What About ‘The Breakfast Club’?

This was a really interesting read. Idk much about Molly but I was really impressed with this.

 

This was an absolutely tremendous read. I think she perfectly tackled what many of us feel like looking back on the things that we loved and were inspired by that now, in hindsight, have obvious social gaps and prejudices.

 

Quite a thought provoking read.

 

I felt the same way when rewatching Sixteen Candles recently. It seemed so obvious how fucked it up was that they used Caroline as a mere piece of meat and not a human, and totally disregarding the straight up daterape she went through. This was an a great read and I'm glad she said this.

 

Super good article. I watched a lot of older films like American Graffiti, 16 Candles, and this last year and was bothered by a lot of stuff in each of them

 

"How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose? What if we are in the unusual position of having helped create it? Erasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art—change is essential, but so, too, is remembering the past, in all of its transgression and barbarism, so that we may properly gauge how far we have come, and also how far we still need to go."

Nailed it. I had a similar conversation with a friend recently after Buzzfeed posted a list of all the ways Friends was problematic. They thought that the article was basically trying to say that it's no longer okay to enjoy that show. I don't think that's necessarily true though, and Molly's statement above perfectly captures the caveat of enjoying pieces of pop culture that are problematic in retrospect. It's okay to still enjoy these things to some degree or another, but it's important to look at them through the lens of how far we've come since then in how we portray races, genders, classes, consent, gender roles, lgbtqia characters, etc. which in turn helps us think more critically about how we can still improve things going forward.

 

I agree with the statement you picked out of the article and think your additional comments add to it, but I also disagree with a lot of the articles that are criticizing old TV shows and movies. I read the buzzfeed article on friends, and some of them hit on good points, but others I just flat out disagree with. It just reads like someone bitter who never got the hype about Friends and is finally excited they can take it down. There are so many leaps to conclusions and reading between the lines to pull out meaning that isn't there.

 

I agree. Some aspects of that show were problematic, but that article was really clutching at straws at times.