I’ve been on a YouTube kick where I’m finding a bunch of the teen sex comedies from the 80s that I watched as a kid. Some of them way too early probably, but some when, yes, it’s exactly what a 15 to 17 year old boy should be watching late at night when the parents are asleep.
They are so gross and so misogynistic and so wonderfully encapsulating a time that, in that moment, felt completely normal and okay. I hate that i have a love for them because they point to so many screwed up things that people still think today.
Nostalgia is so bad for us. Like, I get it. The Thundercats cartoons are hitting Hulu today, and I watched those as they came out. And then they did a revival about ten years ago that I mostly missed, but I kind of want to watch those too. And aside from the overly machismo characters, Thundercats wasn’t a bad example (I think. But I’m definitely looking back with rose-colored glasses).
But a lot, and I mean A LOT of the stuff that I watched back that, be it movies, comedians, the music (hair bands), TV shows and so on… It was problematic. And that’s an issue now because no one likes being told that the stuff they grew up loving was bad for us and should be put away forever. Its one thing to say that there was systemic racism in Gone With The Wind, drop a disclaimer at the beginning, and then still feel okay watching it for the artistic cinematography, the acting, the history. But it’s something else entirely to try to explain the inherent value of them having panty raids and having live cam feeds of Delta Pis in Revenge of the Nerds. “Oh hello, pretty blonde lady I just passed nude photos around of without your permission and then had sex with under false pretenses. Forget about all this rapey stuff and be my girlfriend to show that I’m somehow the good guy in all of this.”
A few years back I watched a seemingly innocent film called “My Science Project” again. I remember enjoying it a lot more when I was a teen, maybe even in my early 20s. And it has its moments, although it’s also all over the place. But Fischer Stevens plays the snarky sidekick in it and drops so many gay slurs… Let’s just realize that Fischer Stevens was problematic in a lot of his roles back in the 80s looking at it through today’s lens. And we probably should’ve seen them for what they were then. But we were way too comfortable with those terms, with blackface or brownface, with racial and gendered stereotypes.
That’s just it. I see 80s movies as quaint. As a product of their time. I watch Zapped (although not in a long time since Baio went psycho) not for the teen sex comedy of it but more for the love story of it. Barnie and Bernadete at the Prom dancing to “You’re the Queen, I’m the King of Hearts” and I still get that puppy-love melt in my stomach. I’ve always leaned towards the romantic stuff. Another movie I’ve tracked down, Lovelines, is a Romeo/Juliet starcrossed story about two teens in a batter of the bands from competing schools. Again, the love story and the music (so bad but so perfect in its time), not to mention Jonna Lee playing the drums (I’d follow her over to her lead role in Making the Grade with Judd Nelson later). Or Gimme An “F,” the cheerleading camp comedy that Bring It On and especially Fired Up! owe everything to. It’s not even technically a love story since Mary Ann, the captain of the underdog Ducks, doesn’t “get the boy” when she offers herself to the handsome cheer coach Tommy. I guess maybe it falls into my weird love of sports and competition movies, even though I hate both sports and competing for things. But otherwise it’s an excuse for camp shower scenes and faux sex and the same grotesqueness as the rest of them. You compare these to something like Hardbodies and they look positively progressive. But I loved that movie too, from the moment I saw Rags flip someone off in 47 different languages.
It would be different if I just loved campy (not “camp” as a setting) movies. But this isn’t something I seek out now. Yes, I mentioned Fired Up! and I can honestly say, sure, I do like that movie. It may be the last example of that kind of film that actually got away with it (probably not financially. I don’t know how successful it was). But these kinds of films don’t happen today. At most we get adult men acting like juveniles, but the women in the films now aren’t going to fall for that shit, or forgive those types of actions. Which, good. You compare a movie like Old School or Wedding Crashers to something like Bridesmaids. The male lead movies are still “men being boys.” But they love it. They relish in it. Bridesmaids has Kristin Wiggs character struggling with crippling anxiety and failure and being afraid that she’s losing the only friend she has because she can’t grow with her. Men rushing towards being juvenile. Women struggling to be an adult.
I watched something called “Good Boys” the other day. It was like Superbad for the pre-teen crowd. It was really funny. The actors were all great, and they let them act like actual kids. Yeah, adult humor and jokes, but done at a level where boys their age are just learning how to make those kinds of jokes, to cross over into that adult-style of comedy. A year or so back was the movie Blockers, about teen girls who make a pact to lose their virginity on their prom night, and their parents find out and try to stop them (well, two of the parents do. One they actually manage to approach with a sex positive attitude). The adults lean into the really gross comedy, the teens have stuff that feels more appropriate for their age and individual stories. It really touches on friendship and acceptance and encouragement and so many things. I find that I love both of these movies, and they are essentially the modern-day teen sex comedies, but they do so much right in comparison to what we thought was all right then.
So how can I still love Joysticks? Or Up The Creek. Or, jesus, Caddyshack?
It’s one of those things I guess that, being that i was there for it then and raised on it, i can try to make the excuse that I’m “grandfathered in.” As long as I’m aware that a lot of it is not okay, that it’s only played for laughs (and some of those laughs are uncomfortable ones now, in a way that’s different than how I was uncomfortable watching breasts bounce across the screen if my parents were in the room watching the movie too). Do we a film because of the bad it has in it even though there might be a lot of good in it too? Or do we put these things away because, while we who lived through them the first time may get that they’re bad actions with some possibly not-as-bad intentions, they might be seen by kids today that aren’t as likely to recognize that. Who might pick up terms and actions and not get how that could be seen as ridiculous or humorous. Or, worse, see it and not realize that it’s wrong at all. How many people that were watching these films from the 70s and 80s on up see nothing wrong with them now?
Since i don’t have kids of my own, and won’t ever, it’s easier for me to see this stuff as an outsider. I don’t have to explain Louis wearing a mask and taking sexual advantage of a girl in a moon room. I don’t have to try to talk out how it’s funny when Bluto looks at the camera with a raised eyebrow when he’s spying on a co-ed through her dorm window as she changes for bed. Effectively as a non-parental, that’s someone else’s cross to bear. But as a person who is constantly trying to make my way into being a better, more enlightened, more caring person today… I do think about it.
I guess it’s easier to explain than my undying love of Xanadu.
