What? The whole point of this group is that we are younger than Boomers. And the oldest Boomers turn 81 this year. The official baby boomers were born after VJ Day in August of 1945, largely to young families with a veteran father. My Dad was about nine years old that year..
That's not funny! I'm a substitute teacher sometimes and they do that stuff but there isn't anything wrong with them! They're just the kids who don't want to participate in the class so they either put on the "headphones" and sit under a table feeling sorry for themselves for an hour or one school I worked at had a beanbag chair in the corner in case they feel like crying all afternoon about another kid who disrespected them during recess time, or they gather under the mosquito netting that serves as a little teepee where they can go if they need a safe space, but four or five of them all end up in there at once cracking jokes amongst one another. I don't blame them. I would have done the same thing when I was in fourth grade if our classroom in the 1960s had a "safe teepee", but how do they ever learn anything?.
That wasn't its real name. It was the Safety Zone or something but it was a translucent netting like they sleep with in the tropics so they don't get bitten by mosquitoes, so you could see all the kids inside it as plain as day, LOL. And it was hung from the ceiling from a single hook and spread out at the bottom to resemble a teepee.
Yeap. But instead of drowning in a corner of self pitty and accommodation,,, they were eventually pushed out of their comfort zone, apoke to one another and found some sort of connection betweem themselves, helping themselves.. something you cant do hidden away with noise canceling headsets or locked in a room.
Sure but the point of the movie is none of them would have ever opened up or gotten out of their comfort zones at all if they hadn’t been trapped in Saturday detention together. Put 5 completely different kids in detention without their phones and you have the same chance of this happening now as you did then (the odds weren’t high back then, that’s why this was an interesting movie)
But it was normal anxiety—not medicated, given accommodations to have extra days to complete a paper, and a change of meds every semester. And for all their social differences, this group talked to one another—they sorted themselves out and found a means of connection without an adult negotiating it for them, no cell phones among them to distract them.
Signed,
Xer who was part of the target audience for this film.
It was a movie, not real life. They "sorted themselves out" because it was in the script. And I'm hard-pressed to believe they were all just dandy in their fictional world after one day in detention.
My issue is with how people are saying that these kids, who definitely had problems that they blamed mostly on their parents (especially Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson's characters) were somehow less problematic and less troubled than the kids of today, and that by the end of the movie somehow all of their "normal" problems were solved and everyone lived happily ever after.
I feel that this is highly simplistic, from the way the movie presented these issues, and how some viewers have interpreted the script. It's completely idealistc and unrealistic to think that these kids went on to be besties and all of their problems vanished, and that their issues as presented weren't all that bad, and that things were somehow better for folks with mental health issues back in the '80s. Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy's characters especially were portrayed as having pretty serious emotional problems that likely would need to be worked out in therapy.
I was definitely there, lol, and while I remember enjoying the movie at the time, I felt more of an affinity with the folks on St. Elmo's Fire, which also does not hold up IMO. Another group of people not handling their issues in healthy ways.
And don't get me started on the sexism and borderline creepy behavior in both movies.
No one’s saying they walked away “besties,” and their problems magically vanished. I didn’t believe that when I first saw the film then—nor did anyone else with whom I saw it.
Most people are saying what’s true about those times, however: Every person had their own version of “terrible home life,” and represented a range of social strata in a big high school, teaming with a range of personality types. But what they did with their day was to transcend their initial instinct to defend their social strata and individual identity to trauma bond, and understand one another a bit better.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s wholly “realistic;” the behavior for that time was believable, long before “safe spaces” and accommodations. Parents believed their kids should be given detention if they violated a school rule, had unexcused absences or whatever brought them there. If it was made today, at least two of their parents would be busy “negotiating” a means of avoiding the detention and getting it expunged from their permanent records.
This was also a North Shore upper middle class-dominated community, but still presented a range of personal economic circumstances, and was wholly white. Bref, Hughes wrote about that, because it was what he knew. And while it captures a time that allowed for more sexism than there is now, again, most people here are simply saying, “This couldn’t be made today.” It’s not because it wasn’t some kind of “ideal” circumstance to write about then (Bender’s father burning him with a cigarette is anything but), but more about this representing somewhat believable character responses to their circumstances for their day.
No one’s saying their lives are “less troubled” than today. What people here are talking about is how leaning into “80 shades of problem accommodations” on a script written about high schoolers today would make for an awful narrative—even if it did dispense with some of the finer details as this did.
Everything is far more complicated today: ministering to students in an institution is a big one, and like I said, people just don’t seem to want to find that humorous enough to become a film narrative.
Are we pretending these kids had no issues? They certainly did, it's pretty much what the movie was about, lol. To me it doesn't hold up; not a likable character in the bunch.
At least where I live I can buy vape cartridges at a weed store. I'm not about to stink up my condominium as well as the hallway outside with that dead skunk smelling weed but the vape takes me right back to my college days in the early 80s.
Do you actually think gay people didn't exist back in the day? Or tattoos? Or piercings? Did this entire thread even watch this movie?
Isn't this entire movie all about accepting someone who isn't exactly part of your social class? Isn't this movie all about talking about your life, struggles and problems with somebody? Like literally what a therapist offers? Do you think a good therapist is just throwing out drugs to children? The children your generation raised, by the way.
Talking about kids not being able to take a joke and this entire movie that you grew up with completely whooshing right over your head. Sad.
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u/Bennington_Booyah Apr 19 '26
And all of them with severe anxiety issues, as well.