Sixteen Candles (1984)

[WendyCR72]

Did a search and nothing popped up, so...

Too bad the thread has to start off on a down note, but Carlin Glynn, who played Mrs. Baker, Sam's mother, has died at 83.

I never knew she was Mary Stuart Masterson's mother! But in photos, I do see the resemblance.

Share your memories of this Gen X [albeit politically-incorrect] classic...

[Spartan Girl]

I think the overall plot of everyone forgetting Sam’s birthday is still good. I unfortunately went to high school with guys like Farmer Ted, so that is still relatable.

But Jake is a total asshole and Sam deserved better—as did his poor girlfriend that got date-raped.

[hendersonrocks]

A very problematic fave that I don’t think I can stomach anymore. I honestly don’t remember the last time I watched it, but I think from here on out I’d only be able to take the last three minutes for nostalgia’s sake. Limo making way for Porsche to the credits. 
 

The overt racism and sexual violence is just…so much. I can’t even imagine how many times it watched it in my teen years before realizing how many different levels of fucked up it was.

[Sarah 103]

Quick disclaimer: Rape and sexual assault are horrible, despicable acts that should not be tolerated.

With that out of the way, here is my slightly crazy theory: I'm not sure anything actually happened in the car with Farmer Ted and Caroline. I think there's a very good chance both of them passed out before anything happened. She says he was wild, but could refer to crazy car stunts/driving in the parking lot. Ted assumes something happened, but he doesn't remember any of it. She doesn't really remember what happened either and says the best part was waking up in his arms. 

Unlike some of the other John Hughes movies, the years have been especially harsh to this one. 

 

[BooBear]

I find it funny that this movie is so problematic for the pc issues but the poor girl in the brace is never mentioned. 

And Joan Cusack, it wasn't funny. 

[Sarah 103]

1 hour ago, BooBear said:

I find it funny that this movie is so problematic for the pc issues but the poor girl in the brace is never mentioned. 

And Joan Cusack, it wasn't funny. 

I thought that would also be covered under the general category of pc issues (because wow does this movie has a ton of them. I knew it was a different time, but still).

That being said, I still love the ending when Jake picks regular Samantha over supermodel looking Caroline.   

[Spartan Girl]

2 hours ago, Sarah 103 said:

With that out of the way, here is my slightly crazy theory: I'm not sure anything actually happened in the car with Farmer Ted and Caroline. I think there's a very good chance both of them passed out before anything happened. She says he was wild, but could refer to crazy car stunts/driving in the parking lot. Ted assumes something happened, but he doesn't remember any of it.

Just because nothing might have actually happened doesn’t make Jake any less of a creep for passing her to Ted when she was passed out drunk. 

[Bastet]

Unwatchable, other than the scene between Sam and her dad.

[Sarah 103]

3 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Just because nothing might have actually happened doesn’t make Jake any less of a creep for passing her to Ted when she was passed out drunk. 

Jake is a very much a creature of the 1980s (which is another way of saying problematic as hell for a modern audience). 

My point was that I think there's a strong possibility nothing happened with Caroline and Ted. If something happened it would have been date rape (which is horrible and wrong on every imaginable level), but I'm not convinced that they had sex in the car. 

[Bastet]

She says "Yeah, I'm pretty sure we did" so I've always figured she felt physical evidence leading her to believe some sort of penetration occurred, even though she has no clear memories (having been in and out of consciousness and all).  And, of course, all this is set up by Jake saying he could go "violate" a passed-out Caroline, but he doesn't want to (not because it would be wrong, mind you - the idea that non-consensual sex is rape is completely non-existent - but because he's ticked at her for the party getting out of control), so instead handing her off to some guy in exchange for another girl's panties, and in her moment of lucidity tricking her into believing the guy getting ready to drive off with her is him, her boyfriend, not this stranger.

'80s rape culture at its finest that this is an entire subplot, meant to be taken as funny, something to be happy for the geek about, and something that reflects poorly on Caroline. 

[supposebly]

I grew up in the 80s and I've never seen this movie, it sounds just awful.

[chrisrose]

I think, at the time, (when so many male-centric sex comedies were popular) this movie was actually considered somewhat progressive simply for having a female protagonist and showing some sensitivity in writing her feelings and insecurities and overall POV. It was something a little more relatable to female viewers than the teen movies that came before it.

HOWEVER. :P

Not defending this movie at all. I've only seen it once, when I was very young, and I never wanted to see it again. It was probably my introduction to the concept of rape and consent - but even if I didn't know those words, I remember *knowing* it was wrong, the way that guy passed his unconscious girlfriend to another guy. I couldn't believe we were supposed to root for him and Molly Ringwald to get together.

Won't even get into the "comedy" involving the Asian character...

I enjoy other John Hughes movies, but this one makes me kind of ashamed I'm a fan of any of his work. Did anyone ever ask him about Sixteen Candles (in a critical way) while he was alive? Anyone know if he ever expressed regrets?

[Sarah 103]

18 hours ago, Bastet said:

She says "Yeah, I'm pretty sure we did" so I've always figured she felt physical evidence leading her to believe some sort of penetration occurred, even though she has no clear memories (having been in and out of consciousness and all). 

Because this is the internet: rape and non-consensual sex are horrible inexcusbile things. With that disclaimer out of the way-

I think the scene in the car at the end is ambiguous and open to intrepretation. My take on it was that she just assumed something that happened, because from her perspective why wouldn't it? She knows she's popular and attractive, and he's a teenage boy, so of course he did something. She's possibly used to that kind of thing happening to her or other people, which is really sad, wrong, and messed up on every level. 

I still think they passed out in the car and nothing happened, but there's strong evidence to support a variety of different interpretations. 

[Bastet]

On 7/22/2023 at 5:51 AM, chrisrose said:

Did anyone ever ask him about Sixteen Candles (in a critical way) while he was alive? Anyone know if he ever expressed regrets?

Not that I'm aware of (he died in 2009, when such issues were still largely ignored by the media), but Molly Ringwald wrote a great essay five years ago.  I suggest reading the whole thing, but here's what she says specifically about the car scene:

Quote

If I sound overly critical, it’s only with hindsight. Back then, I was only vaguely aware of how inappropriate much of John’s writing was, given my limited experience and what was considered normal at the time. I was well into my thirties before I stopped considering verbally abusive men more interesting than the nice ones. I’m a little embarrassed to say that it took even longer for me to fully comprehend the scene late in “Sixteen Candles,” when the dreamboat, Jake, essentially trades his drunk girlfriend, Caroline, to the Geek, to satisfy the latter’s sexual urges, in return for Samantha’s underwear. The Geek takes Polaroids with Caroline to have proof of his conquest; when she wakes up in the morning with someone she doesn’t know, he asks her if she “enjoyed it.” (Neither of them seems to remember much.) Caroline shakes her head in wonderment and says, “You know, I have this weird feeling I did.” She had to have a feeling about it, rather than a thought, because thoughts are things we have when we are conscious, and she wasn’t.

And here's her conversation with the actor who played Caroline:
 

Quote

Thinking about that scene, I became curious how the actress who played Caroline, Haviland Morris, felt about the character she portrayed. So I sent her an e-mail. We hadn’t seen or spoken to each other since she was twenty-three and I was fifteen. We met for coffee, and after we had filled each other in on all the intervening years, I asked her about it. Haviland, I was surprised to learn, does not have the same issues with the scene as I do. In her mind, Caroline bears some responsibility for what happens, because of how drunk she gets at the party. “I’m not saying that it’s O.K. to then be raped or to have nonconsensual sex,” Haviland clarified. “But . . . that’s not a one-way street. Here’s a girl who gets herself so bombed that she doesn’t even know what’s going on.”

There was a time in my early twenties when I had too much to drink at a party and ended up in a bedroom sitting on the edge of a bed with a producer I didn’t know, lightheaded and woozy. A good friend, who had followed me, popped her head in the door a couple of minutes later and announced, “Time to go now, Molly!” I followed her out, trying not to stumble, and spent the rest of the night violently ill and embarrassed—and the rest of my life grateful that she had been there, watching out for me, when I was temporarily incapable of watching out for myself. I shared the story with Haviland, and she listened politely, nodding.

Haviland, like me, has children, and so I decided to frame the question hypothetically, mother to mother, to see if it changed her point of view. If one of our kids had too much to drink, and something like that happened to one of them, would she say, “It’s on you, because you drank too much”? She shook her head: “No. Absolutely, positively, it stays in your pants until invited by someone who is willing and consensually able to invite you to remove it.” Still, she added, “I’m not going to black-and-white it. It isn’t a one-way street.”

After our coffee, I responded to an e-mail from Haviland to thank her for agreeing to talk to me. Later that night, I received another note. “You know,” she wrote, “the more I think of it this evening, oddly, the LESS uncomfortable I am with Caroline. Jake was disgusted with her and said he could violate her 17 ways if he wanted to because she was so trashed, but he didn’t. And then, Ted was the one who had to ask if they had had sex, which certainly doesn’t demonstrate responsible behavior from either party, but also doesn’t really spell date rape. On the other hand, she was basically traded for a pair of underwear . . . Ah, John Hughes.”

I am appalled by the general notion that Caroline bears some responsibility because of how drunk she got, and specifically in this case that she ignores that Caroline went and passed out in her boyfriend's room - a place she believes to be safe - when she got bombed.  That's the end of Caroline's actions that night; everything else was done to her, not by her.  She was removed from the room and put in the car by Jake, and when she had a moment of lucidity and asked what was going on, he took further advantage of her lack of awareness to deceive her into believing she was in the car with Jake. 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Bastet

[kittykat]

3 hours ago, Bastet said:

am appalled by the general notion that Caroline bears some responsibility because of how drunk she got, and specifically in this case that she ignores that Caroline went and passed out in her boyfriend's room - a place she believes to be safe - when she got bombed.  That's the end of Caroline's actions that night; everything else was done to her, not by her.  She was removed from the room and put in the car by Jake, and when she had a moment of lucidity and asked what was going on, he took further advantage of her lack of awareness to deceive her into believing she was in the car with Jake

The sad thing is that for way too long women were made to feel culpable for whatever actions befall them if they drink too much and that's a horrible byproduct of rape culture.  The Stuebenville case that happened around the early '10s was bombarded by dumb comments like bUt ShE wAs DrUnK! As if that absolved those boys behavior.  The Joyce Carol Oates book We Were the Mulvaneys also sadly covers this.  The daughter in the book believes it was her fault because she drank.  It's an ingrained cultural notion that thankfully is finally being talked about and is starting to change, albeit slowly.

As much as I used to love this movie, I definitely agree that most of this has not aged well but the same could be said about most Hughes films of this era especially Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink (Uncle Buck holds up fairly well).

On the positive: they could have gone the cliche route and made Caroline a total one dimensional bitch but they actually made her a decent, relatable nice person.  I always liked the way she says hi to Sam at the dance when shes depressed and Sam waves back in that "I'm supposed to hate you but I can't because you're a nice person" way

Haven't rewatched this in awhile but am hesitant to now.

[Spartan Girl]

Thanks for bringing up that essay @Bastet. It really stood out that Haviland initially shrugged it off and tried to victim blame Caroline…but the more she thought about it, the less acceptable it became to her. That’s how it goes sometimes: we think it’s okay until we realize it’s not.

[Bastet]

On 7/22/2023 at 5:51 AM, chrisrose said:

I think, at the time, (when so many male-centric sex comedies were popular) this movie was actually considered somewhat progressive simply for having a female protagonist and showing some sensitivity in writing her feelings and insecurities and overall POV. It was something a little more relatable to female viewers than the teen movies that came before it.

I meant to note that Ringwald addressed that in her essay, too:
 

Quote

It can be hard to remember how scarce art for and about teen-agers was before John Hughes arrived. Young-adult novels had not yet exploded as a genre. Onscreen, the big issues that affected teens seemed to belong largely to the world of ABC Afterschool Specials, which premièred in 1972 and were still around as I came of age, in the eighties. All the teens I knew would rather have died than watch one. The films had the whiff of sanctimony, the dialogue was obviously written by adults, the music was corny.

Portrayals of teen-agers in movies were even worse. The actors cast in teen roles tended to be much older than their characters—they had to be, since the films were so frequently exploitative. The teen horror flicks that flourished in the seventies and eighties had them getting murdered: if you were young, attractive, and sexually active, your chances of making it to the end were basically nil (a trope spoofed, years later, by the “Scream” franchise). The successful teen comedies of the period, such as “Animal House” and “Porky’s,” were written by men for boys; the few women in them were either nymphomaniacs or battleaxes. (The stout female coach in “Porky’s” is named Balbricker.) The boys are perverts, as one-dimensional as their female counterparts, but with more screen time. In 1982, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” which had the rare distinction of being directed by a woman, Amy Heckerling, got closer to an authentic depiction of adolescence. But it still made room for a young male’s fantasy of the actress Phoebe Cates striding topless in a soft-porny sprinkler mist.

And then Hughes came along.
<I've snipped the background information she gives on him.>

... In synopsis, the movies can seem flimsy—a girl loses her date to a dance, a family forgets a girl’s birthday—but that’s part of what made them unique. No one in Hollywood was writing about the minutiae of high school, and certainly not from a female point of view. According to one study, since the late nineteen-forties, in the top-grossing family movies, girl characters have been outnumbered by boys three to one—and that ratio has not improved. That two of Hughes’s films had female protagonists in the lead roles and examined these young women’s feelings about the fairly ordinary things that were happening to them, while also managing to have instant cred that translated into success at the box office, was an anomaly that has never really been replicated.

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Bastet

[JAYJAY1979]

delayed processing.. where at the time an event happens, you can't grasp the seriousness of the event... but later on, it can hit you like a ton of bricks that what happened was not right.

I was always confused about whether Caroline/Farmer Ted really did anything.. or if they just assumed something had happened.  I guess I've got my answer

[greekmom]

I always assumed nothing happened in the car because they were both so drunk.

What bothered me was Jake's attitude when he remarks to Farmer Ted how Caroline is so drunk he can violate her 10 different ways and she wouldn't know it.

There are numerous amounts of other examples of instances or dialogue that wouldn't hold up today. That's another conversation.

[Fool to cry]

Middle class Molly is the most believable to me. More than upper class(Breakfast Club) and lower class(Pretty in Pink).

Edited September 1, 2023 by Fool to cry

[bluegirl147]

On 9/1/2023 at 8:19 AM, greekmom said:

There are numerous amounts of other examples of instances or dialogue that wouldn't hold up today. That's another conversation.

One scene I always remembered was when Sam and her friend were talking about what Sam wanted for her birthday and she said a car and a guy in the car. Her friend asked what color and Sam says black. Her friend is horrified and says black guy???? And Sam says no black care and a pink guy.  Even at the time (I was also 16) thinking so what if Sam wanted a black guy as a date. I should mention I was dating interracially at the time so I was probably more sensitive upon hearing that dialogue but even if I hadn't been it would have still bothered me.  And don't even get me started on Long Duk Dong.

As others have already posted issues of consent were sorely lacking in this movie. Whether Caroline and Farmer Ted had sex or not for me the issue was Jake not caring what happened to her when Farmer Ted drove off with her.  He showed himself to be a bad guy by remarking if he so chose he could do whatever he wanted with Caroline himself while she was passed out drunk.  And yet we were supposed to think Sam was getting a nice guy.  

Now as an adult and a grandmother of a soon to be tween granddaughter I realize how fucked up it was this movie was written for teens.  Teens who watched it and thought it was funny that a girl got so drunk she was possibly raped.  And it is rape if you are unconscious and can't consent. Teens who watched it and thought it was funny a girl gave her panties to a boy who then charged other boys to see them.   

On 7/23/2023 at 9:00 PM, Bastet said:

In 1982, “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” which had the rare distinction of being directed by a woman, Amy Heckerling, got closer to an authentic depiction of adolescence. But it still made room for a young male’s fantasy of the actress Phoebe Cates striding topless in a soft-porny sprinkler mist.

My best friend and I were just discussing this movie a couple weeks ago.  We both thought the sex in that movie was believable.  Stacy losing her virginity to an older guy.  And her having sex with Damone and it literally lasting 10 seconds.  I'm sure a lot of viewers could identify with that.

[txhorns79]

I always wanted to give Molly Ringwald a special Oscar for looking mortified based on this movie.  The scene where her grandmother feels her up will never not make me laugh.