John Hughes, filmmaker of Gen X?

If there’s a movie that speaks for Gen X, it is probably The Breakfast Club.  Or maybe Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Or Pretty in Pink.  Or Sixteen Candles.  Or Some Kind of Wonderful.  It’s really kind of hard to pick.

John Hughes was born in 1950, putting him pretty squarely in the middle of the Baby Boomers.  So how was he able to put the experience of Gen X adolescence so perfectly into his films?  I don’t have a simple answer to this, but this question comes up frequently with my investigations of Gen X pop culture.

I think a large part of the answer is that Gen X selected John Hughes as its chronicler.  He demonstrated an ability to do so with Sixteen Candles, and its success allowed him to continue on that path.  His film choices once he had established himself diverted from the Gen X experience quite a bit (e.g., Home Alone, Planes, Trains, & Automobiles), so I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine that he was somewhat uncomfortable being the voice of Gen X.

From another angle:  there were lots of filmmakers trying to cash in on Gen X teenage moviegoers, but none of them resonated with Gen X the way that John Hughes did.  So the studios had him make a number of films along the same lines, which luckily ended up being just as insightful and iconic as Pretty in Pink.

The movie ends with a reading of  a letter written from “The Breakfast Club” to their detention supervisor:

“Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong, but we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us. In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal.“

Gen Xers felt misunderstood by our parents and teachers, and John Hughes gave us some of our first times that someone much older than us seemed to get that we felt misunderstood and simultaneously show that some people did understand us.

Thanks, John Hughes.  I’ll be watching some of your movies this weekend.

P.S.  After finishing this post, I discovered a really amazing blog post that indicates that John Hughes was really interested in the Gen Xers he was writing about, especially one that he became pen pals with.  Enjoy!

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