The Brat Pack – Bitch Flicks

The Brat Pack: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for our Brat Pack Theme Week here.

Mannequin: A Dummy’s Guide to True and Everlasting Love by Karina Wilson

By any regular standards, even the 1980s, Mannequin is a TERRIBLE movie. It never should have been green lit, let alone hit wide release. It’s often lumped in with other Brat Pack pics, thanks to the presence of Andrew McCarthy and James Spader, but it really should be categorized separately, as a romcom gone wrong. Showroom dummies that come to life after hours should be the stuff of horror movies, or episodes of Doctor Who, not fluffy fantasies starring a nearly naked Kim Cattrall. John Hughes wouldn’t have touched this material with a ten-foot pole.

Sixteen Candles, Rape Culture, and the Anti-Woman Politics of 2013 by Stephanie Rogers

Holy fuck this movie. I started watching it like OH YEAH MY CHILDHOOD MOLLY RINGWALD ADOLESCENCE IS SO HARD and after two scenes, I put that shit on pause like, WHEN DID SOMEONE WRITE ALL THESE RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY PARTS THAT WEREN’T HERE BEFORE I WOULD’VE REMEMBERED THEM.

Nostalgia is a sneaky bitch.

A Brain, an Athlete, a Basket Case, a Princess, and a Criminal: How The Breakfast Club Archetypes Set Standards for High School in Brat Pack Cinema and Beyond by Kylie Sparks

While today’s entertainment sources a lot of inspiration from Brat Pack Cinema, especially the high school-coming-of-age era of Brat Pack Cinema, we have to be very aware that we do not fall into the trap of embracing multifaceted male characters and yet only providing a Princess/Oddball dynamic with female characters. Not all of us fall into The Brain, The Athlete, The Basket Case, The Princess, and The Criminal, and while we can look to Brat Pack Cinema for inspiration to create new projects for our generation and generations to come, archetypes are suggestions, not the end-all be-all for characters in entertainment.

After The Brat Pack: Ally Sheedy in High Art by Ren Jender

Although a few who had fallen under the brat pack sobriquet (like Demi Moore) continued in mainstream star-vehicles well into the 90s (and Rob Lowe, dismissed as another pretty face in the ’80s, was able to sustain a TV career into the present), most had faded from the public view by then, including Ally Sheedy (after starring in 1987’s Maid to Order, her own Weekend At Bernie’s) –though earlier in her career she, of the whole “Pack,” received some of the best reviews for her work. Sheedy went on to reinvent herself–and make good on her earlier promise–in a series of meaty roles in independent films in the late 90s: the most well known one (for which she won several awards) was Lucy Berliner in writer-director Lisa Cholodenko’s 1998 feature debut High Art.

What They’re Going Through: The Brat Pack Gave Teens a Voice by Caroline Madden

Whatever the Brat Pack actors did with their fame in real life does not reflect the impact they ingrained on our culture. They helped put a face and a voice to teen struggles. These talented young actors gave teenagers an identity and platform for their problems that will stand the test of time. We will always thank the Brat Pack for that.

‘Mannequin’: A Dummy’s Guide to True and Everlasting Love

By any regular standards, even the 1980s, ‘Mannequin’ is a TERRIBLE movie. It never should have been green lit, let alone hit wide release. It’s often lumped in with other Brat Pack pics, thanks to the presence of Andrew McCarthy and James Spader, but it really should be categorized separately, as a romcom gone wrong. Showroom dummies that come to life after hours should be the stuff of horror movies, or episodes of ‘Doctor Who,’ not fluffy fantasies starring a nearly naked Kim Cattrall. John Hughes wouldn’t have touched this material with a ten-foot pole.

This guest post by Karina Wilson appears as part of our theme week on The Brat Pack.

It’s hard to believe the filmmakers ever thought audiences would fall for the outrageous plot. An Ancient Egyptian princess, Emmy (Kim Cattrall), escapes arranged marriage to a camel dung salesman by disappearing in a puff of smoke and reincarnating as a showroom dummy in 1987 Philadelphia, where she finds true love with the career-challenged Jonathan (Andrew McCarthy) inside a glittering retail palace (Wanamaker’s, now Macy’s Center City). She exploits the well-documented Philadelphian obsession with classy department store window displays to turn Jonathan’s life around, defeat the bad guys, and [SPOILER ALERT] get married (in a climactic window display!) and live happily ever after.

Critics, understandably, hated it. Roger Ebert thought it was, quite literally, DOA (“Mannequin is dead. The wake lasts 1 1/2 hours, and then we can leave the theater”). Janet Maslin in the New York Times lamented the lack of substance (“In place of a real story, there is just the spectacle of stock characters being put through their paces to fill up the time”) and lousy performances (“It’s never a disappointment when the mannequin, which comes to life only intermittently, turns back into wood”). Leonard Maltin called it “absolute rock-bottom fare. Dispiriting to anyone who remembers what movie comedy ought to be.” Yet it was a hit – grossing more than $42 million off a $6 million budget – and was nominated for an Academy Award – for Starship’s theme song, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”

I willingly confess to loving Mannequin. It’s so wrong, it’s absolutely right. It’s a big, tatty rescue pooch who plants her paws on your chest and gives you a slobbery kiss of a movie: certain people, dog people, Mannequin people, can’t help but be charmed. Even now, watching it as a hard-bitten 40-something, it invokes my inner impressionable teen.

I adore the unromantic hero, Jonathan Switcher, because he manages to be simultaneously weird and endearing. There’s something a bit off kilter from the top: when we first meet him, he’s salivating over a naked clothes dummy. He exudes every which way of warning signal, from the pronounced doll fetish to the Frankenstein complex to the social ineptitude. When the dummy-making gig doesn’t work out, he is hired and quickly fired from a succession of menial occupations, which consequently causes him to be dumped by his improbably put-together girlfriend, Roxie (Carole Davis). Poor Jonathan would drown instantly if forced to dive into the perilous depths of the 2014 dating pool. However, this was the 1980s, when you could splash about in the shallow end and still qualify as Kim Cattrall’s dream date. On the plus side, Jonathan rides a Harley, lives in a sweet studio apartment (obviously comes from money, yay 1980s!), and he’s Andrew McCarthy. Andrew fucking McCarthy. Be still, my perpetual adolescent heart.

For those of you who don’t recall, Andrew McCarthy was the Beta Male of the Brat Pack. He wasn’t as beautiful as Rob Lowe, or as badass as Judd Nelson, or as peppy as Robert Downey Jr., but you’d take him over Anthony Michael Hall or Jon Cryer any day. He had a burning blue stare, a voice that dropped to a creaky growl when – as often happened – his character was wracked with emotion, and a lift to his chin suggesting a stubborn streak a mile wide. He was cool enough to pop his collar and run with the in-crowd, but he was also sensitive enough to be an individual, even (shock!) an artist, and follow his dream. He was the Nice Guy before the term became so ridiculously devalued. He was the boy who might, quite unexpectedly, offer to walk you home after prom turned to tears, and then turn misery and humiliation into the most enchanted evening of your life through the power of his goofy grin and kind eyes. I loved him then and I love him still.

He’s wasted in Mannequin. He does his best with the material, and manages to make Jonathan geeky and adorable, a whisper away from quietly insane: in lesser hands, the guy would be plain creepy. McCarthy makes it halfway believable that Emmy, who has had her pick of hot dates (Christopher Columbus!) throughout history, might finally settle for the lowest status employee in the store. And Cattrall keeps up Emmy’s end of the deal, regarding Jonathan as a feline would a toy stuffed with catnip – with unadulterated delight. She bats him between her paws, chews on him gently, and, when the montage is done, curls up beside him and goes to sleep. Girl clearly likes to dominate, and there’s a coy whiff of BDSM about some of their dress-up-and-play. What else are they going to do with those tennis racquets other than spank each other’s ass?

In a cute subversion of romcom norms, then, Emmy is the Alpha Female who picks out the Nice Beta Male early on in the narrative and seduces him with a plastic smile. She has been dating for millennia. When she sees it, she knows exactly what she wants – and it ain’t the traditional alpha hero. Jonathan and Emmy are perfect for one another from the moment they lay eyes on one another. There’s no need for a makeover montage. This is due to bad storytelling rather than feminist innovation, but it’s so refreshingly unusual, it works. She’s content to dazzle, he’s content to be awed – and when required, he saves her life. We should all aspire to such a Mr. Right.

The writers, Michael Gottlieb and Edward Rugoff, manage to throw a few obstacles in the happy couple’s way (the course of true love never did run smooth) in the form of manic supporting characters. Forget three-dimensional, thinking, feeling, human beings – crass stereotypes abound. There’s flamboyant, gay, black, promiscuous Hollywood (Meshach Taylor), the set designer who takes Jonathan under his sateen wing. Estelle Getty pops up as the store’s owner, Claire Timkin. G.W. Bailey reprises his Police Academy shtick as Felix, the bumbling security guard – Cattrall was a fellow alumni, best known for her sex kitten turns in Porky’s and Police Academy at this point, so he must have felt at home. And there’s the villainous Richards, James Spader abandoning his usual sexy-husky bad-boy turn in favor of playing a rival storeowner with cartoonish slicked-back hair and outsize spectacles. None of it makes much sense. But somehow Jonathan and Emmy win and Richards and Roxie lose and the finale is all “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” most triumphant good.

That’s all, folks. Mannequin is fun, but wafer-thin. Although considered a cult classic, it has zero cultural significance, especially when compared to the canon Brat Pack hits that defined a generation. It’s a vapid Technicolor fantasy that, by being so poorly conceived and written, accidentally manages to subvert all the other Pygmalion stories. Flimsy as she is, Emmy is the romantic heroine who doesn’t have to be reshaped or reinvent herself in order to deserve her adoring swain. All she needs is for us to believe she’s real.

Karina Wilson is a British writer and story consultant based in Los Angeles. She writes a regular column on horror fiction at Litreactor and can also be found at Horror Film History.

‘Sixteen Candles,’ Rape Culture, and Anti-Woman Politics

Nostalgia is a sneaky bitch.

Movie posters for Sixteen Candles

This post by Stephanie Rogers appears as part of our theme week on The Brat Pack.

Nostalgia is a sneaky bitch.

I wanted to write about all the wonderful things I thought I remembered about Sixteen Candles: a sympathetic and complex female protagonist, the awkwardness of adolescence, the embarrassing interactions with parents and grandparents who JUST DON’T GET IT, crushing hard on older boys—and yes, all that stuff is still there. And of course, there’s that absolutely fantastic final wedding scene in which a woman consents to marry a dude while under the influence of a fuckload of muscle relaxers. OH WAIT WHUT.

Ginny Baker getting married while super high

Turns out, that shit ain’t so funny once feminism becomes a thing in your life.

The kind of adorable premise of Sixteen Candles is that Molly Ringwald (Samantha Baker) wakes up one morning as a sixteen-year-old woman who still hasn’t yet grown the breasts she wants. Her family, however, forgets her birthday because of the chaos surrounding her older sister Ginny’s upcoming wedding; relatives drive into town, future in-laws set up dinner dates, and poor Samantha gets the cold shoulder. It reminded me of the time my parents handed me an unwrapped Stephen King novel on my sixteenth birthday like a couple of emotionally neglectful and shitty assholes, but, you know, at least they REMEMBERED it.

Anyway, she rides the bus to school (with all the LOSERS), and in her Independent Study “class” the hot senior she likes, Jake Ryan, intercepts a note meant for her friend Randy. And—wouldn’t you know it—the note says, I WOULD TOTALLY DO IT WITH JAKE RYAN BUT HE DOESN’T KNOW I’M ALIVE. Well he sure as fuck knows NOW, Samantha.

Samantha and Randy, totally grossed out, ride the bus to school

So, these are the important things in Sixteen Candles: Samantha’s family forgets her birthday; she’s in love with a hot senior who’s dating Caroline (the most popular girl in school); and there’s a big ol’ geek (Farmer Ted) from Sam’s daily bus rides who won’t stop stalking her. Oh, and Long Duk Dong exists [insert racist gong sound here]. Seriously, every time Long Duk Dong appears on screen, a fucking GONG GOES OFF on the soundtrack. I suppose that lines up quite nicely with the scene where he falls out of a tree yelling, “BONSAI.”

Since the entire movie is like a machine gun firing of RACIST HOMOPHOBIC SEXIST ABLEIST RAPEY parts, the only way I know how to effectively talk about it is to look at the very problematic screenplay. So, fasten your seatbelts and heed your trigger warnings.

The 80s were quite possibly a nightmare.

Long Duk Dong falls out of a tree (BONSAI) after a drunken night at the homecoming dance

The first few scenes do a decent job of showing the forgotten-birthday slash upcoming-wedding fiasco occurring in the Baker household. Sam stands in front of her bedroom mirror before school, analyzing her brand new sixteen-year-old self and says, “You need four inches of bod and a great birthday.” I can get behind that idea; growing up comes with all kinds of stresses and confusion, especially for women in high school who’ve begun to feel even more insecure about their bodies (having had sufficient time to fully absorb the toxic beauty culture).

“Chronologically, you’re 16 today. Physically? You’re still 15.” –Samantha Baker, looking in the mirror

While Samantha laments the lack of changes in her physical appearance, her little brother Mike pretends to almost-punch their younger sister. When he gets in trouble for it, he says, “Dad, I didn’t hit her. I’d like to very much and probably will later, but give me a break. You know my method. I don’t hit her when you’re just down the hall.” It’s easy to laugh this off—I chuckled when I first heard it. But after five seconds of thinking about my reaction, I realized my brain gave Mike a pass because of that whole “boys will be boys” thing, and then I got pissed at myself.

The problem with eye-rolling away the “harmless” offenses of young boys is that it gives boys (and later, men) a license to act like fuckers with no actual repercussions. The “boys will be boys” mantra is one of the most insidious manifestations of rape culture because it conditions both boys and girls at a young age to believe boys just can’t help themselves; violence in boys is inherent and not worth trying to control. And people today—including political “leaders”—often use that excuse to justify the violent actions of men toward women.

Mike Baker explains to his dad that he hasn’t hit his younger sister … yet

Unfortunately, Sixteen Candles continues to reinforce this idea throughout the film.

The Geek, aka Farmer Ted—a freshman who’s obsessed with Samantha—represents this more than any other character. The film presents his stalking behavior as endearing, which means that all his interactions with Samantha (and with the popular kids at school) end with a silent, “Poor guy!” exclamation. Things just really aren’t going his way! And look how hard he’s trying! (Poor guy.) He first appears on the bus home from school and sits next to Samantha, even though she makes it quite clear—with a bunch of comments about getting dudes to kick his ass who “lust wimp blood”—that she wants him to leave her alone. Then this interaction takes place:

Ted: You know, I’m getting input here that I’m reading as relatively hostile.

Samantha: Go to hell.

Ted: Come on, what’s the problem here? I’m a boy, you’re a girl. Is there anything wrong with me trying to put together some kind of relationship between us?

[The bus stops.]

Ted: Look, I know you have to go. Just answer one question.

Samantha: Yes, you’re a total fag.

Ted: That’s not the question … Am I turning you on?

[Samantha rolls her eyes and exits the bus.]

POOR GUY! Also homophobia. Like, all over the place in this movie. The words “fag” and “faggot” flood the script and always refer to men who lack conventional masculine traits or who haven’t yet “bagged a babe.” And the emphasis on “Man-Up Already!” puts women in harm’s way more than once.

Samantha looks irritated when her stalker, Farmer Ted, refuses to leave her alone. Also Joan Cusack for no reason.

The most terrifying instance of this happens toward the end of the film when Ted ends up at Jake’s party after the school homecoming dance, and the two of them bond by objectifying women together (and subsequently creating a nice little movie template to last for generations). The atrocities involve a very drunk, passed-out Caroline (which reminded me so much of what happened in Steubenville that I had to turn off the movie for a while and regroup) and a pair of Samantha’s underwear.

This is how we get to that point: After Jake snags Samantha’s unintentional declaration of love during Independent Study, he becomes interested in her. He tells a jock friend of his (while they do chin-ups together in gym class), “It’s kinda cool, the way she’s always looking at me.” His friend responds—amid all that hot testosterone—that “maybe she’s retarded.” (This statement sounds even worse within the context of a film that includes a possibly disabled character, played by Joan Cusack, who lacks mobility and “hilariously” spends five minutes trying to drink from a water fountain. Her role exists as nothing more than a punch line; she literally says nothing.)

Joan Cusack drinking water (queue laughter)

Joan Cusack drinking a beer (queue laughter)

Jake’s girlfriend, Caroline, picks up on his waning interest in her and says to him at the school dance, “You’ve been acting weird all night. Are you screwing around?” He immediately gaslights her with, “Me? Are you crazy?” to which she responds, “I don’t know, Jake. I’m getting strange signals.” Yup, Caroline—IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD NOT REALLY.

Meanwhile, in an abandoned car somewhere on school premises (perhaps a shop lab/classroom), Samantha sits alone, lamenting Jake’s probable hatred of her after their interaction in the gym where he said, “Hi!” and she freaked out and ran away. Farmer Ted stalk-finds her and climbs into the passenger seat. Some words happen, blah blah blah, and a potentially interesting commentary on the culture of masculinity gets undercut by Ted asking Samantha (who Ted referred to lovingly as “fully-aged sophomore meat” to his dude-bros earlier in the film) if he can borrow her underwear to use as proof that they banged. Of course she gives her underwear to him because.

Ted holds up Samantha’s underwear to a group of dude-bros who each paid a buck to see them

Cut to Jake’s after-party: everyone is finally gone; his house is a mess; Caroline is passed out drunk as fuck in his bedroom; and he finds Ted trapped inside a glass coffee table (a product of bullying). Then, at last, after Jake confesses to Ted that he thinks Samantha hates him (because she ran away from him in the gym), we’re treated to a true Male Bonding Moment:

Ted: You see, [girls] know guys are, like, in perpetual heat, right? They know this shit. And they enjoy pumping us up. It’s pure power politics, I’m telling you … You know how many times a week I go without lunch because some bitch borrows my lunch money? Any halfway decent girl can rob me blind because I’m too torqued up to say no.

Jake: I can get a piece of ass anytime I want. Shit, I got Caroline in my bedroom right now, passed out cold. I could violate her ten different ways if I wanted to.

Ted: What are you waiting for?

C’MON JAKE WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR GO RAPE YOUR GIRLFRIEND. Or wait, no, maybe let’s let Ted rape her?

Jake: I’ll make a deal with you. Let me keep these [Samantha’s underwear, duh]. I’ll let you take Caroline home … She’s so blitzed she won’t know the difference.

Ted carrying a drunk Caroline to the car

And then Ted throws a passed-out Caroline over his shoulder and puts her in the passenger seat of a convertible. This scene took me immediately back to the horrific images of two men carrying around a drunk woman in Steubenville who they later raped—and were convicted of raping (thanks largely to social media). This scene, undoubtedly “funny” in the 80s and certainly still funny to people who like to claim this shit is harmless, helped lay the groundwork for Steubenville, and for Cleveland, and for Richmond, where as many as 20 witnesses watched men beat and gang rape a woman for over two hours without reporting it. On their high school campus. During their homecoming dance.

Jake and Ted talk about how to fool Caroline

People who claim to believe films and TV and pop culture moments like this are somehow disconnected from perpetuating rape need to take a step back and really think about the message this sends. I refuse to accept that a person could watch this scene from an iconic John Hughes film—where, after a party, a drunk woman is literally passed around by two men and photographed—and not see the connection between the Steubenville rape—where, after a party, a woman was literally passed around by two men and photographed.

Caroline looks drunk and confused while Ted’s friends take a photo as proof that he hooked up with her

And it only gets worse. Caroline wakes up out of nowhere and puts a birth control pill in Ted’s mouth. Once he realizes what he’s swallowed, he says, “You have any idea what that’ll do to a guy my age?” Caroline responds, “I know exactly what it’ll do to a girl my age. It makes it okay to be really super careless!”

It makes it okay to be really super careless.

IT MAKES IT OKAY TO BE REALLY SUPER CARELESS.

So I guess the current anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-woman Republicans found a John Hughes screenplay from 30 years ago and decided to use this cautionary tale as their entire fucking platform. See what happens when women have access to birth control? It makes it okay to be really super careless! And get drunk! And allow dudes to rape them!

Of course, believing that Caroline is raped in Sixteen Candles requires believing that a woman can’t consent to sex when she’s too “blitzed to know the difference” between her actual boyfriend and a random freshman geek. I mean, there’s forcible rape, and there’s not-really rape, right? And this obviously isn’t REAL rape since Ted and Caroline actually have THIS FUCKING CONVERSATION when they wake up in a church parking lot the next morning:

Ted: Did we, uh …

Caroline: Yeah. I’m pretty sure.

Ted: Of course I enjoyed it … uh … did you?

Caroline: Hmmm. You know, I have this weird feeling I did … You were pretty crazy … you know what I like best? Waking up in your arms.

Fuck you, John Hughes.

Caroline wakes up, unsure of who Ted is, but very sexually satisfied

And so many more problems exist in this film that I can’t fully get into in the space of one already long review, but the fact that Ginny (Sam’s sister) starts her period and therefore needs to take FOUR muscle relaxers to dull the pain also illustrates major problems with consent; her father at one point appears to pick her up and drag her down the aisle on her wedding day. (And, congratulations for understanding, John Hughes, that when women bleed every month, it requires a borderline drug overdose to contain the horror.)


Ginny’s dad drags her down the aisle on her wedding day

The racism, too, blows my mind. Long Duk Dong, a foreign exchange student living with Samantha’s grandparents, speaks in played-for-laughs broken English during the following monologue over dinner: “Very clever dinner. Appetizing food fit neatly into interesting round pie … I love, uh, visiting with Grandma and Grandpa … and writing letters to parents … and pushing lawn-mowing machine … so Grandpa’s hyena don’t get disturbed,” accompanied by such sentences as, “The Donger need food.” (I also love it, not really, when Samantha’s best friend Randy mishears Sam and thinks she’s interested in a Black guy. “A BLACK guy?!?!” Randy exclaims … then sighs with relief once she realizes the misunderstanding.)

Long Duk Dong talks to the Baker family over dinner

And I haven’t even touched on the problematic issues with class happening in Sixteen Candles. (Hughes does class relations a tiny bit better in Pretty in Pink.)

Basically, it freaks me out—as it should—when I watch movies or television shows from 30 years ago and see how closely the politics resemble today’s anti-woman agenda. Phrases like “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape” shouldn’t exist in 2013. In 2013, politicians like Wendy Davis shouldn’t have to stand up and speak for 13 hours—with no food, water, or restroom breaks—in order to stop a bill from passing in Texas that would virtually shut down access to safe and legal abortions in the entire state. Women should be able to walk down the street for contraception in 2013, whether it’s for condoms or for the morning after pill. The US political landscape in 2013 should NOT include talking points lifted directly from a 1984 film about teenagers.

I know John Hughes is a national fucking treasure, but please tell me our government officials aren’t using his screenplays as legislative blueprints for the future of American politics.

A Brain, an Athlete, a Basket Case, a Princess, and a Criminal: How ‘The Breakfast Club’ Archetypes Set Standards for High School in Brat Pack Cinema and Beyond

Breakfast Club Cast Photo — *The Breakfast Club*

This guest post by Kylie Sparks appears as part of our theme week on the Brat Pack.

We all remember the first time we saw The Breakfast Club, that wonderful John Hughes ode to Saturday morning detention at Shermer High School (and as a full disclaimer, it’s one of my favorite films).

At first, we saw five teenagers as the Brain, the Athlete, the Basket Case, the Princess, and the Criminal–perfectly neat archetypes in the basic high school caste system, but they actually were five kids who saw the world more than just through their own designated lens. As Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall, or the “Brain”) narrates, “You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions.” At the end of the film, each character grew to explore what would happen across party lines (the Athlete and the Basket Case, the Princess and the Criminal, the Brain becoming his own entity of independence, and the Basket Case being “made over” by the Princess to become another Princess) and we knew their lives were forever changed by that one Saturday in detention.

It’s awesome to see teenagers explore their own identities and not conform to their own archetypes, but if we examine Brat Pack Cinema and how archetypes are portrayed throughout the 1980s coming-of-age films, there is a common trend. High school boys in Brat Pack films are allowed to be the jock, the nerd, the best friend, the weirdo, the leading male, and any other category a person would see themselves in and be multifaceted, while high school girls in Brat Pack Cinema fell under two categories: the Princess or the Oddball. While The Breakfast Club is a classic example of defining the Princess and the Oddball, several other films in Brat Pack Cinema cling to this dynamic, only showcasing that high school girls fall into these two categories with no in between.

Cast Still from Sixteen Candles — *Sixteen Candles*

Sixteen Candles, which starred Breakfast Club alums Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall, as well as Michael Shoeffling, Gedde Watanabe, and Brat Pack regulars John Cusack and Haviland Morris, showcases classic archetypes in Brat Pack Cinema: the Athlete/All-American (Shoeffling), the Awkward Princess (Ringwald), the Prom Queen (Morris), the Geek (Hall, Cusack), the Exchange Student/Geek (Watanabe), and the female Oddball (Deborah Pollack, playing The Donger’s girlfriend Marlene or “Lumberjack”). While Ringwald’s character is supposed to be an “awkward” girl on the verge of turning 16, she is cast as our Girl Next Door Princess to be a contrast to Morris’ Prom Queen Princess as “everything she isn’t.”

Given Ringwald’s prominence in the Brat Pack as a leading lady (no matter if she is deemed “awkward,” “poor,” or the “every girl”), she is still viewed as a Princess. Ringwald’s sister in the film is also a classic Princess, as everyone is preparing for her beautiful wedding and forgets Ringwald’s birthday is at the same time. Our only female character who is not billed as a Princess is our Oddball, Marlene. Marlene is also called the “Lumberjack” as she is a strong female athlete who begins dating The Donger (Watanabe), but because of her stature and strength, she is not classified as a Princess, leaving her to be relegated to Oddball status.

While the argument can be made that Sixteen Candles came out a year before The Breakfast Club, the archetype lines are solid. You can categorize the men in various archetypes in Sixteen Candles, but women can only fit inside the boxes of Oddball or Princess with no in between. Pretty in Pink follows a similar archetype map to Sixteen Candles, with Ringwald as the “Poor Outcast” Princess and Andrew McCarthy as the “All-American,” James Spader as “The Douchebag/Criminal” and Jon Cryer as the “Best Friend/Brain.”

Still from Ferris Bueller's Day Off — *Ferris Bueller’s Day Off*

Other films in Brat Pack Cinema that don’t include The Breakfast Club stars and feel worlds apart from the triumvirate of The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty in Pink also follow this same archetype map of Princess/Oddball versus more diverse male archetypes in High School. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a classic example. Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), although he’s viewed as a “snot-nosed punk” by Principal Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), actually also falls into the “Popular Everyman” archetype of the high school caste system, adored by all the students –“the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads…they think he’s a righteous dude” as Rooney’s assistant Grace (played by Edie McClurg) informs Rooney. Ferris’ best friend is Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck), who on first appearance would fall into the “Freak” archetype, also falls into different archetypes as the Rich Kid, and by being Ferris’ best friend, Popular by Association.

Charlie Sheen’s appearance as the kid in the police station falls under the classic “Criminal” archetype, but we don’t know the rest of his background and he could fall under different archetypes. While our male characters are multifaceted, our two prominent female high school characters, Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) and Sloane (Mia Sara) are seen solely as Princesses. Sloane is a classic Princess–pretty and popular. Jeanie, although misunderstood and somewhat of an outcast, is also a Princess falling in line with Ringwald’s classic “every girl” princesses she portrays in Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink. Neither one would be classified as Oddballs based on the criteria presented in Brat Pack Cinema, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off does not provide any leading, prominent female characters in the high school caste system other than various forms of Princesses.

John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything — John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler from *Say Anything…*

Say Anything… is also an interesting film to look at in terms of male archetypes versus the Female Princess/Oddball structure since its male lead, John Cusack, played different high school archetypes in Brat Pack Cinema. In this case, in Say Anything… Cusack played iconic underachiever Lloyd Dobler, making millions of hearts break by lifting a boom box playing “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel outside Diane Court (Ione Skye)’s window. Diane is a classic Princess–beautiful, rich, high school valedictorian, and the object of Lloyd Dobler’s dreams. Although Lloyd and Diane have a rocky relationship the summer after high school–between falling in love and breaking up, ultimately–Lloyd has crossed party lines, the Underachievers, to date and fall in love with the Princess, eventually going with her to London for her fellowship. Our female Oddballs are Lloyd’s fellow underachiever friends Corey Flood (Lili Taylor) and D.C. (Amy Brooks); however, with the focus of the film being the relationship between the Underachiever and the Princess as well as the Princess’ father being investigated by the IRS, this is a love story between two classic crossing archetypes we see in Brat Pack Cinema, especially since a few years before, we saw The Princess and The Criminal fall in love in The Breakfast Club.

While we examine character archetypes in High School Brat Pack Cinema, it is also important to examine the actors. Previously, Cusack played a geek (Bryce in Sixteen Candles) and the Artistic Romantic in One Crazy Summer, and with his role as the Underachiever in Say Anything…, it highlights a point that men in Brat Pack cinema may get the opportunity to portray different archetypes in the high school era. Only one female Brat Pack regular comes to mind in portraying both the Princess and the Oddball in High School: Ally Sheedy. Sheedy played Matthew Broderick’s girlfriend Jennifer in WarGames, but also played Allison Reynolds in The Breakfast Club. Every other female in the high school era of Brat Pack films plays either the Princess or the Oddball.

comparison of Allison Reynolds before and after the Princess makeover in The Breakfast Club — Comparison of Allison Reynolds before and after the Princess makeover in *The Breakfast Club*

After examining these four films (as well as looking at several others), there is the question of how we present teenagers in entertainment today so we do not fall into the trap of basing characters on the Brat Pack high school female archetypes of Princess and Oddball, especially since very rarely do we allow girls to cross these lines unless the Oddball is given a makeover into a Princess and not vice versa. While today’s entertainment sources a lot of inspiration from Brat Pack Cinema, especially the high school-coming-of-age era of Brat Pack Cinema, we have to be very aware that we do not fall into the trap of embracing multifaceted male characters and yet only providing a Princess/Oddball dynamic with female characters. Not all of us fall into the Brain, the Athlete, the Basket Case, the Princess, and the Criminal, and while we can look to Brat Pack Cinema for inspiration to create new projects for our generation and generations to come, archetypes are suggestions, not the end-all be-all for characters in entertainment.

Kylie Sparks is an actor, producer, writer, singer and USC Alumna living with a pug and a pug mix in Los Angeles. She’s passionate about entertainment, pancakes, pugs, coffee, college football and feminism. You can find her @kyliesparks on Twitter and her official website is kyliesparks.com.

What They’re Going Through: The Brat Pack Gave Teens a Voice

This guest post by Caroline Madden appears as part of our theme week on The Brat Pack.

The Breakfast Club opens with a title card quoting David Bowie’s “Changes”:

The song lyrics express what The Breakfast Club and many of the Brat Pack films were portraying–that teenagers have as much of an understanding, inner conflict, and a place in this world as adults do. Their characters fight the ignorance of their principals, teachers, and parents who don’t bother to listen to what they’re dealing with inside.

David Blum’s 1985 article “The Birth of Hollywood’s Brat Pack” had him acting just like the adults Bowie sang about. He spit upon the young actors of the beloved teen films, and undermined them because they were young. He believed they were not entitled to fame and money and that their talent was not valid, all because of their youth.

The phrase for the group stuck, but Blum was met with scathing criticism from actors and journalists alike. Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, and Rob Lowe were the focus of the article, with mentions of other actors. The who’s who of the Brat Pack varies, but most consider those who star in both The Breakfast Club and/or St. Elmo’s Fire. After the article’s release, the Brat Pack actors were angry and humiliated. Their group refused to hang out together anymore, feeling that their reputation as a group was tarnished. Reading the article, it’s easy to see why they were so mad. It paints all of the young actors in the same brush stroke, making them all out to be shallow and money-hungry narcissists.

John Hughes himself even expressed distaste for the group name in a 1986 Seventeen magazine interview with Molly Ringwald interviewing him.

JH: I think that this clever moniker was slapped on these young actors, and I think it’s unfair. It’s a label.
MR: People my age were just beginning to be respected because of recent films such as yours, and now it’s like someone had to bring them down a peg or two, don’t you think?
JH: There is definitely a little adult envy. The young actors get hit harder because of their age. Because “Rat Pack” – which Brat Pack is clearly a parody of – was not negative. “Brat Pack” is. It suggests unruly, arrogant young people, and that description isn’t true of these people. And the label has been stuck on people who never even spoke to the reporter who coined it.
MR: Such as myself. I’ve been called the Women’s Auxiliary of the Brat Pack.
JH: To label somebody that! It’s harmful to people’s careers. At any rate, young people support the movie business, and its only fair that their stories be told.

David Blum admonishes the actors for their lack of formal training, addressing how they do not idolize or try to live up to famous method actors Pacino and De Niro: “If I were a Hollywood star I would spend more time working on my craft instead of chasing girls as the Hard Rock.” But even the most famous well-crafted actors also occasionally enjoy the perks of fame.

And so what if they’re not method actors? All you have to do is watch the scene in The Breakfast Club where they all describe how they got detention (which was completely improvised by all of them) to see their impressive talent, regardless of training or not. Blum acts as if they were handed everything on a silver platter, as if they didn’t work hard or even care about their profession.

He goes on about their fame and wealth: “They make major movies with big directors and get fat contracts and limousines. They have top agents and protective P.R. people. They have legions of fans who write them letters, buy them drinks, follow them home. And, most important, they sell movie tickets. Their films are often major hits, and the bigger the hit, the more money they make, and the more money they make, the more like stars they become.” Did the young Brat Pack actors enjoy the perks it came with being Hollywood stars? Of course they did, and that’s nothing new. We’ve seen it time and time again with some of the most famous and well-respected stars.

It is overall an ugly article that portrays them in an unflattering light. Most importantly, what David Blum fails to see is why those films were such big hits, why they were selling so many tickets. People have always been fascinated with the celebrity life, but what the fans cared about more than their off-screen lives was the people that they portrayed onscreen. That is why they were drawn to them in the first place. The Brat Pack actors portrayed the types of characters that teenagers of that time could relate to. They were the faces of thousands of all the teens out there, bringing to life the stories that they had all been dying to hear.

Before the 80s, teen movies were often good vs. evil stories, such as Rebel Without A Cause, or nostalgic looks at teenage lives of the past, such as American Graffiti. Films were rarely marketed or made for teens because executives felt that audiences didn’t care about them, and teenagers weren’t taken seriously. John Hughes comments on this in his Seventeen magazine interview: “My generation had to be taken seriously because we were stopping things and burning things. We were able to initiate change, because we had such vast numbers. We were part of the baby boom, and when we moved, everything moved with us. But now, there are fewer teens, and they aren’t taken as seriously as we were.”

80s teen films expressed the plights and anxieties of that Regan-era generation, the ones who grew up after Woodstock and before YouTube; there was a huge lack of respect for their generation. 1980s America was suffering from high divorce rates and economic setbacks and unemployment that led to an obsession with money and a huge divide of class distinctions.

1980s teens were very aware of who had money and who didn’t and how painful that divide can be. That is the crux of Blaine and Andie’s relationship in John Hughes’ Pretty in Pink. She’s poor and he’s a rich yuppie–how could it work? Duckie and Andie drive through a ritzy neighborhood as Andie exclaims about how beautiful a house is: “You know what the really sad thing is? I bet the people that live there don’t think it’s half as pretty as I do.” The Breakfast Club also focuses on that divide, especially between rich girl Claire and rebel Bender over an argument about her earrings. Bender says, “I bet he bought those for you! I bet those are a Christmas gift! Right? You know what I got for Christmas this year? It was a banner fuckin’ year at the old Bender family! I got a carton of cigarettes.”

But for all the statements they made about teenage life in the 80s, these stories are timeless. They changed the world then and remain renowned today. The Breakfast Club is nearly 30 years old and still relatable to teens of this generation. These films had teens that were here to say, “Even though I’m young with my whole life ahead of me, there are things that I have to deal with and I have problems that affect me too.”

These characters talked about how their parents have failed them or hurt them, the pressure to do well in school or have the right friends. Just look at the heartbreaking scene in The Breakfast Club when Bender describes his abusive dad. Or Andrew the jock screaming about how his father so desperately needs him to “Win! Win! Win!” Think of how many kids in that audience could relate to that. They saw the Brat Pack actors up on the screen, speaking aloud something that they were struggling similarly with deep down inside.

Teenagers are often seen as self-centered brats, and it certainly doesn’t help if they’re also rich and famous. David Blum saw them as brats, as most adults see those who are younger than them. So yes, they are a pack of young kids. But the word “brat” doesn’t have to refer to what they are, but what they’re seen as. Call them brats all you want, but that’s not what they are inside.

_______________________________

Caroline Madden is a recent graduate with a BFA in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory. She writes about film at Geek Juice, Screenqueens, and her blog. You can usually find her watching movies or listening to Bruce Springsteen.

Call For Writers: The Brat Pack

The infamous Brat Pack of the 80s was and remains a huge cultural phenomenon. A term inspired by the Rat Pack of the 5os and 60s, the Brat Pack immortalized a group of young actors whose films had a tendency to overlap. Though the actors themselves disliked the moniker and some complained it hurt their careers, the term stuck.

Our theme week for August 2014 will be The Brat Pack.

The infamous Brat Pack of the 80s was and still remains a huge cultural phenomenon. A term inspired by the Rat Pack of the 5os and 60s (which included iconic names like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, etc), the Brat Pack immortalized a group of young actors whose films had a tendency to overlap. David Blum coined the term in his New York article: “Hollywood’s Brat Pack.” Though the actors themselves disliked the moniker and some complained it hurt their careers, the term stuck.

Scholar Michael J. Palmer scathingly describes the Brat Pack as “the socially apathetic, cynical, money-possessed and ideologically barren eighties generation.” On the other hand, film critic James Thorburn claims that “Eighties teens drew instruction and inspiration” from Brat Pack films and “had their faith in society reinforced, and their moral fabric strengthened.” Author Susannah Gora weighs in, stating that Brat Pack films “changed the way many young people looked at everything from class distinction to friendship, from love to sex and fashion to music.” Whether identified as a positive or negative contribution to film, the Brat Pack is universally considered “among the most influential pop cultural contributions of their time.”

We’d like you to write about the Brat Pack. Examine a single film, a series of films, the actors’ careers or the effects that the Brat Pack had on an era. Some questions worth considering are:

Who constitutes the Brat Pack?
Did the grouping of these actors under the blanket term Brat Pack help or hinder their careers?
What did/do they stand for?
Was the Brat Pack influence good or bad?
How do these young actors and their works compare to the Rat Pack?

Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, Aug. 22 by midnight.

The Breakfast Club

St. Elmo’s Fire

Oxford Blues

Fresh Horses

The Outsiders

Hail Caesar

Less Than Zero

Blue City

One Crazy Summer

Weird Science

War Games

Mannequin

Young Guns

About Last Night…

Sixteen Candles

Class

Betsy’s Wedding

Johnny Be Good

The Pick-up Artist

Pretty in Pink

Taps

‘Pretty in Pink’: Side Effects from the Prom

In Pretty In Pink, Andi is a self-sufficient, seemingly self-aware teenage girl who lives in a little cottage with her single father. Andi isn’t the type of girl who goes gaga for cocky, linen suit-wearing Steff (James Spader). She’s too busy at home sewing and stitching together her latest wardrobe creations. To her fellow girl students, she’s just a classless, lanky redhead who shouldn’t dare be caught dead at a “richie” party. So, she spends her time at TRAX, a record shop she works at, and a nightclub that showcases hip new wave bands like Ringwald’s real-life fave, The Rave-Ups. Her best friends Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Iona (Annie Potts) admire and envy Andi.

Pretty-in-Pink-promo-poster — Blaine, Andi, and Dickie in *Pretty in Pink*

This guest post by Kim Hoffman appears as part of our theme week on Child and Teenage Girl Protagonists.

Molly Ringwald was to John Hughes what strawberry jam is to sliced bread. As a forever fan of Hughes and his muse, it took me a long time to warm up to Pretty In Pink, in part because I’ve always played favorites for my first love, Sixteen Candles, followed by the untouchable Breakfast Club. That said, I’m a prideful observer of all Hughes films, having watched each countless times over the years—the aesthetics constantly taking new shape despite knowing the plot will end the same each time. Hughes wasn’t a particularly public man, but his genius mind left traces of secret suburbia and the endless topic of teenagers. Ever since I first watched a Hughes film at summer camp, I’ve been hovering over the wide shots of gymnasium school dances, yuppie keg parties, and high school girls with pink drapes covering their bedroom windows.

In Pretty In Pink, Andi is a self-sufficient, seemingly self-aware teenage girl who lives in a little cottage with her single father. Andi isn’t the type of girl who goes gaga for cocky, linen suit-wearing Steff (James Spader). She’s too busy at home sewing and stitching together her latest wardrobe creations. To her fellow girl students, she’s just a classless, lanky redhead who shouldn’t dare be caught dead at a “richie” party. So, she spends her time at TRAX, a record shop she works at, and a nightclub that showcases hip new wave bands like Ringwald’s real-life fave, The Rave-Ups. Her best friends Duckie (Jon Cryer) and Iona (Annie Potts) admire and envy Andi.

Pretty-in-Pink-granny-chic — Andi’s style

The divide between the protagonist and the antagonist in Pretty In Pink isn’t among clear-cut stereotypes (i.e. cheerleaders, football players, nerds, rebels) but between the size of your house and the make of your car, or the price tag on your pastel peach prom dress. Steff comes off like this unreachable asshole who will never be able to grasp real feelings, but does somehow sense Andi’s pure nature and wants to squash the blossom so as to feel just an inch more powerful on his gross social high school hierarchy tree. Subconsciously, I used to think about this dark versus light dynamic between Andi and Steff when I was a teen warding off unwanted boys.

Andi’s the girl I’m sure an impassioned Cher Horowitz modeled her Daddy care-taking after. Andi’s father, whose wife has since left him, wants so much to please his daughter, to reinventing himself as a stable middle-aged man who can and will support his Andi and not the other way around. Many of the men in Andi’s life are floundering without her guidance—like Duckie. The Duckman is a ball of energy, an equal match in his fashion ingenuity, pining after Andi though it’s pretty clear she’ll never bat an eye back at him. Duckie has this gender queer vibe that feels free and unapologetic. His childlike abandon is admirable—endlessly riding past his crush’s house on his bike. He may not appear buff like the other popular dudes, but he’s stronger than each of them, especially insecure Blaine.

Blaine is a popular guy with rich parents, a BMW, a similar wardrobe to his sucky best friend Steff, and he is totally smitten over Andi. He wants to take her to prom. He kisses her. She melts and buckles. But there are glimpses of deception. Is Blaine just bored with his uppity lifestyle and his judgmental friends? Is he trying to get revenge on his parents who he thinks still believe in “arranged marriage”—and by that he means “date someone rich, Blaine.” Frankly, there’s nothing cheaper than Blaine. He has everyone on his back about being seen with Andi. She is seen as an outsider based on the geographical location of her house. Forget how Blaine feels—what about Andi? He can yo-yo back and forth between what’s acceptable and what his heart is telling him to do, but Andi is dealing with a ball of feelings to. She doesn’t have her mother to talk to about these kinds of things. All of her roles as a teenage daughter have been repurposed.

In many of John Hughes’ films, the girls at the party draped over their boyfriends are never the role models. A teenage girl like Andi is supposed to show young girls watching Pretty In Pink that you can be pretty, but only if you’re proud. Like so many teens—especially the ones laced up in 1980s Hughes films–pride isn’t something that’s understood in the first act. Andi has to feel betrayed first. She has to confront Blaine in the hallway after he doesn’t return her calls and claims he is taking someone else to prom. She has to have a heart-to-heart with her dad on the couch about whether or not he’s doing his best to be both a dad and a mom. Her dad somehow has to tell her that being with Blaine and suffering from the ebb and flow of love is all worth it, even from where he’s sitting. And Andi has to let Blaine drop her off at her front door. Most importantly, she has to just be a teenager—a girl who will make mistakes, need to rely on other people, and can’t always be there to pick up the broken pieces at home. She has to experience this moment, even if it’s a stupid prom. But she has to experience something true to this time in her life.

Movie stills from "Pretty in Pink". — Andi begins to make her prom dress

Andi also has to have a kick-ass comrade who she can look up to, vent to, and play dress-up with. That girl is Iona, owner of TRAX. Oh, rockin’ beehive babe Iona. She’s a sassy broad and she doesn’t believe in wasting lip-gloss after 7 o’clock. She plays a chameleon of personalities through her wardrobe and she’s drenched in nostalgia, always. But, it seems Iona’s sense of the world is a little bit dreamy and drippy like a push-pop creamsicle on a hot afternoon. Iona, being the older girlfriend who still swoons hard over her prom, convinces Andi she needs to go to prom, warning her: “I have this girlfriend who didn’t go to hers, and every once in a while, she gets this really terrible feeling—you know, like something is missing. She checks her purse, and then she checks her keys. She counts her kids, she goes crazy, and then she realizes that nothing is missing. She decided it was side effects from skipping the prom.”

Let’s set one thing straight—I never went to my own prom. Sure, it’s this American classic, but it’s so patriarchal—a prom queen and a prom king to rule the ball. There’s so much emphasis on prom in teen films. Will her crush ask her? Will she find a dress in time? Will she be humiliated when and if he ditches her? Iona kind of becomes a sell-out when she starts dating a rich, preppy looking guy, and you can see the next ten years of her life like a moving picture in front of her—a kid, a house, certainly not her chic Chinatown studio. I had higher hopes for Iona. Does she know how to be Iona? Or is it easier to play a new role each day? She was better off smooching Duckie (and pondering if he practices on melons). But it’s also clear that she could learn a thing or two from Andi. And who knows, maybe she snapped out of it and eventually did.

pretty-in-pink-prom — Duckie and Andi at the prom

So, Andi gives into the brouhaha of prom. It’s true. However, she makes her own dress, she decides to still go alone, even after Blaine dumps her, and when she arrives—there’s Duckie, looking dapper as ever. “May I admire you?” Andi asks Duckie, a question Duckie frequently adorns Andi with. Inside prom, Blaine has showed up after all—and dateless. He looks like a baby deer in headlights, but he’s finally pieced together that his buddy Steff, who’d been calling Andi “lowgrade” behind her back but kept insisting she give him a chance when he hounded her in private, was just mad he couldn’t have her—mad because he gets whatever he wants. Blaine does have good intention, but he doesn’t know how to break the cycle, because then he tries getting Andi back. He should have left it alone. But that’s the hunk of the meat in Hughes films—characters realizing important lessons.

Andi won’t let anyone tell her what’s best, make her feel cheap, dumb, used, or objectified. And when she’s standing under the prom lights while OMD’s “If You Leave” swells in the background, her broad shoulders finally fill with pride. Should Andi have stayed with Duckie? Why did she chase Blaine out to the parking lot—because he told her he loved her and looked so sad and regretful? For one, this is high school—we all know she and Blaine didn’t end up getting married and settling down. We know that Duckie remained her best friend long after the corsages came off. We know that Andi drove home at a reasonable hour and made sure her dad was OK. Andi taught me that it’s cool to just be yourself—however that looks, inside and out. If people think you’re weird or different—that’s honorable. If a lover doesn’t know your worth—that’s because they can’t possibly reach your higher self. Not everyone can be pretty in pink, just the ones who are proud to wear it.

Kim Hoffman is a writer for AfterEllen.com and Curve Magazine. She currently keeps things weird in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on Twitter: @the_hoff