As I have gotten older I have taken to going back to movies I saw as a child and re-watching them. Mostly because after seeing "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" somewhat recently I came to a not so odd conclusion. Teenagers are kinda dicks. I know this is not shocking to anyone who went to high school, teenagers are dicks to their own almost as much as to anyone in authority, but the people in authority get the shittier end of this massive shitstick called high school.
Ed Rooney is the name of the principal in the Ferris Bueller, and is supposed to be an asshole. He wants to reign in the free spirit of Ferris Bueller. He is The Man trying to keep the cool kid down. Here is the thing though, up to a point he is just doing his job. Part of the duties of a principal is to make sure students attend school, and since Ferris Bueller is skipping school, of course Rooney is going to get after him. Now, I said "up to a point" earlier and that is because at one point he leaves campus to break into Ferris' house as a means of catching him in the act of skipping. That is fucked up, and far beyond the call of duty for pretty much anyone. The point is though, that we are supposed to hate him from the start, not just when he tries to commit a crime. Of course, the guy who played Rooney plead no contest to possession of child porn so just fuck everything about that guy. Also the hero of this movie is a sociopath. He lacks empathy for anyone he is around. My favorite example of this is the scene where he bullies someone who is supposed to be his best friend (named Cameron) into spending the day out with him, even though Cameron is sick. He also convinces him to steal a car, commit fraud on several occasions, and is consistently verbally abusive to Cameron. It is kind of scary actually, that this person has gotten to a place of significant influence in this movie.
Its fairly close to another movie from around that era "The Breakfast Club". I thought this was a good movie when I was in the intended demographic for it. Some of the themes still ring through to me now, but at the same time, one of the main antagonists is someone who is just doing their job. Richard Vernon is the assistant principal at the high school in the film who needs to watch over several kids in detention on a Saturday. As part of the detention he asks the students to write an essay explaining who they think they are. Of course the students decide to not do it because, once again, he is The Man, trying to keep them down. It is busywork, but they are supposed to be there for 8 hours, so giving them something to do, especially something that forces them to look at who they are, might be more beneficial then just having them sit silently for most of a day. They end up discovering empathy for each others problems, which is actually a pretty good lesson, and write an essay explaining that trying to force them into defining themselves is foolish, especially when the assistant principal has already made up his mind about them. But once again the person in authority is considered to be someone who is just being evil rather than a man who is called in to work on his day off to take care of students who don't respect him as a person. He does antagonize them, but he could just be frustrated by the position he himself is in. That said, this man is in a position of authority over fucking children. I don't care how bad a week you've had, by taking on an authority role you lose the option to take your issues out on other people. Its never fucking okay to tell a kid that they're a waste of skin.
I am not trying to say that people in authority are good or bad, but that trying to "other" them (in the Hegelian sense) and ignore that they are themselves people with problems and not just a monolithic embodiment of authority and oppression is fucked up. Yes people in authority can be assholes(Eshi talked about it in his last few posts), but they can also be not assholes. Just because their jobs prevent you from doing what you want to do at that time, doesn't mean that they are being a dick, maybe they just don't want to get fired. And this is especially bad when it comes to teen movies. Parents sometimes prevent their kids from going to a party, but not because they want the kid to suffer, but because they know what goes on at high school parties and don't want their kids to be drinking and making idiot teenage decisions. In teen movies the parent is the bad guy in that situation and that's pretty fucked up.
You want to know the most fucked up thing about this lack of generational empathy? Its biological! This lack of empathy goes in both directions, and is the product of how teens and adults understand body language. Its less of teenagers being dicks, and more teenagers have trouble empathizing. The only real solution to this problem comes from people actually listening to one another and dispensing of pre-decided notions of held positions. Basically talk to each other and be willing to listen to reasoning from both sides.
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