A drunk passed out teenager was pretty much a prop. No automatic date rape would be assumed, especially by a nerd. Nerds are lucky to go to the same school as hot girls. Driving one home, even an unconscious one would be a dream come true, but not for evil reasons.
Small mercies.
its a good movie better than most comedies ( or they say they are ) in this day in age
Sixteen Candles is on ABC Family Channel right now.
Well, there you go. It must be wholesome :D.
Sixteen Candles came out when I was still in High School and John Hughes was considered a god. Liked it then ( though even unsophisticated teen me winced at the Long Duk Dong caricature ), can’t stand it now. John Hughes’ oeuvre has not aged well.
I always find it interesting that Caroline’s bad behavior toward Jake tends to go unremarked upon even by the critics of this movie.
I never saw the movie till I was in college and remember being quite offended at the portrayal of the woman who was handicapped.
Wait. What woman who was handicapped? I don’t remember that.
Well, Joan Cusack was in some kind of a neck brace. I assumed injury, though.
The exchange about “violating her ten different ways” was exactly how guys talked in high school back then. And it was hard to believe the rich jock would have any sensitivity about it. (I graduated in 1989). Any jock would brag to everyone even if he didn’t really “violate”".
I think that the scene between Anthony Michael Hall & Molly Ringwald in the garage was amazingly acted by both. It is one of my favorites. Especially when he’s admiring her from behind the shelf and knocks over the hubcaps. Priceless!
My 15 year old daughter and her friends all like it. They get that its a movie that was made in a different time and expressed different values on race and sexual standards. They also seem to get the idea that as a broad comedy it has characters pushing the boundaries of taste and behaviour and that not all are role models.
Its also that much harder dictating what is right and wrong as a parent when they know that at their age I was watching racist movies where 16 year old girls would sell their panties to a geek [that’s a line from the movie if you’ve just dropped in]. Teaching young kids to not be sucked in by moral absolutism has to be a good thing.
As a kid I have been at teenage and high school parties where there were girls as young as 12 present, drinking and for a few making out with 15-16 year old guys. And even there a suggestion someone take a passed out girl and “violate her” would have been beyond the pale.
And what makes it worse is that the guy who treats her like this, and who passes her out for the nerdy guy to enjoy is the romantic hero. The guy we’re supposed to be rooting for, not some sleazy villain.
The situation in Revenge Of The Nerds is not even near this.
In Jake’s (the romantic hero) defense, even when I watched that scene years ago as a teen, I thought he was being sarcastic.
I just purchased the most recent Blue Ray of “Sixteen Candles” and it was confirmed by interviews with the actors that there are alot of deleted scenes and entire sequences that could add up to a four hour movie!
How Farmer Ted ended up under the glass table at the party was actually filmed!
This actually explains why he was not given a ride home in the trunk with his friends.
And there was alot more that we know and don’t know about the joy ride with Ted and Caroline that was also filmed!
We all know about one scene that has been confirmed that we have not seen. That is Long Duck Dong standing in for the DJ. This is going on when the breakdancers (the guys in the red outfits in the hallway of the school) have the undivided attention of everyone at the dance!
The individual scenes that were actually filmed are to numerous to mention!
Of course the only deleted scene that we know about and have seen is the cafétéria scene, but there is so much more!
Granted that the thread is 7 years old, I was just talking last week with my wife about how much better modern teen sex comedies are than the drivel that we grew up with. Compare Sex Education or Teenage Bounty Hunters to any of the brat pack movies. They’re definitely raunchier, they’re far funnier to my tastes, and racist stereotypes are there for the lampshade, and sexual assault is not there for the giggles.
Back in 2018, Molly Ringwald wrote a pretty thoughtful article for the New Yorker about her John Hughes films, specifically including that “trading his unconscious girlfriend” scene. Very much worth a read.
That was excellent.
I was impressed with it enough at the time that it immediately popped to mind when I saw this thread. The discussion she has with the actual “traded girlfriend” herself is fascinating; and, I think, does a great job of showing how reasonable people can disagree.
I watch that scene and it feels pretty rape-y. As does the moon room scene in Revenge of the Nerds. And Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s just made my jaw drop the first time I saw it. But people (for the most part) simply didn’t react the same way when these movies were made. We can certainly argue that they should have, but judging the past by current norms is a good way to start hating everybody that ever called someone a “fag” (which I’m pretty sure happens about a hundred times in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure) or, you know, owned slaves in the 1800s.
Anyways, kudos to Molly Ringwald.
Well, it doesn’t help that “Gedde Watanabe” sounds almost as much like an Asian joke as “Long Duk Dong.”
?? What sounds like an “Asian joke” about the real-life name “Gedde Watanabe”? Especially compared to the entirely made-up “Asian” name that was merely an excuse to say “long duck dong”?
I mean, Watanabe is a well-known actual Japanese surname with a Japanese etymology. “Gedde” is AFAICT an unremarkable variant of the Japanese-American actor’s highly usual given name “Gary”.
Am I just naively missing some obviously ridiculous or dirty-sounding homonym here, or do you have to be really clueless about East Asian names to think that “Gedde Watanabe” sounds like an “Asian joke”?