Projector: Image of John Hughes
Speaker:
John Hughes was an American film director, producer and writer who made many successful comedy films in the 80s based around teen life. A lot of his films follow a narrative that incorporates the theme of dysfunctional families. I believe that the consistency of using dysfunctional families in his films is a trait that can classify John Hughes to be an auteur. Auteurship can be defined as "a director who manifests a consistency of style and theme across his or her films" (item 5) which perfectly describes Hughes and his style of film making as he routinely employs characters that come from dysfunctional families in his films. This idea is discussed in an interview with two film critics as they remember the working life of John Hughes (item 10). They go as far to say that there is not one "sympathetic adult character in any John Hughes film." This is an example of people recognising Hughes' auteur traits due to him continuingly fitting dysfunctional family units into his films narratives.
Projector: Home alone clip (item1) - Kevin arguing with his mother
Speaker:
In this clip from the 1990 film Home Alone written and directed by John Hughes, you can see how Hughes has been very obvious in showing the main character's dysfunctional relationship with his family through the dialogue. "I don't want any family, family suck" is a line shouted by the main character at his mother. It clearly shows his frustration with his family and situation. This idea of difficult situations in family units is a commonality in John Hughes films but I think that Home Alone is a suitable focus film because the whole narrative surrounds "the ignored child" (item17) which is a commonality in Hughes' films.
Projector: Home Alone clip(item2) - Kevin thinking about how his family treats him (1 min) (20mins in)
Speaker:
In this clip we see an editing technique were faded footage is placed overlaying the main frame and faded in and out acting as through bubbles for the main character. As we can see in the overlaying footage, Kevin's family are not very kind towards him at all showing how he is treated as the black sheep of the family and therefore depicting a flawed family unit. The dysfunctional family is shown through editing techniques in another scene from the film where everyone in the house are frantically running around trying to get packed and ready to go on holiday.
Projector: Home Alone clip(item2) - The family rushing to get ready (1 min)
Speaker:
Here we can see that the images in the shot have been sped up by the editor to make the scene feel more chaotic, the upbeat diegetic music helps emphasise the franticness in the shot and makes the family look even more disorganised and stressful. Which are characteristics that Hughes likes to place on the families that he creates. Because John Hughes so often has this idea of a dysfunction family present in his films, it makes me question his own childhood and if these ideas and themes are stemming from personal experience. In an interview where Corey Brunish talks to Hughes about his career (item7), he describes how his childhood had its challenges.
Projector: Clip from interview #2 with John Hughes (30secs in)
Speaker:
As we can see here, Hughes says how for him not everything always went right, just as things started to get easier for him as he was growing up, his parents would decide to move again against his will. This shows how Hughes experienced first hand parents not taking his feelings into consideration. This may explain why "the ignored child is a consistent theme within his films" and why the narratives have often "negatively portrayed adults and parents as being foolish or concerned with material objects"(item17). These irresponsible parental characters are present in many of Hughes' films and they contribute to creating a flawed family unit. The idea of a flawed family unit is present in many other John Hughes films, for example; 'The Breakfast Club' (item 2).
Projector: Clip from The Breakfast Club -opening sequence
Speaker:
From the opening sequence in The Breakfast Club (1985) we get a glimpse into the personal lives of each main character. As each character leaves their parents to go to school we can see that they each "already had to put on their armour" before getting to school due to their home lives being difficult (item8). This is apparent through the little interactions they have with their parents, the fact that Brian's and Andrew's parents both have harsh words with them before they leave, Alison's parents say nothing and simply drive away and Bender's arrives without any parents. This clearly sets us broken backgrounds for these characters. Alison possibly being in the most difficult situation as she has self diagnosed psychological problems that are revealed to be "a direct tactic to ignore her parents' ignorance of her." (item 4) This helps to prove Hughes' auteur tendencies as he is constantly creating difficult family situations in his main character's narratives.
It is apparent that it is not just John Hughes films that create a dysfunction family by putting a negligent parent in the mix as "parents tend to be totally absent from most high school comedies" (item 13). However as John Hughes helped create and mould the teen comedy genre into what it is today, I think that it is possible that he deliberately incorporated irresponsible adults as a way of isolating the teen's problems. This amplifies the life of the teen and focusses on what they this is important. Actress Molly Ringwald, who worked closely with Hughes for years, agreed with this idea and said that "Hughes is 36, but he provides no adults-eye view of teen problems." (item12)
Projector: Ferris Bueller's Day Off - opening scene
Speaker:
In this scene we can see that the parents are completely oblivious to the fact that their son is faking his illness in order to get a day of school which clearly shows how they are in the scene to be "credulous fools, present only to be the butt of Ferris's gift for whip-smart deception"(item14). This is another example of how Hughes has used the parental characters simply to amplify the problems of the teenagers, who take on main roles in his narratives. Parents neglecting their children or not being sympathetic towards them is the main feature of the dysfunctional families that John Hughes incorporates in his film. Another example of this common feature would be the father figure in 'Pretty in Pink'(1986).
Projector: Image from Pretty in Pink(1986) (Item18)
The screenshot from Pretty in Pink shows main character Andie caring for her "unemployed father"(item15). This displays an element of role reversals as normally parents are the ones that should be caring for the children and not the opposite way around. This is why the image shows how the family in this film is dysfunctional, the supposed parental figure is not only financially unstable and therefore unable to provide for his only daughter but also clearly unable to look after himself. The screenshot shows Andie to be the most responsible person in the house showing how she has been forced to give up some aspects of her own childhood in order to become a caregiver to her father. This makes her family somewhat dysfunctional as it does not fit the norm of a nuclear family. Pretty in Pink is yet another John Hughes film that has this similar narrative and therefore supports the theory that Hughes is an auteur due to the commonality of flawed family units in his films.
Projector: clip from Weird Science (1985) (item3)
Speaker:
In this scene we see the parents of main character Garry getting caught up in a heated argument about a party they do not want their son to go to, the argument results in the parents being put in a trance and consequently the father forgets that he has a son altogether. This is a very exaggerated and science fiction way of John Hughes expressing parental negligence towards their children. As a result of Garry's father forgetting that he exists a dysfunctional family unit has been created and although this was done for comical effect, it still follows the auteur tendencies that Hughes has already previously showed.
To conclude, I think it is clear that John Hughes carries auteur traits into his films in the form of a dysfunctional family narrative. This is an aspect that makes Hughes an auteur as it fits into the description of a director who "consistently express his own unique obsessions" in films (item6). Hughes' unique obsession has been drawn from his own childhood troubles and then adopted into his film making style which shows his auteur tendencies and therefore classifies John Hughes as an auteur.
By Connie Bytheway.
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