Could '80s Movies Have Ruined Your Life?

Seven years ago, I wrote a post about how the movie Say Anything, and Lloyd Dobler, set up the women of Generation X to be dissatisfied with their romantic partners. I recently received an email from a reader commenting on it and on the question I posed at the end: "If we wanted to rid ourselves of the curse of Lloyd Dobler, how could we do it?"

At the time, the curse of Lloyd was that he was so sensitive and romantic, and just enough of a rebel, that he defined what a "good" boyfriend was. Now, however, I'm rethinking that curse. Perhaps the curse of Say Anything (and a host of other '80s movies) was not that the romantic leads were too good to be real, but that we ever thought they were ideal. It's hard to admit that something I loved and cherished and considered an important part of my adolescence isn't as perfect and great as I thought it was, but times have changed for the better and maybe those good old days weren't as good as we thought. Personal memories can be tinted by nostalgia and emotion, and even falsified, but the plots, lines, and actions in the movies haven't changed. So, they provide a more accurate reminder of how Gen X was taught to think about relationships and gender roles.

Fictional works, including books and movies, are a means of simulating real-world experiences. As noted by psychologists Mar and Oakley, observing experiences to which we do not personally have access allows us to generate expectations for how these events should play out in real life. For example, although we may not ever be on a hijacked plane, having watched several movies about planes being hijacked, we are able to generate what we think would happen if we were really in the situation. For pre-teens and teenagers (Gen Xers predate the term "tween") of the 1980s and 1990s, the romantic comedies that featured white high school students navigating relationships allowed us to simulate the real-world experience and created our expectations for how those relationships should work. Looking back, unfortunately, it is easy to see how those movies set up women to expect to be treated poorly (and like it). No, I don't think '80s movies ruined our lives, but they certainly did set women up for some difficult experiences.

Saving Not-Very-Nice Men

The romantic leads in movies such as The Breakfast Club and Reality Bites were inconsiderate, and sometimes abusive, men. For example, John Bender from The Breakfast Club and Troy Dyer from Reality Bites verbally abuse the women leads who will eventually feel sympathy or compassion for these tragic figures and ultimately fall into their arms. The girls and women who fall for them absorb that abuse in a process that leads to some redemption (but not meaningful change) in the men. These models taught white Gen X women that they could and should heal or fix broken men and that broken men deserved their sacrifice and compassion.

Young Girls and Mature Men

The actors playing romantic male leads were older than the female leads. For example, the actor playing Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles was 23 and the actor playing John Bender in The Breakfast Club was 24. Both played opposite a 16-year-old Molly Ringwald. While the storyline made them only a few years apart, the onscreen visual painted a different picture in which sexual attraction between physically mature adult men and a naive young girl was appropriate.

Unwanted Touching

Similar to women absorbing verbal abuse from their future romantic partners, the touching or assault on girls in the movies is a convenient plot point. More importantly, after the unwanted physical contact, these women and girls were portrayed as experiencing no emotional consequences. In Sixteen Candles, Samantha Baker's grandmother grabs her breasts and then Jake gives his incapacitated girlfriend, Caroline, to Ted. While Sam rolls her eyes and Caroline just asks if she enjoyed the hours she can't recall, in real life, such incidents do have an impact on women. In Back to the Future, the sexual assault on Lorraine (Marty McFly's mother) becomes a major turning point for George McFly. As a result of rescuing her from her attacker, George becomes a confident hero. There is no consideration for how Lorraine might have felt, beyond grateful for a male protector. In fact, research shows that sexual assault and sexual harassment have long-term consequences. By showing female characters as unaffected by these assaults, we were given a narrative that prepared us to disregard and not believe what real women in real situations experienced, as a result of real sexual assaults.

Taking No for an Answer

Finally, Lloyd. Can I really reject Lloyd? Not entirely. But Lloyd's pursuit of Diane after she breaks up with him does create some expectations regarding behavior that are not healthy. It taught boys that continual pursuit of a girl, even though she has clearly said no and wants to be left alone, is okay. That persistence is the key to wearing her down. Because of this, boys did not learn how to accept rejection nor how to respect a girl's boundaries. Girls were taught that if a boy really cared, he'd chase. And, as a consequence, both were told that women have a passive role in pursuing relationships.T

We'll Always Have the Memories

I'm not saying that we are bad people for having loved these movies. The 1980s were the high point of teen movies and corresponded with the sudden ability to watch them on VHS (or Beta!) rentals over and over. The goal isn't to wipe away a heritage or dismiss the good things that we got from these movies. But, as adults, we have to be able to take the good and take the bad. Recognition that something from our past had some serious flaws (I haven't even touched on the race-related issues) and realizing that we might need to have some careful conversations with our kids about these movies is just part of understanding how far we, and American society, has come in 40 years. It's wisdom.