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ReFocus: The Films of John Hughes 66769_Shary769_Shary & SSmith.inddmith.indd i 110/03/210/03/21 111:501:50 AAMM ReFocus: The American Directors Series Series Editors: Robert Singer, Frances Smith, and Gary D. Rhodes Editorial Board: Kelly Basilio, Donna Campbell, Claire Perkins, Christopher Sharrett, and Yannis Tzioumakis ReFocus is a series of contemporary methodological and theoretical approaches to the interdisciplinary analyses and interpretations of neglected American directors, from the once-famous to the ignored, in direct relationship to American culture—its myths, values, and historical precepts. The series ignores no director who created a historical space—either in or out of the studio system—beginning from the origins of American cinema and up to the present. These directors produced film titles that appear in university film history and genre courses across international boundaries, and their work is often seen on television or available to download or purchase, but each suffers from a form of “canon envy”; directors such as these, among other important figures in the general history of American cinema, are underrepresent ed in the critical dialogue, yet each has created American narratives, works of film art, that warrant attention. ReFocus brings these American film directors to a new audience of scholars and general readers of both American and Film Studies. Titles in the series include: ReFocus: The Films of Preston Sturges Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Sarah Kozloff ReFocus: The Films of Delmer Daves Edited by Matthew Carter and Andrew Nelson ReFocus: The Films of Amy Heckerling Edited by Frances Smith and Timothy Shary ReFocus: The Films of Budd Boetticher Edited by Gary D. Rhodes and Robert Singer ReFocus: The Films of Kelly Reichardt E. Dawn Hall ReFocus: The Films of William Castle Edited by Murray Leeder ReFocus: The Films of Barbara Kopple Edited by Jeff Jaeckle and Susan Ryan ReFocus: The Films of Elaine May Edited by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Dean Brandum ReFocus: The Films of Spike Jonze Edited by Kim Wilkins and Wyatt Moss-Wellington ReFocus: The Films of Paul Schrader Edited by Michelle E. Moore and Brian Brems ReFocus: The Films of John Hughes Edited by Timothy Shary and Frances Smith edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/refoc 66769_Shary769_Shary & SSmith.inddmith.indd iiii 110/03/210/03/21 111:501:50 AAMM ReFocus: The Films of John Hughes Edited by Timothy Shary and Frances Smith 66769_Shary769_Shary & SSmith.inddmith.indd iiiiii 110/03/210/03/21 111:501:50 AAMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation Timothy Shary and Frances Smith, 2021 © the chapters their several authors, 2021 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun—Holyrood Road 12 (2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 11/13 Ehrhardt MT by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 4902 1 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 4904 5 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 4905 2 (epub) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66769_Shary769_Shary & SSmith.inddmith.indd iivv 110/03/210/03/21 111:501:50 AAMM Contents List of Figures and Tables vii Acknowledgments ix Notes on Contributors x Film and Television Work by John Hughes xiv 1 Introduction: Refocus on John Hughes 1 Timothy Shary and Frances Smith Part I Hughes in the Industry 2 John Hughes as Auteur: History, Hagiography, Historiography 24 Elissa H. Nelson 3 “Becoming John Hughes”: Regional Production, Hyphenate Filmmaking, and Independence within Hollywood 44 Yannis Tzioumakis 4 Ferris Bueller vs. Parker Lewis: “Adapting” Ferris Bueller’s Day Off for Television 64 Stephen Tropiano Part II Reconsidering Youth 5 “Life moves pretty fast”: Mobility, Power, and Aesthetics in John Hughes’s Teen Films 84 Christina G. Petersen 6 “When Cameron was in Egypt’s land”: The Queer Child of Neglect in John Hughes’s Films 102 Barbara Jane Brickman 66769_Shary769_Shary & SSmith.inddmith.indd v 110/03/210/03/21 111:501:50 AAMM vi CONTENTS 7 We Need to Talk About Kevin McCallister: John Hughes’s Careless Parents and Abandoned Children 118 Melissa Oliver-Powell Part III Family and Fatherhood 8 Brand Name Vision: Props in the Films of John Hughes 142 Leah R. Shafer 9 Domesticating the Comedian: Comic Performance, Narrative, and the Family in John Hughes’s 1980s Comedian Films 161 Holly Chard 10 Fatherhood and the Failures of Paternal Authority in the Films of John Hughes 179 Alice Leppert Part IV Contested Identities 11 Bizarre Love Triangle: Frankensteinian Masculinities in Weird Science 202 Andrew Scahill 12 “You look good wearing my future:” Social Class and Individualism in the 1980s Teen Films of John Hughes 221 Robert C. Bulman 13 The Unbearable Whiteness of Being in a John Hughes Movie 236 Frances Smith Other Films and Television Shows Cited in This Collection 250 Bibliography 255 Index 267 66769_Shary769_Shary & SSmith.inddmith.indd vvii 110/03/210/03/21 111:501:50 AAMM Figures and Tables FIGURES 1.1 John Hughes in the 1980s, his defining decade 1 1.2 Autographed picture of John Hughes with the cast of Pretty in Pink 5 1.3 Six teen films that Hughes wrote and/or directed in the 1980s, which became epochal for a generation of youth 10 1.4 Family matters in Hughes’s stories, as in Vacation and the sequels that followed 12 1.5 Home Alone was Hughes’s biggest financial success, but his subsequent projects yielded diminishing returns 15 3.1 Generic playfulness and visual gags: not exercising 56 3.2 A humanized geek! John Hughes gives a much-maligned teen archetype full characterization 58 3.3 Opposite teen archetypes in harmony: the restrained hunk and the hyperkinetic geek 59 4.1 Television’s Ferris Bueller and his nemesis, Principal Ed Rooney 70 4.2 Parker Lewis and his nemesis, Principal Grace Musso 72 5.1 Ted takes control of the frame in Sixteen Candles 88 5.2 Older brother Chet controls the frame in Weird Science 90 5.3 The high school class system in The Breakfast Club 92 5.4 Glass as a barrier in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off 96 6.1 Cameron’s traumatized isolation on the diving board represents an iconic moment in Hughes’s oeuvre of neglect 104 6.2 Cameron, alone, initially dwarfed by Seurat’s pointillist masterpiece 110 66769_Shary769_Shary & SSmith.inddmith.indd vviiii 110/03/210/03/21 111:501:50 AAMM viii FIGURES AND TABLES 6.3 Cameron’s imploring eyes 111 6.4 The abstraction of the extreme close-up brings us into the existential quest 112 8. 1 Clark asleep at the wheel 148 8.2 Jim Dodge and mannequin watch TV 154 8.3 Kevin’s battle plan 155 8.4 Pershing missile 156 10.1 Clark Griswold flirts with the Girl in the Red Ferrari in Vacation 184 11.1 Gary and Wyatt become spectacles to the female gaze 204 11.2 Lisa is fittingly created on an altar of heteronormativity: Milton Bradley’s Game of Life 211 11.3 Gary takes up the gun to conquer the toxic hypermasculinity of Hollywood cinema 216 TABLES 3.1 Top five films targeting explicitly youth (children, teen and young adult) audiences, 1980–83 51 66769_Shary769_Shary & SSmith.inddmith.indd vviiiiii 110/03/210/03/21 111:501:50 AAMM Acknowledgments We thank our series editors, Robert Singer and Gary Rhodes, for inviting us to contribute this second volume to their ReFocus series, and for motivating collaboration between us that has lasted almost a decade now. At Edinburgh University Press, we once again give thanks to our commissioning editors Gillian Leslie and Richard Strachan; our desk editor Eddie Clark; our cover coordinator Bekah Day; and our copyeditor Anita Joseph. Thanks as well to our anonymous reviewers, who obviously cannot be named but who none- theless were quite helpful in guiding our production of this collection. And naturally this would not be a collection without our great contributors, all distinguished figures in the field, whom we thank for their insights and hard work, as well as their patience through the unexpected delays we faced during the global pandemic of 2020. Frances would like to acknowledge the supportive colleagues in Film Stud- ies at the University of Sussex, and students taking American Teen Cinema. She thanks her family and the ever-enthusiastic Mr. Metcalf. Tim acknowledges the teenage friends who accompanied him when he first saw John Hughes movies over 35 years ago—David Amanullah, Paula Hostler, and Paul Hawkins—as well as the friends who have since continued to discuss the films herein, including Chris Boucher, Richard Brown, Devin Griffiths, and Tom Scully. He dedicates this study to the most stylish and sophisticated teenager in the world, whom no movie could endeavor to represent, his won- derful daughter Olivia Xendolyn. 66769_Shary769_Shary & SSmith.inddmith.indd iixx 110/03/210/03/21 111:501:50 AAMM Notes on Contributors Barbara Jane Brickman is Associate Professor of Media and Gender Studies at the University of Alabama. Her research interests are in girls’ studies, femi- nist film theory, gay and lesbian studies, and American popular culture. Her work has appeared in Camera Obscura, Discourse, and Journal of Popular Music Studies.

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