actually a horror movie

nearly all of Pryor's post-burnup movies are.

in When Harry Met Sally there's like one black actor who speaks and it's a waitress who Sally is kinda giving pain-in-the-arse instructions to for 20 seconds. it's pretty much my favourite comedy ever so it bugs me that it's you know, peopled not just mostly but almost entirely by white people. and it's New York! same goes for Big, which has 2 non-whites the entire movie; a non-speaking janitor and a non-speaking sleaze wandering around a motel.

until I went to college, I was usually the only non-white person in my social circles, so none of these stood out as being a weird thing to see

xpost Mississippi Gary was from Ottawa in the original CBC version

was The Toy really a hit in the States?? it went straight-to-video in the UK i'm sure.

didn't know it was a remake! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toy_(1976_film)

Weirdest race stuff in '80s comedy to me is in Stripes. There's a scene toward the end where they've been training, and Harold Ramis says something like "black guys, help the white guys." And John Candy, out of nowhere, starts this weird race fight with his fellow recruits. Comes out of nowhere, like a whole subplot had been cut.

Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7sNpXJ6ci0

WTF?

was The Toy really a hit in the States?? it went straight-to-video in the UK i'm sure.

The film earned roughly $47 million at the box office, making it the 14th-highest grossing movie of 1982. Since that time, it has grossed more than $24 million in rental

Cleary The Toy is ripe for a reboot!

starring Leslie Jones and Elle Fanning

If Trump loses he can play the Gleason character. Maybe if he wins, too.

When Harry Met Sally is essentially a Woody Allen ripoff, and WA got lots of flack thru the '80s for not having any black characters... but it seemed an accurate reflection of the Elaine's/UWS crowd.

Wish I could find a clip of the Kids in the Hall sketch where Mark McKinney doing "Mississippi Gary" breaks character to talk about how awkward the bit is - "Well, I suppose you're wondering what the hell I'm doing, imitating an eighty-year-old blues guy like that. Uh, I guess it's not something I should be doing. I don't really know much about the Southern blues experience, the whole Mississippi delta thing, really, I'm from Vermont. It's not like, that I wouldn't want to know more about the whole Southern blues thing, uh, it's just that there weren't a lot of blues guys around when I was growing up, uh, they tend not to be skiers."

another example of why KITH are probably the best sketch comedy troupe ever

I feel like just the "oh shit, we accidentally got off the highway in the SOUUUUTH BROOONX" scene showed up in at least half a dozen movies or shows from my childhood.

― socka flocka-jones (man alive)

See also Judgement Night, where the wrong exit on the South Side leads them to gang leader Denis Leary.

These are variants on the Animal House white panic "mind if we dance with your dates?" scene. I want to say that shitty movie "Road Trip," from the late '90s, features a scene where they go to/crash a black frat, and are soon scared, but maybe settle things with ... a rap off? Doesn't Revenge of the Nerds also have an awkward scene with a black fraternity?

Was thinking movies like DC Cab, Dr. Detroit and Night Shift must be rife with bad racial politics. But oh, the soundtracks!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/DoctorDetroitSoundtrack.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ef/D.C._Cab_Soundtrack.jpg
https://img.discogs.com/Udcd9PUqCRM2Syoo5Z493YMd9XY=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(40)/discogs-images/R-2562651-1291217817.jpeg.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz3SOdEw0LY

I was close.

These are variants on the Animal House white panic "mind if we dance with your dates?" scene.

Reminds me there have to be about a thousand movies where a scene plays out as a racial variant on "person x snaps at/insults person y, unseen, then turns out to realize person y is (whatever) and suddenly changes entire affect" jokes. The whole "ah, and of course what I meant by that, uh, sir, is..." kinda thing.

"racial" there should be "racially loaded"

In 2008, New York Press's critic Armond White cited "Soul Man" as predicting the rise of Barack Obama, who entered the real life Harvard Law School in 1988, and White declared that Soul Man was "easily the best movie ever set at Harvard."

There is definitely a racially weird black frat scene in Road Trip, like "how is this still happening in the 90s" level weird. IIRC it starts with the black frat bros being unrealistically hostile and threatening, and later the nerdy white guy gets wasted, turns out to be good at hip hop dancing and then beds a big fat sassy black woman.

reading Ebert's review of "Soul Man", kinda think he was otm. The racial politics of it are actually p interesting, since it's basically about a white dude learning to acknowledge his privelege.

but the execution of the idea is completely fucked

Trading Places seems worth mentions as a movie that at least makes a noble attempt to do better.

Weirdest race stuff in '80s comedy to me is in Stripes. There's a scene toward the end where they've been training, and Harold Ramis says something like "black guys, help the white guys." And John Candy, out of nowhere, starts this weird race fight with his fellow recruits. Comes out of nowhere, like a whole subplot had been cut.

Not deserving of its own thread but that scene and Candy's super-racist WWII tank crew member in Spielberg's 1941 made me wonder for a while just WTF was going on with Candy for a while.

Not deserving of its own thread but that scene and Candy's super-racist WWII tank crew member in Spielberg's 1941 made me wonder for a while just WTF was going on with Candy for a while.

Casting directors figured a fat white guy made a convincing onscreen racist?

There's this... thing... in old movies -- Kentucky Fried Movie and Die Hard 3 come to mind -- where the viewer is supposed to believe that if a white person says the n-word, any black person will immediately start raining blows on dude.

I think the POINT may be "racism is bad and has consequences" but it also kind of dehumanizes black people? As an adult looking back at the movies I watched as a kid, I've found it kind of a weird, racist "gag" to be so common.

I don't think that's exactly what's going on in that scene in Die Hard 3.

Well, who knows the last time I saw it

Yeah, I just watched it and the black dudes immediately start punching and stabbing and breaking bottles on John McClane's head

SLJ also warns him explicitly, something like "When those guys see you they will kill you." He seems pretty certain about it.

re 1941 and Stripes, imagine there being racism in the Army

you guys have seen SCTV, right? Candy specialized in playing cluelessly smallminded characters.

(and Orson Welles)

most of these movies i either didn't see at all or didn't see until i was older . . . but yeah. nor did i ever see death wish, but between its existence and bernie goetz on the cover of newsweek, i had the childhood impression (which lasted far longer than it should have) that nyc was basically a war zone. now i've lived here 10 years. i feel like my mom was surprised to learn that there are trees and stuff.

i did love the blues brothers. it's a weird appropriation -- and did they really have all the MG's without booker t? -- but that was probably my first exposure to aretha and hooker and certainly cab calloway, and it got some of those ppl paid, which is cool.

some of this stuff is discussed here: LONG DUK DONG

the blues brothers is probably problematic but i think its heart is in the right place. it's probably actually a bit worse w/r/t gender than it is race.

except when ARETHA walks in

It was mentioned up thread, but I forgot how racist Nolte's character was in 48 hours until I re-watched it again a few years ago. It was almost shocking.

But that's intentional, iirc.

What about the "I speak jive" shit in Airplane! ? Is it less "lol white person speaks black" than "lol old lady speaks street"?

"lol 'Leave It To Beaver' mom speaks jive"

These are variants on the Animal House white panic "mind if we dance with your dates?" scene.

Speaking of the racism of that scene (and this bit isn't on youtube), one of the white guys asks his date, "What are you majoring in?" She says, "Primitive cultures." Immediate cut to Otis Day and the Knights.

The jive scenes are cringey but Kareem is excellent in "Airplane."

reading Ebert's review of "Soul Man", kinda think he was otm. The racial politics of it are actually p interesting, since it's basically about a white dude learning to acknowledge his privelege.

― Οὖτις, 14. heinäkuuta 2016 1:06 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but the execution of the idea is completely fucked

― Οὖτις, 14. heinäkuuta 2016 1:08 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've seen Soul Man, and this is OTM. It's not a good movie, but it's more interesting than most other examples discussed here because it explicitly tries to address racial awkwardness and white prejudice + privilege. Like, there's a scene where the main character (who's a white dude who pretends to be black dude to get in Harvard) is invited to a black student society meeting, and he goes there dressed up as Black Panther, beret and all, because that's what he expects the meeting to be like, and of course every one else is dressed in regular 80s clothes. It's an obvious joke but it felt poignant to me when I saw the movie as a teen.

might be mentioned already, but the mexican car park attendant in ferris buellers, who ends up confirming stereotypes.

this is basically why i have avoided big trouble in little china (it might not be that bad, but idk, i dont know if i want to find out)

also, short circuit.

I got so much milage out of the Los Locos chant in elementary school.

Hmm, I don't think Big Trouble in Little China is that bad. In fact, as discussed, lead Kurt Russell is essentially sidelined, and the Asian actors are the real stars, which was (and is) pretty unusual.

Also don't remember Richard Edson in Ferris Bueller playing a Mexican stereotype ... ?

yup, that's why I love Big Trouble In Little China. plus Russell is hilarious

BTiLC is basically a Wuxia movie with one token white guy, right?

Yeah, part of the whole point of Big Trouble in Little China is that Kurt Russell is the "action hero type" while everybody else around him (mostly the Chinese actors, but Kim Catrall's character as well) is more competent, capable, and experienced. It's self-aware.

xp nah it's still basically a goofy 80s action comedy really, with wacky Carpenter fx and violence

"Also don't remember Richard Edson in Ferris Bueller playing a Mexican stereotype ... ?"

hmm, ok, i could have been wrong all these years, but if not mexican, i assumed he was just playing the 'disreputable ethnic employee' you cant trust. i dont know edson's ethnicity.

ok youve all sold me on BTiLC - its the one major JC film of his i havent seen.

Edson's accent in Ferris Bueller was bizarre -- I thought he was Greek!

there are no major Carpenter films

Starman?

Diary of an Invisible Man.

don't even try, y'all

wesley morris in the NYT on the filmic fantasy of racial reconciliation through transactional relationships, starting from Green Book and Driving Miss Daisy and arriving at a brilliant passage on Do The Right Thing, makes some pointed stops at 80s sitcoms and comedies mentioned itt: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/arts/green-book-interracial-friendship.html