Molly Ringwald's brilliant essay about John Hughes is a superb exploration of what it means to love "problematic" art
If youâve been paying attention, you might already know that Molly Ringwald is a brilliant writer with smart things to say about the movies that made her famous.
But her essay on John Hughes movies, the Breakfast Club, #metoo, and the useful and versatile concept of âproblematicâ art and artists is a whole new level of excellence.
Ringwald has an insiderâs view into the attitudes that prevailed among the decision-makers who shaped the beloved movies of her era, and how those decisions came to be. Whatâs more, Ringwald commands enough respect that when she has a blank spot in her understanding, she can just email the people who can fill it in and get together with them for lunch or chat on the phone and interrogate them in uncompromising â but empathic â ways, to assemble a full picture of what was going on.
What emerges from her recollections and investigations is a thoroughly mixed bag: from John Hughes on down, the people involved were thoroughly flawed vessels who, at times, did, thought and said things that are unforgivably monstrous, and who also were, at times, noble, selfless, thoughtful, compassionate and altogether good. They made art that helped people struggle with oppression and alienation â and they made art that abetted oppression and alienation.
I love the idea of âproblematic.â Problematic art isnât bad art, itâs art that has problems. âProblematicâ is an idea that lets us lower the cost of acknowledging and fixing bad and wicked things in our world. Without âproblematic,â all you have is âbadâ and âgood,â and that means that any stain on a piece of art that moved you, improved you, opened your horizons and lifted you up is a disqualifier â being virtuous means that you have to reject the art because of its irredeemable sins.
This is, I think, a major source of denial, and a major impediment to talking about â and thus fixing â the problems with our culture. Without âproblematic,â then imperfect art is âbadâ and you have to choose between cherishing the ways in which it improved your life and jettisoning the art and its effects on you. That all-or-nothing framework makes acknowledging imperfections needlessly expensive and thus unpopular.
But with âproblematic,â we can have it both ways: âThis art, whose flaws I acknowledge and wish to see improved upon, made me happy and improved my life and my understanding of the world.â That statement doesnât give a pass to the flaws in art, it doesnât make a virtue out of the workâs hurtful or ugly imperfections â rather, it opens a space to talk about (and thus address) the flaws without having to deny your pleasures, influences and loves.
The same goes for artists (or people in general, really): people who do bad things can make good art. We donât have to enrich them and reward them once we learn about their wicked deeds, but we can denounce and repudiate the artist without denouncing and repudiating their works. You can admire the beauty of the Crown Jewels without endorsing colonialism or monarchism, or denying the blood and suffering that is inseparable from the jewels. They can be problematic: that is to say, having good qualities and bad qualities that do not balance each other nor cancel each other out, but simply co-exist, there to be seen and admired or decried depending on the way theyâre affecting you right now.
So: Ringwald describes a baffling conversation with Emil Wilbekin, founder of Native Son, which advocates for gay black men, who told her that he was âsavedâ by John Hughesâs movies, which had no black people and no gay people in them to speak of, and, moreover, made liberal use of homophobic slurs and racial stereotypes. She tracked down Wilbekin later and asked him what John Hughes movies had to say to someone like him: ââThe Breakfast Club,â he explained, saved his life by showing him, a kid growing up in Cincinnati in the eighties, âthat there were other people like me who were struggling with their identities, feeling out of place in the social constructs of high school, and dealing with the challenges of family ideals and pressures.â These kids were also 'finding themselves and being âotherâ in a very traditional, white, heteronormative environment.â The lack of diversity didnât bother him, he added, 'because the characters and storylines were so beautifully human, perfectly imperfect and flawed.â He watched the films in high school, and while he was not yet out, he had a pretty good idea that he was gay.â
Wilbekinâs life was improved by Hughesâs movies, his hurts succored by them. Not despite Hughesâs homophobia and racism, nor because of it, but alongside of it. Hughesâs movies are problematic, and their racism and homophobia (and their misogyny) are a force for evil in the world, while their compassion and their wittiness and their beauty are a force for good. We donât have to balance or cancel these forces, we can just acknowledge them and move on â by which I mean, âuse our critical analysis to make art that is less problematic, learning from Hughes, not letting him off the hook, and neither denying his virtues.â
Like many people of my generation, I grew up admiring Ringwald by way of her screen presentations, which offered little insight into her as a person; now that weâre both adults, Iâm delighted to learn how un-problematic she turns out to be, and revel in her wit, insight and compassion.
https://boingboing.net/2018/04/07/the-worlds-an-imperfect-place.html
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