I started “reading” (well, listening to Wil Wheaton performing the text of) Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One this week. I’m only a handful of discs in, but I’m really enjoying it. It’s pretty much pure, condensed nostalgia – aimed pretty much dead center at the culture of my childhood (the pop culture of the 1980s to be specific, with a special focus on the geeky), but clearly written from the perspective of someone who’s got some life-imposed distance from it. As I said, I’m not terribly far into the narrative, so I can’t speak of it in great detail yet, but if you’re of an age and of a type (and that age and type being roughly the same as mine, and appreciate things like a major early plot point revolving entirely around the classic D&D module “Tomb of Horrors”, for example), I think you’ll get something positive from the experience.
I’m guessing it was that nostalgic frame of mind that drove me to watch the John Hughes classic Pretty In Pink yesterday afternoon after a particularly rough work day and a commute that wouldn’t let me escape the office by insisting on including me on conference calls most of the way home. I tried my best to carve a bit of time for myself after the drive (a difficult enough thing to do), and after totally failing to make the ukulele-finger-brain interface work at all (much to my chagrin – making music usually helps me to feel better, though I couldn’t make that little nylon-stringed Hawai’ian bastard sing last night at all), I kicked the kids off of the television and popped up the first thing that seemed halfway interesting on Netflix Instant.
That first thing, apparently, was a semi-celebrated Molly Ringwald vehicle.
And, I more or less enjoyed it, though I did it through the lens of someone with the same sort of appreciative distance that I’m getting from Cline’s writing. I loved the music all the way through, perhaps more than I did when the film was current – in 1986, I was twelve, and was largely invested in hair metal rather than college/alternative stuff like the Psychadelic Furs’ title tune. Now, having been versed in advanced subjects like The Replacements and R.E.M., this stuff clicks at 38 the way it didn’t in my early teens when is saw this film the first time.
Secondly, I was amused to find that the fog of nostaligia has merged this film entirely with Sixteen Candles in my memories, to the point that I was confused when the film didn’t end outside a church with Andrew McCarthy leaning against a Porsche, and totally skipped the scene where James Spader playing Billy Zabka beat up John Cusack over a pair of panties or something.
That previous paragraph makes sense to me, at least…maybe if you’re of an age, it makes sense to you as well.
Otherwise, I noticed things like cameos by Kristy Swanson and Gina Gershon that never clicked with me before, and appreciated things like Harry Dean Stanton’s excellent small role as Molly’s dad. Mostly, though, I found that through the window of life experience, I found Duckie absolutely irritating.
Once upon a time, John Cryer’s differently styled NiceGuy™ was the character I would have (and did) identify it, because, if you strip off the wacky clothes, facade of overblown mannerisms, add a few pounds, and ratchet up the self-loathing a bit more, I *was* Duckie in high school. I pined from afar, and both banked on the idea that I’d eventually be upgraded from “friend”, and resented the fact that it never happened, because it never does. I’m not proud, but I got over it. I figured it out and made my peace. At least the character got to kind of be the good guy in the end, and the possibility presented by the theatrical Buffy the Vampire Slayer as his reward.
Not that I identify with rich kid Blaine, either – he’s kind of a doofus, but apart from that one time, he’s never really a prick or anything, but he’s a kid – they’re all pretty much idiots, including our heroine Molly Ringwald.
I guess that’s the rub – I didn’t really identify with any of the characters any more, at least not directly. John Hughes managed to tap into the experience of being a teenager really well over the course of a half a dozen films or so; there’s a reason they were, and continue to be terribly popular. I retain fond memories of them. However, I don’t really relate to these characters any longer – I’m simply not a teenager any more – I’ve been there, and I’ve got the scars, surely – but I can’t get into that kind of mindspace any more, without the intervening 25 years or so of experience getting in the way. It’s not that way with every piece of media like this, but it is with most of them.
And you know, I really wouldn’t have it any other way. There’s no kind of drama like teenage drama (which I now get more than my fill of vicariously thank you very much), and I’m more than glad to be done with it. Being a supposed adult often sucks in myriad ways*, but at least, most of the time, I’ve got the armor of life experience to shake the worst of it off.
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*- buy me a beer sometime, and I’ll tell you all about them.
