Is this an unpopular opinion to say that “16 candles” is a bad movie, with an unclear plot, no real objective and with a lot of problematic scenes involving rape culture, sexism, racism, xenophobia and mysoginy? I watched it with an open mind, I really wanted to enjoy the moment, I tried to brush of the anger at the beginning telling myself that it was made in the 80’s… But surely people weren’t that clueless? Let me explain:
1. The scene with a drunk Caroline is in fact a rape and should be seen as so.
In one scene, Caroline, who is the girlfriend of the male love interest in the story (Jake), has drunk too much. And- it’s unnecessary to precise but- it’s not a little hey-I-got-drunk-I-cant-walk kind of drunk, she’s completely out of it. She can’t realise when one of her friends cuts her hair, she’s not able to think straight. So what happens next? Well, Jake, her bf, who is hella mad that she threw a party at his house when they were supposed to be just the two of them, and who claims he wants a more “serious” relationship decides to throw her away, he treats her like scum. Next thing you know, he tells Geek (a first year, I think?) to take her away and to “enjoy” himself with her, all of this after saying that she is so drunk he could’ve had his way with her a couple of times but that the reason he doesn’t is because he is not “in the mood”.
Then Geek drives her around, takes pictures with her as “proofs” that something happened between them, all the while Caroline is completely out of it. Then they wake up the next morning, and it’s even more infuriating because it’s like they followed the near-rape or however you want to call it scene with a scene of humour -but it’s not funny, really.
Why is that so bad? Well Caroline didn’t give her consent for any of this, she just trusted the wrong people not to abuse of her when she wasn’t able to give any consent. The boys treated her as an object, because she’s a woman, they used her as a mean to an end. Jake used her because obviously he didn’t want to party that night and -let’s be honest- because he wanted to get laid, and when it didn’t go well, he GOT RID OF HER, Geek used her as a mean to satiate his “sexual” discovery and to increase his status.
Why am I saying it’s rape culture? Because it’s an apology of rape. What we’re watching IS rape, but it’s portrayed in a way that we are supposed to feel like Caroline earned it. Yeah she threw a party and got drunk. But is it her fault if people- more importantly people she trusted decided to abuse her ? Oh and she threw a party at Jake’s house so we’re supposed to feel bad for him? Dude, wtf, I guess I was unable to feel any sympathy towards him since the beginning of the movie but: the dude is an asshole, period.
2. Racism and Xenophobia.
Long Duk Dong, is supposed to be an Asian foreign student who stays with Samantha’s (the lead role) grandparents. And obviously since it’s the 80’s, he has an accent, can’t talk english properly and is a walking stereotype. It even seems like he is only there to be a stereotype, with him only being mentioned for his only caracteristic of being “asian” “chinese”, he is also a little bit stupid, get’s into a really weird relationship, he is not serious at all… but moreover, I think the worst part is how everyone treats him, every time the character is on screen he is mocked, kicked, insulted or he hurts himself.
And I get that this is the 80’s, I am not stupid, I know that people didn’t call out racism publicly on a daily basis as much as we do today but I just can’t get how THIS MOVIE of all get’s so much attention that I still hear people calling it an “amazing movie” today. This comes from someone that kind of liked Trading Places.
Plus, they call Ginny’s husband a “bohunk” never really mentionning her name, even insisting on how deplorable it is that he is a “bohunk” and I get that this could be considered as satire, but to me something is satirical only if it is used as a way to call out certain behaviours - for example, if a woman is pursued for having an abortion, and someone says that, had she been a rapist or a molester, she would have more chances to get out of court unscathed (you’re mocking the system, not the person, feel me?)- plus, in this situation, the xenophobia just adds to the long list of problematic behaviours in this movie.
3. It lacks of compassion, of humanity…
I mean it’s a romance, and I guess it!s interesting to put two characters against each other, I am not against but the whole drama about Jake having a girlfriend in the beginning was unnecessary. Tbh, it was bullshit. Samantha even says that Caroline is too “kind”, and I’m still trying to understand how in people’s mind the attention of a man can be so important that they are willing to disregard each other’s qualities.
Yes, Samantha’s love interest is Jake and it’s a problem because he is with Caroline, who seems perfect. But the sole fact that she is “in the way” makes her the antiheroe of the story, she is then portrayed as a bad person, and the audience gets revenge when so many bad things happen to her. The problem is that eventhough she is portrayed as an outcast, there is clearly no reason to justify that other than the fact that she “in the way of true love” or whatever the fck. We get that she parties and drinks a lot, but that is a personnal choice, other than that, there’s nothing, no justification. She did nothing. The party? When she realised her boyfriend was not up for it, she went up to say that she was sorry, to what he slamned the door and hooked her hair in it. So, my opinion? Jake is the one we should be hating, he loses interest in her and acts like an asshole. Caroline needs compassion and I guess if I were to re-imagine the movie in our days I would stop comparing the girls and work on creating a real chemistry between the two love interests because there was none. I believed in this love story as much as I believed in my chances of validating my statistics class, not really.
So this was it, you have my opinion, I didn’t like this movie one bit. I don’t know why I wrote all of this since it is not that important, I just feel like people tend to talk about old movies without talking about what’s problematic and it’s really not what should happen, I’m not for Cancel Cuture but I feel like if we are to appreciate what the people before us created we should keep the conversation going. What shocks me the most with 16 candles is that I’ve heard so much about how good it was that I was actually prepared to enjoy it but, when I finally watched, everything was awful, I wasn’t enjoying any moment out of it. Anyway, no one’s going to read that but I said my piece.
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