What Molly Ringwald’s New Yorker Essay Gets Wrong About Filmmaker John HughesJohn Hughes simply must be defended. He was a singular talent and could be considered the most overtly America-loving filmmaker since Frank Capra.
By Mark Hemingway
April 10, 2018
In the latest New Yorker, still-adored 1980s film star Molly Ringwald has an essay about filmmaker John Hughes. His beloved films such as The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, and Pretty In Pink made Ringwald famous.
Hughes’s cultural impact is immeasurable, not just on film comedies but his sensitive portrayals of teenagers, and teenage girls especially. Hughes practically invented the genre that’s become known as “YA,†or young adult fiction.
In many respects, it’s an excellent essay, and Ringwald is a thoughtful and talented writer by any measure, not just grading on a celebrity curve. However, it seems that 30 years later Ringwald has some very mixed feelings about Hughes’ work. The subhead of Ringwald’s essay is “Revisiting the movies of my youth in the age of #MeToo.†I have some issues with critiquing Hughes’ work through
a revisionist and politically correct lens the way Ringwald does here....
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