Ferris Bueller: Perceived Adulthood and the Class of 2015

This week, the Beloit College annual “Mindset List” for incoming freshmen was released. As usual, the list contains a myriad of references to pop cultural trends and icons from bygone eras and how they fit (or don't fit) into the class of 2015. The most striking to me was a passing reference or two to Ferris Bueller as a potential parent to a recent high school graduate. There's something so sacrilegious, so wrong, so culturally shocking to consider Ferris Bueller as a father figure to anyone. But what could it be?

The math and dates make sense. Ferris Bueller's Day Off was released in the summer of 1986 meaning Ferris would walk the isle to Pomp and Circumstance in the spring of 1987 and today Ferris would be 42 years old, certainly capable of having multiple children of age. Matthew Broderick who brought Ferris to life, himself, born in 1962, was 24 when the film was released and today is 50. But seeing Broderick get older was never a cause of concern or a moment to reflect. The actor aging is not the same as the character aging.

The offense arises not from chronological gripes but from thematic ones. We feel that Ferris Bueller cannot age because he represents youth, or at the least the zeitgeist conception of youth from the 1980s. Most people don't remember the details of their high school experience, but they remember what films (and music and television shows and...) best tapped into its social relevance and energy. It would feel just as violating to suggest that John Bender is now a high school principal or janitor or that Samantha Baker is a day over 16. The actors come and go freely, but the characters are ours, forever frozen in celluloid for our enjoyment and dissection.

However, what if those wounds are felt in error from romanticism, not just of our own memories of our lives but memories of memories – memories of films? Does Ferris Bueller stand for youth and fighting for your right to party? At first glance, it certainly seems to. Ferris lives a high schooler's dream life: he breaks all the rules but never gets caught; he does next to nothing but gets all the credit; and most importantly, he's popular with everyone including the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads. They all think he's a righteous dude.

But all of this notoriety with teenagers buys him no currency with adults. Every obstacle that comes Ferris's way comes for two reasons: because he lies and because he's a teenager. Moreover, all of Ferris's lies are because he's a teenager without a car, a job, independent income, a house or a degree – all the hallmarks of being “adult.” That being said, Ferris's problems can be merged into one collective issue: Ferris lies about being an adult because he's a teenager. The eighteen year old's fantasy is to become a grown up or at least be treated like one.

If this seems self-evident, it stands in direct contrast to the nostalgia of Ferris as a paragon of youth. In the film, he is able to accomplish nothing as himself and nothing alone other than to fool his well-meaning yuppie parents. He needs Cameron's help to get Sloan out of school, but even then, they must pretend to be Sloan's parents on the phone and dress up as her father to pick her up. They can only get a seat at the finest restaurant in Chicago by again placing prank phone calls posing as police officers and sausage barons. When they get to the big city, they oddly spend time at the NYSE, an adult business institution, where Ferris suggests to Sloan that they embark on another adult institution, marriage. In the film's universe, fake adults can get more accomplished than teenagers.

Yet, even as Ferris, Sloan and Cameron struggle to apparently escape their teen years through reaching for perceived maturity, they collide back with their real parents because their lives are inextricably governed by their parents. They have to “borrow” Cameron's dad's car for their adventure. Ferris runs into his dad at the restaurant and again in traffic. When trying to hurriedly get home before they arrive, he is almost hit by his mother and sister driving. As they ascend the Sears Tower, Cameron first thought at reaching the then-highest man-made point in the world was, “I think I see my dad down there.”

The lone naysayers to this trend in the film are Ferris's sister, Jeanie, and his principal, Ed Rooney. Jeanie and Mr. Rooney despise Ferris and his attempts to circumvent the normal teenage rigors of going to high school and taking classes. Jeanie's attempts to play by the rules though are not rewarded by the film. After calling the police about a crime, she is the one arrested for prank calling and taken to another, darker adult institution: jail. Rightful Teenage actions have placed her in adult entrapment. She meets Charlie Sheen, the Shakespearean fool shouting wisdom that is often not followed due to the lowly source. Sheen tells her to lighten up and live her own life. When next confronted with the intruder Rooney, she has the opportunity to turn Ferris in to either her parents or to her principal. But she interprets Sheen's advice as to stop playing it straight and instead fake adulthood. Jeanie converts to Ferris's mantra of perceived adulthood and pretends to be Ferris's mother and kicks Rooney out of the house. At the film's close, Rooney the sole person not persuaded by Ferris's antics has lost almost all markers of true adulthood: his car has been towed, his wallet now belongs to a fierce canine, his clothes are shredded, he has to ride the school bus like a child, and he may lose his job after this very visible incident of student harassment.

Much earlier in the film, though Ferris knows he has his mark in his parents, he's not satisfied at escaping school and pissing off his sister. He ups the ante by openly mocking traditional paths toward success and maturity. He sarcastically quips, “I want to go to a good college and lead a fruitful life.” Similarly after Ferris has foiled the “snooty” restaurant host, the maitre d is left to aggressively shout, “I weep for the future.” He's not the only one.

Fast Times at Mel's Diner: American Graffiti and Lost Innocence

American Graffiti opens on a still of Mel's Drive-In, the popular hangout spot for the locals. Like a framed novelty picture that would be sitting on the wall of a modern diner, the photograph is a simultaneously celebration of the era but a reminder of how unapproachable it is. Though set in 1962, the first song played with the drive-in still is an anachronism, Bill Haley's “Rock Around the Clock,” a hit from the late 1950s. The song and the image signal that though the film plays like a documentary, it more closely resembles a class reunion where distance and time away have distorted perception to where everything feels just a few years off and everyone reminisces about the good ole days that may not have been so good.

But George Lucas's ode to his high school years seems less a fond remembrance and more of an ironic commentary. The film is permeated by a sense of nostalgia tinged with melancholy. The characters mourn their lives even as they live them, as if they know that in just a few short years Vietnam will start and all of this will be gone. John Milner is the fatalistic, outlaw philosopher akin to James Dean's Jim Stark from Rebel Without A Cause. He has the fastest hot rod in town but spends all of his time visiting the junkyard and wondering if each new race could be his last until his number is up.

The town is experiencing economic, social, and moral decay. Milner complains that the strip use to be so much longer and bigger just a few short years ago. Though Modesto, California had apparently escaped the economic and social contraction that plagued Anarene, Texas in The Last Picture Show a decade earlier, it has now come to pass. The local arcade owners and the Moose Lodge are giving away their first ever scholarship to encourage kids to leave the town because they can better prepare themselves for the future elsewhere. In this town, the film insinuates that one night stands and meaningless sex are common and schoolwork is done by parents for their children. While intimidating, The Pharoahs gang is much older than the rest of the teenagers and spend their time committing petty thievery for quarters from pinball machines and bullying people that sit on their cars. And they show their small-time status further by getting caught up in the awe of Milner's drag racing narrative wondering when and if he'll ever lose. The grown ups are no different. A popular teacher in his late 20s tried to go to college but wasn't the “competitive type” and came back home, the film implies, to violate ethical codes by sleeping with his students.

Even the iconic Wolfman Jack is demystified. Through the use of diegetic radio for ambiance, the film builds Wolfman into a folk hero, a mythical figure that escaped the town to evade the law and travels the world and comes back only to deliver the occasional pirate broadcast. Everyone has a Wolfman Jack story to share that is half collaboration from other urban legends and half confabulation to inflate the storyteller's sense of self-importance. When we meet him on the outskirts of town, Lucas cleverly shrouds him in darkness as a gatekeeper guarding the secrets of music and life. He is The Wizard of Oz, Marshak from A Serious Man, The Oracle from The Matrix – he is film's semblance of inspiration and answers. We can only enter through a backdoor maze, but when we see him the illusion is dropped for reality. Like the malt shop commemorative picture of Mel's Drive In, Wolfman Jack's legend does not match his appearance. He is a middle-aged disc jockey eating popsicles too fast so they don't melt first. Seemingly unable to crush our dreams, he perpetuates the mythos of Wolfman Jack even after we've seen behind the curtain. He is another in a long line of locals who was unable to flee the small town's grasp.

The younger, recent graduates also feel a sense of pessimism about their plight. Though they try to escape, they are unable to avoid reliving the same experiences. Steve, the exiting class president, plans to fly out of town the next morning for college and break up with his girlfriend. After unsuccessfully ending the relationship, he spends his remaining hours at a freshman dance back at school getting back together with his girlfriend and delaying the trip back East. Terry the Toad, the loser of the group, itches to be cooler than he is. He borrows Steve's car for the night driving the strip and tries to adopt a new persona. He changes his nickname, puts on airs to pick up a girl, drinks more than he normally does and gets into a fight he is sure to lose. However, by night's end, he has lost the car twice, had the fight broken up by Milner, and gotten sick from alcohol poisoning. At night's end, though Debbie gives him hope that they can hang out again, Terry is left to beg Milner to let him ride with him during the race against loud-mouthed comic relief Bob Falfa played by Harrison Ford. Even Milner, despite his posturing and existential angst, reprises his role as drag strip king in another race at film's end to reinforce his inability to alter his course.

Curt, the brain, is the film's one exception. Like the others, he “wants to remember all of the good times” as well by going to the dance. He even wanders the halls of the old school and gets back together with his ex-girlfriend for about an hour. However, symbolically, he is unable to reopen his old locker by using the same combination because he has been locked out of his old life and forced to branch outward. He is given multiple avenues of change. He pursues a blonde siren in a white chevy all night. He is forced to hang out with the Pharoahs but wins them over and gets invited to join the gang. He receives the scholarship from the Moose Lodge and also plans to leave town in the morning. But he's also the one that talks to the hedonistic teacher and meets Wolfman Jack. He hears all the tales of misspent youth and wasted opportunities. He has been granted knowledge that Terry lacks, Milner appreciates, and Steve fakes, but none are able to act on other than Curt. He is the only one able to break the destructive cycle of small town life and escape the picturesque Mel's Drive-in.

American Graffiti possesses one of the saddest codas in film history but perhaps the most honest. As Curt boards the plan and flies back East for college, a title scrawl brings us up to date with the characters. Milner, in spite of his prescient wisdom and familiarity with all the fatal car wrecks, is killed by a drunk driver only two years later presumably in a drag race. Steve still lives in Modesto, California as an insurance agent repeating the path of the teacher and Wolfman Jack. Although given a glimmer of hope with Debbie, Terry does not get the comic epilogue that Bluto does in a similar situation in Animal House by marrying the blonde and getting elected to congress. Terry goes to Vietnam and is reported MIA near An Loc just three years later. Curt, like George Lucas himself, becomes a writer and moves to Canada, perhaps to avoid being drafted into Vietnam like his friends.

The film like the nostalgic still of Mel's Drive-In is an artifact of a by-gone time before Kennedy's assassination, before Vietnam, and before Watergate that can never be recreated.